"Father," said he, "I have been down in the sitting-room, trying to read my little books; but I think so much of my dear dead mother, I can't read; and the tears come into my eyes so fast, that I can't see the pictures. I went to rock in my little chair, but I saw my mother's empty chair, and my little heart aches very much. It will be very lonesome and sad here, if I don't see mother anywhere. And who will take care of this little baby brother?"
No word was spoken by those present, but their tears and sobs told plainly that they too felt how lonely and sad that home would be without the gentle voice and cheerful song of that "dear mother." As no one checked him, Willie again spoke, and, as well as he could amid sobs and tears, told the bitterness of his young spirit.
"I love you some, father, but not as I did my mother; and now my mother is in heaven, who shall I have to take care of me and kiss me, father; who will say a prayer to me every night? Aunt Susan's prayers are not like mother's; and your voice doesn't sound so sweet by the side of my bed as my mother's did. Oh dear! what did my mother die for, and leave me a poor little motherless boy?"
His father then took him upon his knee, wiped his tears, and soothed him to sleep with gentle caresses. No word could David utter. For a long time he sat with his sleeping boy, beside his dead. The paleness of his cheek, and the frequent sigh, expressed his sorrow. His mother again tried to draw from him an expression of his Christian fidelity, fearing that he was untrue to his God and his Master under a trial so severe. When at length he did speak, a hardened heart might have been moved by his broken sentences and choking words, as he made an effort to assure his anxious parent.
"Mother, I have the utmost confidence in the mercy and goodness of God—even now that he has taken to himself one so very dear. I feel sure there is some great and important lesson which he would have me learn from this sorrowful event. I have all faith that Abby is at rest, and will still love those of us who are left on the earth to mourn. I believe we shall meet each other in the future, that we shall recognize and love each other, with a far more perfect and a purer love than we have cherished here. I shall be lonely, and miss from my hours at home the counsel, the aid, the cheerfulness, sympathy and attentive love of one of the best of women. Her beautiful example in the service of her Master will often be remembered with deep and sincere grief.
"All this I could bear calmly; if it were more bitter, I could bear it and not weep. But to think of my children—as motherless babes; to hear Willie tell his sorrow, and mourn so bitterly in his tender years for a mother—so dear; to feel that with his susceptibility and keen sensitiveness he realizes so fully his loss; to hear him sob on his pillow at night, and, when alone, call himself 'little motherless Willie;'—oh, mother! what man or Christian would not bow beneath a burden like this?—It is the contemplation of four motherless children that wounds me most. It seems to me Abby herself would not reprove me, could those cold lips now bring me a message from her spirit in heaven."
With expressions like those in the chamber of the dead was every hour in the home of David embittered, for weeks and months, by the little mourning child. He gathered flowers and laid them before his father, saying, "I don't suppose you care about them, father; but my mother isn't here to take them. I pick them because they look up into my face as if mother was somewhere near them. But they wither on my hand, and hold down their heads, just as I want to do now my mother is dead."
Every object at home seemed to remind Willie of his mother, and keep his bereavement uppermost in his thoughts. He did not weep as much after a few weeks, but through all his boyhood there rested a sadness on his countenance, that indicated a mournful recollection of that dear mother. Through his whole life he felt that he was like a tender branch lopped from the parent-tree; like a lamb sent out from the fold while too young to meet the storms and travel the dangerous paths of which he often heard from his mother. This idea seemed ever present, and served many times to hold him back from adventurous pursuits and untried schemes. "I don't know—but I should have known had my dear mother lived," was the expression of his general course in life.
As long as he was a child he spoke often and tenderly of his mother. He cherished a remembrance of her faithful admonitions and precepts, as vivid as might have been expected from a child bereaved at the age of eight or ten. When older, he realized more fully his loss, especially when he met one whom he believed to be a good mother. He then seldom spoke of his mother; but his visits to the grave-yard, his sadness on the anniversary of the day of her death, his conversations about her with his brothers and sister, the value he attached to every token of her love to him, convinced us that he remembered her with deep affection.