Iowa State University - Bomb Yearbook (Ames, IA)

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A BOY AGAIN, JUST FOR A NIGHT, OR, THE SPIRIT OF MOTHERHOOD. MAN is a sheaf and the straws are moods. These are chaotic, epochal and formative. Once in a great while a man longs to be a boy again. The boyish instincts of all the years rebirth themselves in his soul. A cradle song co'mes back to him with the discovery that mother sang it for her own heart as well as his- H Backward, turn backward, oh time, in thy flightg Make me a child again, just for to-night I In such an epochal mood a child in his forties' and a mother in her seventies lived life over again, just for a night. It came about in this way: Duty and work had separated them hundreds of miles for years. The child in his forties had been summoned from afar to share the undescribable and ineffaceable last hours of the mother. Her absence from boyhood,s entrance gate had been intuitional of bad dreams coming true. The nurse had been dismissed for the night that the child might share the vigil and the care. There is something in the atmosphere of things between twelve and four of the night that blends both worlds and makes them somewhat intelligible to each other. At these hours the silence of earth makes hearable the voices of heaven. At this period it is not difficult to find good spirits abroad, and to dis- cover one's own soul out of the portal ways of the body to commune with these in a higher life. The child in his forties was homesick to lie upon that mother arm that first divided the lines between earth and Heaven: the arm that had soothed many a tired day with a solace of the night's restg the arm that had been strong and yet tender in the perplexing revelations of the mystery called a boyg the arm that had held him to the mother breast and the fountain of an elixir of life. The child-man longed to rest upon that arm and to be a boy again, just for a night. Back flooded the years and memories plentiful. Mother and child shared the holy abandon of true affection. They communed as of yore-the mother in her seventies and the child in his forties. She said, U When you were a babeI took you in my arms to an unused chamber upstairs, and placing you upon the bed, I kneeled in dedication of your life to What- ever province a good God might determine. I vowed you should go anywhere in the world that duty should call and I would not murmur. I prayed that you might be kept from harm and become useful. I have been wanting to tell you for years of my prayer, but never had courage enough in your presence before. I am so thankful I have lived to tell you. H My mother, said the boy, H the conhdence is an inspiration of Heaven, but you must not talk more now, your strength will not permit. You are to be the child to-night and I am to be the strong one to hold you and talk you to sleep as you did me in the days of the old trundle- bed lifeg so, please listen. H That old custom of a trundle-bed telescoped under the larger bed for the day had its poetry as well as its utility. What a comfortable structure for a child, with the corded ropes when new and without pockets of sags, but you always kept mine strung up tight and good. To call up in the night, after some fright of dream, 'lVIother, are you there ?,' was a prayer to heaven with love's immediate answer. In the ills and fears of the night, to have youicome down to that trundle-bed to soothe ailments of body and soul as real and great as any in all life, was a descent from the skies of a heaven-born messenger. It was an easier pathway to the Good Man in the skies who you said knew all about a boy, and could see him in the house as well as in the big road. As from the mart in South American countries one or two ,broad pathways face each point of the compass and distribute themselves over the plains and 1-8

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,Many of the Beautiful Thoughts OF DOCTOR BEARDSHEAR HAVE BEEN LEFT IN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS. THE BOMB PRESENTS THE FOLLOWING FROM HIS PEN, FEELING THAT THEY CAN BEST BE APPRE- CIATED BY THOSE WHO HAVE COME UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HIS MASTER-MIIxD THEITWO I'S OF YOURSELF. WHAT a Heaven's wide flung palace gate was the parlor of the old childhood homestead! It had the scent of a holy shut-inness from being open chiefly on Sundays. As a retreat in the mountains to wild things, it beshuttered, gave a boy a week day seclusion. Its hair mattressed settee was as soothing to a boy's bare feet on a summer day as a mother's hand to a fevered brow when the day becomes tired. The biggest mirror that ever hung in the world graced that parlor with a God-Almighty's face. One day when the hours were tired, a bare-foot boy lay upon that settee, afront of that God-Almighty's face measuring souls. The soul of him fell into the balances of the face. Who is that boy- in the mirror? I am that Ig that I is I. The I is called - . What is this I? What are Emi and Elim? Oh, to be a barefoot boy upon that settee again! It isn't long enough now. The fir trees near the windows like Thomas Hood's seemed close against the sky. It is no pleasure to find one's self farther off from heaven than when a boy. The years have enfilled that I with many. If the night has a thousand eyes and the day but one, the soul has a thousand and seventy times seven. TWO THOUGHTS OF THE NIGHT. ONE spring time when the flowers were belated and the crops tardy, for a full week the sun had not shown and the husbandman complained of the backward spring. The roads were lead and refused their purple to the eye. Days of continuous cloud tied the body fast in on the soul when the day was done and the darkness of the night. Under foot in the mud and the cold a 'humble insect of God lit a light. The passerby stopped out-right. He had been somewhat blue, andthat tiny insect threw out more light of cheer into the blackest night of the Week than man or sun had done. He said to himself, This light is more appreciable than that of the sun for six whole days. A star in its glory never did better in his degree than this.', And he went his way reconciled. On a dark, stormy night of another year in the lull of the storm on the bank of an old stream way, a man sat down to listen to the brook and the night. His face was between his hands and his eyes to the earth. When the stars do not shine the gloom of the clouds is easiest back of the head, so he was sheltering his soul from the shadows of the storm. But down through the muddy, murky grass and weeds sprang a light. Naturalists say it is a love light of an insect. The increase of the light drove out the darkness. 17

