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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 50. In Search of a Mother.
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In Search of a Mother.
The touch of being dining-table companions in a hotel for a while gave us acquaintance with a woman who gave us a little glimpse into her early life. She was a woman of old family and good schooling, of gentle culture, and of much of the broader culture that foreign travel gives.
One day, with a bit of the hunger from childhood days still lingering in eye and voice, she said: "I have never had a mother such as you have had, though I have never seen your mother. Oh! She was kind, but she didn't talk with me about the things that a girl naturally inquires into as she grows up. And she didn't talk with me about anything with the seriousness of a mother-wise heart. And when I would go to her longing for real counsel, she would say, 'Oh! I guess so,' or some such word, and never seem to feel my soul's yearnings."
Another day, with a merry laugh, she told us a bit of a story of her child days. The childlike naturalness and simplicity, together with the touching pathos have made the story linger in our memories ever since. Her brother and she were sent to the country to live with their grandmother, because the country was better than the city for little folks, they were told. They used to sit together, and talk about it, and say that they were the only little boy and girl there that had no real home and no father and mother. All the other children had happy homes with fathers and mothers. And they felt bad.
They talked it all over many times. And one day they decided to go to a village that they had heard of. It was about twelve miles away. She was the leader in the plan. She knew, she told her brother, that there was a home with a real father and mother waiting for them in that enchanted village. They would be hugged and kissed every night when they were put to bed. She knew it would be so. So one day they took the book of poems, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," that their nurse used to read them to sleep with, and a bandana handkerchief in which they tied up their "nighties," and started down the road.
They trudged along wearily, but they thought of the home with the father and mother who would take them in, and put warm arms around them, and kiss, and hug them. And the vision of warm arms and kisses ahead drew them on. About three miles down the road a former servant in their grandmother's home saw them, and came out, and asked where they were going. They said, "We will tell you, but you must not tell anybody." And they told their little story. And then old Peggy, the servant said, "But you are hungry; come in and get something to eat."
"No," they said, "it is twelve miles to——and night will soon be here, and we must hurry on."
But Peggy said they would make faster time if they would stop for something to eat, and a little rest. So in they went, and had a good meal and a sleep. And when they wakened—there was grandmother's carriage waiting to take them back! And a short, unconventional, but very forceful sentence, which we understood instantly finished the story—"Peggy had peached."
And as we listened with laughter, and something wet in our eyes, the early hunger of the child-heart still seemed to look out at us from our friend's eyes; and it still haunts us as we tell the simple tale over for mothers' hearts to hear. There were fine family, good schooling, the culture, and refinement that money can give, and some it couldn't give; but no mother nor father; money but no mother. Poor poverty-stricken lives!