our mother.

Y DEAR JACK: It is with a feeling of sadness I take up my pen to write to you to-day, for it is a year ago to-day we lost The sky is overcast, the children are gathered in quiet groups in the door-ways and win dows, the pigeons gaze disconsolately from under the eaves, a heavy depression weighs over the earth, or so it seems to me.

This is the first time I have ever been away from home without feeling that Mother was there at the hearthstone, following my every step with her watchful, loving eye, and offering nightly a prayer for her distant son. This is the first time I have ever been afar and failed to find her tender, all-gathering, thoughtful letters at every halting place. This is the first time I have ever wandered from my native state and have not put a letter off to her at every set of sun.

During all these days of my absence I have felt a want, a void, a something missing, a chord broken. I have felt that the magnet which drew me homeward had vanished, that, somehow, home itself had gone. In all my travels heretofore I have seen things doubly; through my through my own eyes and through Mother's. Whatever pleased or interested me, I looked at from my point of view and then from hers, and I never closed my eyes without writing her about it, thus enjoying it twice for

our pleasure was always Mother's. But now, all this is ended. Do not think, my boy, I do not enjoy writing to you. You know I do. It is not that, but it is the longing, the craving, to tell Mother about it, just as we did when children, to go to her with all our pleasures and griefs, just as we always have up to a year ago to-day. You remember the old verse : Backward, turn backward, O time, in thy flight,

Make me a child again, just for to-night." To hear once more her dear voice, to see her loving face!

Do you remember, Jack (of course you do), our nursery just out of Mother's room in the old house, and the great four-post bed you and I used to sleep in together? There was the high window right over it, just within tip-toe reach, against which the branches of the Gravenstein tree used to rattle (ghostly fingers to us). Then there was the wall cupboard, right beside the bed, where we kept our treasures-how handy it was Sunday mornings, when we had to stay in bed till 8: 30 so that Father might sleep! And can you remember lying there and hearing Father's deep, muffled voice and Mother's softer tones in earnest conversation in the next room? How I used to wonder what they were saying!

And how good those scorching hot pillows used to be on cold winter nights, when the wind was rattling through the old house, seeming

about to drive the windows in, and the frost was finger deep on the panes! You remember she always had a row of them on such nights around the old air-tight stove in her room, and, as the children were one by one packed off to bed, she would seize one of the pillows, doubling it up to retain the heat, and hurry to place it under the shivering little one. At the foot of the bed under the blankets there was always a freestone nice and warm, and in a few moments you were as cozy as a bird in its nest. Mother would tuck you in with little loving exclamations and pats, and finally, after your prayers were said, a good-night kiss, and then sweet, childlike slumber. Do you not see that picture, Jack? Does it not come back to you? Can't you see Mother bending over you?

I remember I always went to sleep with your hand in mine, and if I lost it in the night I could not go to sleep again till I had found it.

What was that prayer Mother used to read every night to herself just before she turned out the gas? Not the one we said, but the one she read for herself after we were safely in bed? Somehow, I always connect her with that prayer. It begins, "Defend us, O Lord, in all our doings-," I can't remember the rest, but it always made a great impression on me. What a perfect, simple, undoubting faith she had!

I remember one time when Mother was very sick. I lay in bed in the darkness in the next room, and I prayed with all the strength and purpose of my soul for her recovery, and I thought, with the old idea of sacrifice in my mind, what I would give to make her well again. First an

It

arm, or a leg, or both arms, or an eye, and finally, in a paroxysm of grief, my life itself. That was love, pure, unselfish, worshiping,—the love of the child for its mother. is good to feel, no matter how far you have drifted, that there was a time when you were pure, clean, unselfish, self-forgetting,-a child.

In my maturer years, I have sometimes thought that, in the kindness of her heart, Mother was too good, too lenient with us children. Can you remember her refusing you anything? And the things we used to do in that old house, the romps, the pranks we played!

The kitchen was the scene of many of our exploits, and a famous kitchen it was. You remember it, Jack. Fully thirty-five feet long by twenty-five feet wide, the east side all of brick, and the outline of the enormous fireplace of other days still plainly visible, flanked on one side by the brick oven, still used for baking bread and pies, and on the other by the capacious wash-boiler. In the opposite corner was the long-handled wooden pump, drawing the water from the well in the yard. The low ceiling was crossed by big oaken rafters, and the small rectangular window-panes allowed a distorted glimpse of Grandmother's old-fashioned garden, with a row of peach trees at the back.

It was in this kitchen I had my celebrated "Menagerie, Museum, and Megatherion Minstrels" (before you were born, Jack). We built a stage right across one end of the kitchen, spiking the boards to the floor, completely closing all entrance to the dining-room, so that for two days all communication was by going out of doors and around to the side porch.

The curtain and wings were made from mother's shawls and the parlor portières, and mother was right in the thick of it, aiding and abetting, while cook held up her hands in holy horror, and tried in vain to go on with her work.

And there was the time of the big snow, when we packed it up against the L till it formed a regular toboggan slide. Then we and all the neighbors' children tramped through the house, right up the front stairs, through the best chamber, with our sleds and snowy boots, got out the north chamber window, and slid down the roof. What a time that was!

And May day, 1876! Shall I ever forget it! After making night hideous with horns, guns, drums, rattles, and devil's fiddles, I gathered about fifty of all the young ragamuffins of the town, and, somewhere in the small hours of the morning, when sleep is sweetest, I quietly led this horde of tatterdemalions through the side door of our house. At a given signal, thumpity-thump, tootity-toot, bangity-bang went the whole gazoo up the front stairs, single file, by the foot of the bed where Mother and Father, at first furious, but soon laughing uproariously, were, and then down the back stairs, and out into the darkness to hatch other mischief.

What good times mother used to plan for us, little parties, picnics, suppers; never too tired to put us up a lunch; never too ill to make us a uniform for base-ball or soldiers, a mother not only to her own large family and several orphan relatives, but to all the motherless children of the neighborhood. Her heart was big enough for all. You remember how all the boys used to love her,

and how they used to wish they had such a mother, and did you notice at her funeral how many of those boys, now bearded men, were present? They had not forgotten the tender words and kindly hand pressures of years gone by.

I

You were her youngest, Jack, her baby; her last born, and she loved. you with that fondness mothers lavish on their tenderest and frailest. used to be a little jealous of you sometimes. But not for long, for I knew she loved us all alike, and frequently, when she felt her "sands of life” were ebbing, she used to talk with me of you, and tell me what I must do for you when she was no longer here to watch over you. You see how her love looked into the future, how she planned for the good and welfare of her loved ones, even beyond the grave. It is a sweet thought for you, especially, and for me, and I frequently find myself thinking, would Mother have me do this so?

Mother-what a sweet word it is! How it fills the mouth and the heart! How it expresses all love, and all devotion, and all self-sacrifice. Mother -home-the two are one and inseparable; and here am I, far, far from both, many and many a dreary mile, with wastes of rolling, wind-swept ocean between. The sun is setting drearily behind the hills; with you it is just rising, and I take hope and comfort. When it is setting on half the world, it is rising beneficently on the other half: it sets, but it always does rise, it always shines behind the clouds, "there is n't more night than day"; so good night, my boy, and "pleasant dreams," and "God guard thee," as Mother used to say.

Your loving brother, MORRIS.