Iowa State University - Bomb Yearbook (Ames, IA)

Page 15 text:

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

Page 14 text:

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

Page 16 text:

tribute to its immortality and empire supreme. Oh, my son, I am just a child of the dust here, and will live more and better than a thousand years in the land of the soul. The child-man said, H Rest now, turn on my arm, and say after me the prayer you used to teach my childish ears- Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, And if I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. Like a tired child the mother slept upon the exchanged arm, and the mother heart ofthe man-child wooed and brooded over that life as in childhood days his life had been fostered by the hallowed breast and prayers of the fostering night hours. The breast of a woman bared to nourish her children renders every woman's personage sacred as the bared arm of a man to support the world begets supremest reverence for this HKing of men for al that ! There is a motherhood in a man's heart as in a woman's. Once in a great while the yearning of this motherhood rises to its intensest capacity and has a strength surpassing any other of earth. The truest love of man for woman, as of woman for man, has a sincere mother element that is akin to the heart of God in the wooing of the children of men to the beautiful and the good. Such a heart moved in the child-man that hour, and the troubled breaths of failing years betokened anxiety for iminent dangers. Mother and child were interchangeable. That day of marvelous impressibility, the last of hope for the life of a friend and loved one came. This boy-man, helpless to further effort and stifled by the shut-in-ness, sought the tonic of the out-doors. From the house he started down an old path made by mother's feet. A bug in the way drew him a step half aside as if to crush it. H No, you shall liveg there's enough death in the world alreadyfl And the loathsome bug became .a thing of love. Thrown upon the sod of a summer air he lost himself to be awakened by a childish voice- H Oh, Uncle Will! Look what a pretty grave in this grass. Who made that grave? HAsk God Almighty. What, Uncle Will? HWhy, that mole was made to go under the ground, just like you are made to go on top of the ground. H Oh. And the understanding of the little child seemed gratified in that H Oh. But the man said to himself, H Yes, the whole World is now a graveyard for somebody to Walk on. He turned over with his face to the sky. In grief as in love: HA man Without senti- ment is a mental cripple. However appreciative he may be, it takes forty years to know his own mother. Looking into the fathomless sky his eyes became fixed in that interminable fidelity blue of an indefinite Wonder. The fields of the boyhood neighborhood rose in a resur- rection morn of rebirthed glories-the corn in its springtime, the fields of royal clover, the flowers of life's earliest acquaintanceships appeared re-graced and the lark flew as he used years agone toward the old tree mid-field, turning his head this way and that to see if anyone were looking, and flinging music all about him. But what is all this-mother is dying! The river runs with its sparking, be-gemmed surface recalling nights and days of boyhood glee and seeming to make sincere effort anew to happify the world this day. The sky fillswith Kentucky beneflcence and the air has a human feel, but mother is dying! Into an old cedar near by five bluejays awoke him with their vociferous calls and cries. In size they are indistinguishable, but one is a mother bird. They are four times her capacity yet nourished to the full by her ministry and devotion. Four sit clustered together in silence during the intervals of her absences only the more clamorously to appeal to the life of the mother bird's instinct good. Oh, you dumb birds, these are among the last appeals for aid you will ever make through the mystery of motherhood! You must live by yourselves or die. The season of your dependency is accomplishing and you can never be a broodling again. So our fates, or something called destiny, determines that this mail, 20