About this time I received another long letter from my brother, offering me a half interest in his grocery store, and advising me to come at once if I expected to find mother alive.
I lost no time in telegraphing the following reply:
"Will come immediately if you send ticket; otherwise I can't."
Late the next day I received a telegraph order for ninety dollars.
The telegraph company wrote out a check, which I got the Principal of the Fresno Business College to endorse.
I purchased a ticket via Denver and Chicago, and after a long and tedious journey, I arrived in Tarboro.
My mother was sleeping and dreaming of her boy in far off sun-bathed California, when, with a light kiss, I awoke her. I will never forget the glad cry that escaped her lips when she saw me home once again, safe and sound.
It was Horace Greeley, the great American author, who said: "Young men go West."
From what little I saw of this great, grand country beyond the Mississippi, I think it is good advice. There are more opportunities to make money and more money to be made, and the climate is better; but unless father and mother are dead, take the well-meant advice of a young man who has recently been West; only to learn that there was but one place on earth—"HOME."
THE END.