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away up into the mountains until that of the highest dweller is scarcely perceptible, so some- where out beyond the paths of human feet and a last trace of a going up on the mountain, begins the infinite approach of the soul of man through the paths of his fellow-beings and down near the trundle-bed Mother and God walk in the same way, worn smooth, like the old school path across the fields, by the frequency of the going to and fro of the mother steps. Do you remember old Penn, the old brindle dog of childhood hours ? Penn had more sense and good comradery than many wise people. I used to think he had a soul. It was a divine privilege to have Penn go with me into the barn of a dark night. I would hear a rat squeal his last, and it drove away ghosts and fearful things to be able to say ' sic'em Penn ! ' He never did me a mean thing in all his play and companionship. I He had such a human feeling and seemed to know when harm came to me, and one time when Ihad an awful hurt the balm of Penn's tongue was the sweetest solace that came to a boy's heart. You know a boy's hurt isimountainous any way. A piece off his foot seems but a hair's breadth distance from the center of life. Penn lay dead under the kitchen table one morning, of heart disease I suppose, and like old dog Rover, when he died he died all over. You went with us chil- dren to the funeral of Penn, and I often think of the tear that was in your eye when we buried him. I never cried holier tears in my life. It seemed to me some part of my heart went into that grave under the apple tree. That tree is dead and the spot is ploughed over, but Penn lives in my heart better than a great many people I have met in my life, Perpetual apple blossoms were none too beautiful nor fragrant over Penn's grave. Wonder where he got his name? It must have been after Pennsylvania, for his heart was as big as a commonwealth. HIn creation time when God Almighty made the dog he started in, I believe, on a dif- ferent creature, and bethinking himself of man's loneliness and of a boy's need for a heel-and- heart companion, and of a creature with sense enough to be still at the right time, he changed his mind and made a dog. Penn was of the elect from the fountain of a boyls world. Oh, those slices of bread and butter you used to give me. The ambrosia of gods couldn't have tasted better to dieties. A slice clear across the loaf with country butter snow deep and maple molasses of lakeful proportions percolated every pore of that slice like honey the flowers of May. It will be a sad day when a boy can't come rushing into the kitchen and say: 'Mother, please give me a piece of bread and butter! ' 'I Here the mother roused from her semi-conscious sleep and said-HThe angels are flying all about, I wonder what they are after. The man replied, H Mother, do you remem- ber when a tiny boy you took me to the bedside of grandmother who was ill to die? I remember the old log cabin and the old fashioned bedstead in the corner with knobs on the top of the posts- the face of that good saint of God glowinglike that of a prophet with the light of goodness during her changing of worlds. My childish curiosity wanted to know what would become of grandmother, and you said, ' The angels are now coming to carry her into the skies. ' It thrilled my fancy and upon my repeated solicitation you opened the door that I might see the angels come out of the sky to convey grandmother's spirit to her good home above. The garden of grandmother's own planting with the old fashioned Howers dressed in living beauty stood a fitting beginning just beyond the doorway for her pathway from earth to sky, and out over Jake Hire's house was a sky fit for the ascension of angels. These angels you see thus are kindred with those that came to the old home in that long ago to take grandmother to her good home. They know the ways of the pathless air and are bidding you not be afraid. The mother said, Oh, my son, this has been my faith and I am only too happy to exchange worlds when when the good Father bids me come. The son replied, HI wish you could live a thousand years, dear mother. You are just ready to be of the most service in the world. There is more good than bad on the earth anyway and you would con- 19