Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1880-02-25
" Take Care OF Mother"

We stood with hushed breath and senses
strained, to catch these last words, so
precious always from the lips of the dying.
It was not a brave youth, stricken in his
prime, whose heart in the supreme moment
turned away from the shadow of the dark
valley, on the confines of which his feet
fingered, toward the mother he loved pass
ing well nor was it maiden fair, who, leav-
ing her young life, clung still to earthly
loves and to the gentle being who, bearing
that holiest of ties, wept over her dying
child, as from pallid lips and with the last
quivering sigh were uttered the words,
"Take care of mother" There were no
raven locks, nor golden, clinging with the
death dew to the polished brow of the one
we watched so anxiously; no young life
pulse was being suddenly and "untimely
stilled." An aged man lay there, with
withered cheek and furrowed brow. His
eyes were dim and uncertain, and his limbs
were pasied ere they had been touched by
the chill hand of death. He had run his
course, full three-score years and ten, draw
ing nigh upon those days of which it is
said that strength shall become but labor
and sorrow land now, with the breath of
the summertime around him, aud amid the
many things, animate and inanimate, which
all these years he had loved and tended, he
was dying. Around his bed side we stood,
his children to the third generation, sorrow
ing alike, for he had been at once parent,
companion and friend to each and all; and
though we had seen his locks silver o'er,
and those burrows come one by one, and
deepen on the dear face, his voice had never
lost the ring of youth nor his form its manly
bearing. His heart had not chilled with the
passing of years, and we had been slow to
realize that Grandpa was growing DID,"
Beside him, her hand held in his looseniug
clasp, stood the wife of more than fifty years
Here to the old home he had brought her,
youthful bride, and here they had shared
alike the good and the i'll of life, tightening
each others burdens. Here their children
had entered upon life, and hence for veal or
for woe they had gone forth into the world
and now, within those walls, in the room
even, sacred to almost every joy and every
grief of earth, he held her hand for the last
time. Silence fell upon the scene, silence
so deep that the watcher nearest to him bent
over the passive form, to note If indeed the
feeble pulse had ceased to throb, when sud-
denly the eyes, dim in death, assumed an
unwonted brilliancy, as they opened upon
the fearful circle around him; the faint
clasp upon the hand he held grew frmer
anu neSpOke' LAKE cdTc VI luOtucI. Ere
the sound of the words had died away, the
spirit that had prompted their utterance had
fled. Loyal in death to the love of his
youth and of his life, her name rad been
the last word upon his lips. Not the pretty
girlish name that had been SO dear to him
in the days of. long ago, "when they were
first acquaint," nor yet one of the fond
names that his love had given her in after
years, but that most sacred one of all, which,
when he numbered around her their chill
dren and their grandchildren, and when she
had seemed fairest in his eyes, he had loved
to give her" Mother" As it is true that
great men, in dying, have sometimes uttered
sentences or words, memorable as giving a
key to lives and characters which have won
the respect or the admiration Of their fellow
beings, so it is that others, equally great in
their true and unassuming natures, give to
those they love glimpse of the departing
soul in utterances never to be forgotten.
Thus, none save those who had known this
man, the singleness of his heart, and the
purity of his life, could conceive the sacred
ness Of the charge he gave to us in his dying
words "Take care of mother. er."-Selecied.