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6
SHEARING THE LAMBS
ODAY the lambs are to be sheared,”
announced Bob, my comrade, whom
I had nick-named Bob White, be
cause of her swift, quail-like move
ments, and her brown hair and
eyes. “Let’s go and see it.”
“Lamb shearing?” Not here in
New York, Bob?
“Sure. There are plenty of lambs
>'-■ ‘J- \
here —the kind Jesus loved. There are hun
dreds of them at one of the Foundling Homes,
and today, they are to be clipped. It is hair
cutting day, and a splendid morning for a
walk. Come on.”
A fine morning it surely was. Warm, with
a light sea breeze and a blue sky mottled with
white clouds. Not yet June, but the flood of
yellow sunshine was suggestive of whole acres
of roses, and one might fancy the hum of the
restless city was the drone of bees in the honey
suckles.
Bob filled her lunch basket with little shin
ing red apples for the Foundling children, buy
ing them from the stand of the Irish apple
woman, an old acquaintance of ours, though
this was the first time we had seen her dumpy
figure and weather-beaten face since early last
winter. “The rheumatiz,” she explains, in an
swer to a question about her absence. “Sure,
and it jest gripped my old bones, and the win
ter was the hardest oive iver seen.”
How had the poor soul managed to live
through the hard winter? How had the others
lived 1 —the peanut man, the candy man, the
perambulating advertiser of soaps and per
fumes, the shoestring man, with his goods
strung down his back and across his arms like
something fished out of a pond with leeches
hanging to it. Where do these summer habitues
of the streets hibernate during the season of
snow and blizzards? Do they cltt up in some
corner and remain dormant like the wood
chuck, the bear and the Georgia Gopher? Or
do they go into a chrysalis state like the grubs
and emerge with the first warmth of summer to
resume pushing the banana cart, roasting the
peanut, inveigling the small boy to buy the
fly-specke r d candy, and pursue other street
avocations pertaining to the “good old summer
time.”
In the public square there are more of these
summer adventists, sunning themselves on the
benches, where from their tousled appearance
they have been all night. I am certain that
puff-faced woman has slept in her bonnet. It
is crushed flat, and the broken feather upon it
looks as forlorn as the wing of a storm-tossed
buzzard.
A brisk walk brings us to the big Foundling
Institute —the fold that shelters so many un
mothered lambs. Here they are —of all sizes
and Sges up to six. Here are /iny babies, ly
ing in their iron cribs, some fat and dimpled,
others pale and skinny. Some of the delicate
ones are in the arms of kindly nurses. Larger
ones are playing on the floor with expensive
toys donated by rich mothers whose children
are dead or have outgrown playthings. When
these children have reached the age of six, they
must leave the shelter of the Foundling asylum,
and go to homes that have been found for them
often far away in the broad West, or the hos
pitable South.
Smiling attendants are bringing up batches
of the elder tots to have their hair cut. Two
pleasant ?faced ones, with sleeves rolled back
and wide, white aprons over their black gowns,
sit at one end of the long room and shear the
lambs as they are brought to them, the locks
falling into a basket placed between the two.
Some of the little boys and girls come up
laughing and willing; others hang back, fright
ened at the sharp scissors and cry but not aloud.
Foundling children seldom cry aloud. One
sturdy black-eyed little man kicks and fights,
until a young woman kneeling by him holds
The Golden Age for July 18, 1912.
his tiny fists firmly while ghe says, “You must
be a born prize-fighter, number 500. Your
hands are always doubled up even when you
are asleep.”
The shearing goes on rapidly. The first
batch of twenty-five have been shorn. The
mingled locks lie in the basket, brown and
golden and black —straight and curly—coarse
and silky fine. There is no mother’s hand to
pick out her darling’s hair from the rest. The
basket will go to the hair goods factory, where
its contents will be sold for a few cents, or the
hair will be thrown in the kitchen range.
I picked out one nut-brown curl severed
from the forehead of a pretty boy, three years
old, wrapped it in a bit of paper and slipped
it into my handbag.
When we were again at home in our little
flat and had had some tea, I took out the curl
and looked at it. Memory led me back across
a waste of years.
“What are you thinking of?” asked Bob.
“Os something that lamb-shearing perform
ance has called up to me —the time when I
cut my first baby’s hair. He was just the age
of the little fellow who wore this curl —three
years—and his mother was not twenty. I can
see him now —my first born —my beautiful,
whose short adult life was so full of sadness
and tragedy. I remember I sat on the back
steps of my old home, facing the hedge of
snowy blossomed Cape Jessamine, with my boy
on my lap, clipping his baby curls. I would
not let my mother cut them. I must shear my
little lamb myself. I can see his brown eyes
now, and hear his proud laugh as he stood up—
a baby no more —grandpa’s little man. I had
a cry over it, and then I went to my room and
wrote about it.
