“Over my heart in the days that have flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,
Faithful unselfish, and patient like yours.”
“That is one of my husband’s favorite songs,” I said. “I often sing it to him and to Bert in the twilights at home.” And with a little laugh, I added: “My boy asked me once to emphasize ‘patient.’ He says that is the strongest characteristic of the mother’s love.”
“They repay us for it all!” was the fervent reply.
And I returned as feelingly, “Yes, a thousandfold.”
She was ever the true, unselfish woman, generous in impulse and in action, sweet and sound to the very core of her great heart. We had loved each other without a shadow of changing for over thirty years. In all our intercourse there is nothing upon which I dwell with such fondness as on the days that slipped by brightly and smoothly, that late January and early February. If I observed with regret that I rallied from my sudden seizure more rapidly than she threw off the languor and loss of appetite which, she assured us, over and over, “meant next to nothing”—I was not seriously uneasy at what I saw. She had not been strong for the last year. Time would restore her, surely. She had just arisen on the morning of my departure, when I went into her room to say, “Good-bye.” She smiled brightly as I put my arms about her and bade her, “Hurry up and return my visit.”
“You will see me before long,” she said, confidently. “As soon as I can bear the journey I shall go to Newark. My native air always brings healing on its wings.”
My beloved friend Mrs. Waite had passed from earth, six months before. The visit I paid at her house, on the way back to New York, was the first I had made there since the beauty of her presence was withdrawn.