Here was a man upon whom the eyes of the world had rested, whose name was familiar to millions, sitting at a table mending broken toys. I was won back to him before I had looked upon the picture two minutes. I could overlook all his faults, because his faults were human, just the same as his love for children was human. The simplicity of the picture showed the man and the father and the companion, mutely telling the story of his great love for the boy whom he never hoped to see when grown to manhood. He fully realized that when the boy became a full-grown man he would not be there to see him and help him and guide him with his great love.
THE MOTHER-IN-LAW
There never was a woman who made a more loving mother, nor a mother more proud of her son than Mrs. Taylor. Tom was a boy that any mother might be proud of, so obedient and affectionate. But Tom was going to get married and bring his wife to the old home, and the widow Taylor assured me that she was going to be such a model mother-in-law that there would be never a cloud of discontent hover over the Taylor home. Tom’s girl was such a sweet little soul that anybody could get along with her; and even if she was not, Tom would not let his mother be abused or slighted or made discontented in her own home.
I didn’t return to the Taylor home for ten years, but I noticed at once a change in the Widow Taylor. There was a look of sadness in her white face and she seemed to have grown old very fast since I saw her last. I knew she couldn’t be more than sixty, but she looked to be easily seventy-five years old. When I found myself alone on the wide porch with the sad faced woman I made bold to inquire: “Well, Mrs. Taylor, did you succeed in playing the part of a model mother-in-law?”
She smiled at me with a look of pain in her face, and slowly said: “I don’t believe there could be such a thing. Perhaps a mother could be a model mother-in-law to a son-in-law, but she couldn’t be one to her son’s wife, and live in the old home. When Tom brought Bessie to this house it was my home. My word was law. You well know that I couldn’t be a tyrant if I tried, yet it was a satisfaction to arrange the house to suit my taste and run things after the style I had practiced for years.”
Then, in answer to my startled look, she continued: “No, Bessie and I have never quarreled. I wouldn’t allow myself to do so. She is Tom’s wife, and he loves her to devotion. If I quarreled with Bessie Tom would have to take one side or the other. I wouldn’t want him to decide against his wife, and if he turned against me it would break my heart. So I try to bear my lot without complaining, but I can hardly help the feeling that I am a stranger in my own home. I have no longer any authority about the house. The pictures are no longer arranged as they were ten years ago. The portraits of the family no longer grace the walls of the downstairs rooms. Bessie says it is not fashionable, so the pictures of Tom’s father and my own, are banished to the narrow confines of my own bed room.
“And my bedroom has been changed, too. I no longer sleep over the parlor, facing the public road. Bessie thought it would make such a pleasant spare room for visitors, so I was removed to the east room over the kitchen. When Bessie’s mother visits her she occupies my old room, while I must go off to my den over the kitchen. I may be selfish, though I pray God to keep me from thoughts that are narrow; but it does hurt an old woman to be thus set aside in her own home.
“And no longer any callers or visitors come to see me. I’m a back number. Even you came to see Tom, and not me. I am a deposed ruler. My kingdom has been handed over to another and my own son is a subject of the new ruler. I never complain to Tom, because he does not understand. He thinks that I ought to be satisfied with things as they are, and maybe I should, for I have nothing to do. Well, nothing to do is the hardest life a person can live. I can go and come at will, but that is not enough to satisfy a woman. I long for the old home in which I was once an entity, a moving force, a working energy.