Newspaper Page Text
Y MOTHER is dead.
It takes very little ink to write
that sentence. But what a flood
of heartblood goes with it.
Every man loves his mother. It
is she who bore him through the
agony of travail, the uncertainty of
infancy and the doubt of youth.
I think, when I look back into the
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past through the mist of tears, recalling from
the first day my mother lifted me to her bosom
and said, “My son,” I have never ceased to re
gard my mother as the greatest woman in the
world. Her fine sense of justness appealed to
me as a quality never equalled in any other
person I ever knew.
When I was a little boy, stimulated by the
spirit of adventure that youth and the exhil
erating mountain air of my native Western
North Carolina home gives every boy, my
pranks upon animals and children used to
be admonished by a philosophism of my mother
who said: “Fun, to be fun, must be fun for
both parties.”
And what wonderful courage she had.
She hated whiskey. Her whole life she spent
fighting that great curse of civilization. Bit
ten by a rattlesnake when she was a young
mother, the doctor told her she must drink
whiskey. She refused.
“Then you will die,” said the doctor.
“Then I’ll die with a clear head,” was her
ultimatum. She did not die; she lived to
prove whiskey is not the sovereign cure for
snakebite, and for over 50 years thereafter she
planted flowers on the grave of the whiskey
prescribing doctor who had prophesied her
death.
My mother was a married woman at 14 years
old, and bore 14 children, rearing all but two,
who died in infancy. Going with my father
when he was a young Methodist preacher, into
the fastnesses of the Western Carolina moun
tains, she helped him found Rutherford Col
lege, where, for half a century, she toiled with
him in the education of the poor boys and girls
of the South, educating 10,000 free, until, tired
and nature exhausted, my father laid down his
life, an honored man in the South. At his
death the Southern Confederacy’s debt to my
father in commissions and taxes he had raised
for the Confederacy, amounted to over $300,-
000, without the interest. Yet he never drew
a cent, and my mother never revealed the sac
rifice to any except her children.
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EXTENDED TIME.
Just because they are giving such I
splendid satisfaction, we have decided to
extend our special, Black, Morocco
Bound, Gold Stamped, Testament offer
until Christmas. It is so very appropri
ate for teachers to give to their pupils, or
to be given to any one for pocket use.
They are exactly what retailers sell for
50 cents, and many of them for 75 cents.
Remember, we will give one free for the
asking, with every one year’s subscrip
tion to THE GOLDEN AGE sent in before
January first, at $1.50, new or renewal.
If you want a dozen, or more for class
Christmas presents, send in your subscrip
tion, and get our cut prices on them, but
you will have to hurry, for Christmas is
almost here.
THE GOLDEN AGE PUB. CO.
814 Austell Bldg., Atlanta, Ga.
MY MOTHER’S D
The Golden Age for December 12, 1912.
My mother was more than mother —she was
my friend, my companion, my teacher, my
sweetheart and my “pal.”
The word “pal” is a Western word, coined
in the expressiveness of the great open plain,
to signify absolute companionship and unques
tioned fidelity. It ought to be a classic. A
young man hesitates to tell his mother every
thing; he is slow to confide reverses to his
sweetheart; his teacher might misunderstand
and his friend prove faithless. His “pal”
never.
I believe, if I had been charged with treason,
I should have gone straight to my mother with
the secret. Locked in the cells of her sacred
heart it would have been inviolable against
courts of law or demands of inquisitions.
My mother was my swetheart.
Often at night, when the others of the fam
ily were asleep, she used to steal into my room,
and by the slow burning embers, we chatted
of things such as the average mother and son
never dream of. I read her my manuscripts
and she counselled and advised, but never re
buked. Often her life-story of her dream of
love, marrying the only sweetheart she ever
knew as a tall, beautiful mountain girl, and
going hand in hand with him through the years
until God called him, inspired me by its sweet
simple recital. She loved to tell the story and
I loved to hear it. My father could only have
been a chivalrous wooer, and my mother a
queenly prize. She told me she was beautiful
as a girl. When I last saw her, two years ago,
she was as beautiful as ever.
There were wrinkles in her brow —but they
got there sacrificing for her children —for me.
The raven tresses that thrilled my father’s
youthful heart were white as the first snows
of winter —but every gray hair was a badge of
honor to a life given to her family and her
Christ.
Her footsteps faltered and her back bent —
but those imperfections had come as a natural
consequence of years bent over the cradle of
her children, leading their faltering footsteps
to the throne of God.
I never saw a white hair nor a faltering foot
step, nor a wrinkle —but away back in the vista
of life’s youth I saw a queenly bride led by a
manly gentleman, setting up the altar of the
home to the consecration of their coming fam
ily-
My mother was my greatest teacher. I had
!fi !fi Hi Hi Hi Hi Hi !fi !fi !fi Hi Hi Hi !fi !fi Hi Hi !fi !fi Hi Hi
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Dec. 1912. Dec. 1912. z
Golden Age Pub. Co., H This is worth 3
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Address
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By ARTHUR TALMAGE ABERNETHY.
EA TH
the privilege of some great instructors: Gilder
sleeve, in Greek; Minton Warren, afterward of
Harvard, and Arcade Mogyorosy, once minis
ter of Education in the Hungarian empire and
foremost Latinist of the world. He is now
family tutor to the grandson of John D. Rocke
feller. In history, I had Herbert Adams and
Daniel Coit Gilman, the man whom Carnegie
chose as head of his Carnegie Ten Million Dol
lar Institute at Washington. Countess de
Chavanne taught me French.
These taught me nothing as compared with
the tutelage of my mother. Leading me to
her knees before I knew the alphabet, she
taught me of Jesus, and when my Greek and
my history and my Latin shall have gone for
ever, the lesson learned at my mother’s knee
will still remain. I shall never forget “Now I
lay me down to sleep.”
And when my father died, the only rival I
had to my “sweetheart’s” deepest devotion
passed away.
Like some romantic queen in chivalric times,
she waited and watched for me as the years
went by. Out in the world I went, a sinner
and a truant, neglectful of that sweetheart’s
love. She knew I would come back. When
people chided, she gave no heed. She prayed
and she believed. And blessed be God, I came
back in heart, even if I never got back in per
son. Lying on her death pillow, with her fac
ulties paralyzed, her other children around her,
her deep well of love for her youngest boy
surged uppermost and she said: “They are all
here but one. But he will come.” That is
the love of a faithful sweetheart —to be an
swered by a like devotion payable in the world
to come.
With other newspaper men, I stood near the
bedside of the great statesman, William Max
well Evarts as he lay dying, and heard the cry
of his soul in his last dissolution, “Oh, what
of my country? Oh, what of my country.”
Tonight, in a city a thousand miles from my
loved ones, I hear my dear old sweetheart’s
cry, “My boy, my boy!” and I propose to an
swer it in heaven.
Mothers never die. My mother, who watch
ed over me in life, through all its meanderings,
has simply changed to a more convenient
watch-tower. I see her now. Beautiful in her
reincarnation in the Spirit of her Lord, she
guides her children to a better destiny.
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