One of the most affecting reminiscences of my mother is my remembrance of her as a Christian housekeeper. She worked very hard, and when we would come in from summer play, and sit down at the table at noon, I remember how she used to come in with beads of perspiration along the line of gray hair, and how sometimes she would sit down at the table and put her head against her wrinkled hand and say: "Well, the fact is, I'm too tired to eat." Long after she might have delegated this duty to others she would not be satisfied unless she attended to the matter herself. In fact, we all preferred to have her do so, for somehow things tasted better when she prepared them. Some time ago, in an express train, I shot past that old homestead. I looked out of the window and tried to peer through the darkness. While I was doing so one of my old schoolmates, whom I had not seen for many years, tapped me on the shoulder and said: "De Witt, I see you are looking out at the scenes of your boyhood." "Oh, yes," I replied, "I was looking out at the old place where my mother lived and died."
That night, in the cars, the whole scene came back to me. There was the country home. There was the noonday table. There were the children on either side of the table, most of them gone never to come back. At one end of the table my father, with a smile that never left his countenance even when he lay in his coffin. It was an eighty-six years' smile—not the smile of inanimation, but of Christian courage and of Christian hope. At the other end of the table was a beautiful, benignant, hard-working, aged Christian housekeeper, my mother. She was very tired. I am glad she has so good a place to rest in. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labors, and their works do follow them."
FOOTNOTES:
[4] It may be hoped that the savage who administered it received the attention of the Board of Education. A man so grossly unjust should be in the Penitentiary.
WOMAN ENTHRONED.[ToC]
"There are threescore queens."—Solomon's Song 6:8.