I closed the doors feeling more danger for her life than the child's and coming softly in, drew back the curtains from the bed. She spoke, "I heard them—it is Henry; oh, I knew he went—is he dead?" But she never seemed to hear the answer I gave her. She commenced coughing—she died in agony—strangled to death. The poor mother! The boy's disobedience killed her.
After a couple of hours I sought the boy's room.
[Illustration]
"Oh, I wish I had not told mother I did not love her. Tomorrow I will tell her I do," said the child sobbing painfully. My heart ached; tomorrow I knew we must tell him she was dead. We did not till the child came fully into the room, crying, "Mother, I do love you."
Oh! may I never see agony like that child's, as the lips he kissed gave back no kiss, as the hands he took fell lifeless from his hand, instead of shaking his hand as it always had, and the boy knew she was dead.
"Mother, I do love you now," all the day he sobbed and cried, "O Mother,
Mother, forgive me." Then he would not leave his mother. "Speak to me,
Mother!" but she could never speak again, and he—the last words she had
ever heard him say, were, "Mother, I don't love you now."
That boy's whole life was changed; sober and sad he was ever after. He is now a gray haired old man, with one sorrow over his one act of disobedience, one wrong word embittering all his life—with those words ever ringing in his ears, "Mother, I don't love you now."
Will the little ones who read this remember, if they disobey their mother, if they are cross and naughty, they say every single time they do so, to a tender mother's heart, by their actions if not in the words of Henry, the very same thing, "I don't love you now, Mother."
"LITTLE MOTHER"
She was a clear-eyed, fresh-cheeked little maiden, living on the banks of the great Mississippi, the oldest of four children, and mother's "little woman" always. They called her so because of her quiet, matronly care of the younger Mayfields—that was the father's name. Her own name was the beautiful one of Elizabeth, but they shortened it to Bess.