“And published it?”
“Yes, in the paper I was writing for. Af
terwards, it appeared in a book, ‘Sketches of
Southern Writers.’ The book is there in my
trunk.”
Bob got down on her knees before the trunk
and found the book. She read the sketch
aloud, her voice choking sometimes; my own
tears dropped silently. This is the Sketch
written long—so long ago.
Cutting Robbie’s Hair.
And so this little household plant of ours
must be shorn of some of its superfluous beau
ties. Even roses and geraniums must be prun
ed sometimes, and these silken rings with the
sunshine of three summers tangled in them,
must make the acquaintance of scissors at last.
Grandpa says so, and adds that if it is not
done, the low plum bushes will make another
Absalom of Robby some time when the blue
eyed gander is in hot pursuit.
Yes, they must be cut, but it seems such a
pity. Little curls that I have turned around
my finger, while wet with the morning bath.
Little curls I have played with when singing
the evening lullaby. Little curls that my tears
have drooped upon when the baby’s eyes were
fast shut in sleep. Only mothers know how
dear such curls are to mother-hearts.
Here are the scissors! Robbie must sit very
still now while his hair is being cut.
Why sir—How can you smile and look at
me so beamingly? How do you know I am
not going to cut off that saucy head of yours
with these sharp scissors? Oh, holy faith of
childhood! If we could only trust our God
as implicitly as babies trust their mothers!
“Except ye become as little children,” said
the Master.
Be very still now while I comb out these
strands of shining floss. The mother is the
first barber to her boy. No other hand can
perform the sweet office so gently. When 16
or 20 years have flown, rougher hands will
By MARY E. BRYAN
comb and cut these locks, darkened by suns
and winds, and clustering about the brow of
manhood. The white-aproned, deft-handed
barber, will trim and perform. No, my boy
will not be a fop. By these strong limbs and
the sturdy look in the brown eyes —No.
But just to think, that a mustache will adorn
this pretty upper lip, delicately curved as the
petal of a rose —that this round neck—like the
throat of a lily, will be choked up by a collar
and a necktie; that these pink flower feet will
wear boots, and, pshaw! I will not think of
it. I will not try to realize that this fair baby
of mine, who still smiles in his sleep, remem
bering What the angels told him in Paradise,
can ever be so metamorphosed.
Yet the boy’s babyhood is fast passing away.
The cutting of these ringlets is like severing
the golden thread that links his infancy to his
childhood. Oh, Robbie, you will not be my ba
by much longer. Already you rebel at being
treated! as one. You would rather ride on the
saddle in front of grandpa than lie in your
lace-curtained crib and hear me sing of the
baby whose cradle was the tree top and whose
nurse was the wind. You would rather hunt
hen’s nests than play peek-a-boo when I hold
out my arms; as you stand in the doorway,,
twirling your hat, you turn your head on one
side like a half-tamed bird, and your dancing
eyes say: “You’ll see; you’ll see. I’ll fly
away soon.”
Before long you’ll lose faith in Santa Claus
and the wolf that ate Red Riding Hood.
I can not keep the bud in the sheath. I can
not stay the little bark that is slipping down
the narrow stream. Soon the stream will
broaden, the realm of roses and April skies
will be passed, the golden brow of this dear
head will be darkened, and sorrow—it may be
sin—will dim the clear heaven of these innocent
eyes.
There! I am Crying!
Grandpa would laugh if he caught me at it
and say it was because I wanted the curls to
stay and make a girl of his boy. Your eyes
are looking up at me with wide-opened ques
tioning and your red lip beginning to quiver
sympathy. Oh! Robbie, even if the worst
should come and I should have to lay this little
head under a coffin lid and see the grass grow
between my darling and the bosom he slept
upon through his brief babyhood, still I should
thank God for having given you, for it is such
little arms as these about our necks that make
us feel strong to suffer and to do. It is draw
ing such little heads as these, close, close to our
breasts, that keeps the hearts of some of us
mothers from breaking.
There, the task, is done. The little lamb is
shorn. Look at this heap of glistening silk,
such as Persian loom never wove into richest
fabric. You did not know such shining wealth
grew on your little head, did you baby?
No, you mustn’t clutch it with those destruc
tive fingers. Go, grandpa is calling his little
man. But leave me these, the first curls cut
from my baby’s head, I will put them away.
They are sacred to his sweet, lost infancy.
To the Seashore, the Seashore,
Away and away,
And be sure to go
By the A. B. & A.
W. H. LEAHY, G. P. A.
A. B. & A., ATLANTA, GA.
