Morning journal and courier., 1881-03-30
The Old Mother in The White House, Johnny Bouauet in Sunday Tribune.l

When Garfield came safely to Washington
 he gave his arm to his mother, who has lived
 with him all his married life, and she was
 taken by the Hayes family to the White
 House direct and given chamber there, and
 so preceded her son, who went to hotel with
 his wife. The great iron gate, on it's carved,
 white pillars, was swung wide for her, and
 up the beautiful broad drive to the lofty
 portico and the prodigious house rolled the
 plain little old lady at 80 years of age, ob-
 along the ledge of the plate glass windows on
 the first day of March. The blooded horses
 scarcely felt the load as they kicked the
 echoes up the roof of the porte cochere, for
 she weighed almost as little now as that baby
 which lay upon her lap in the forest cabin
 nearly fifty years ago and swallowed his toe
 audaciously, and squealed at the bringing of
 water and wash basin. He is to be her chief
 magistrate tomorrow and ours, and she, who
 saw him grow up hatless and shoeless in the
 stump -strewn fields, is the preferred guest of
 the world on this first day of spring and 8oth
 of her winters.
 She is helped to the portico, but requires
 no great help, having nothing of the very old
 woman about her, and lighter on her feet to-
 day than many in French heels and she looks
 around smartly, but with unconscious thanks,
 as the porters bow her into the high, wide portal, and beneath her feet the thick,
 warm carpets of the palace, while heat from
 brazen radiators on low glowing grates of polished steel enters into her nostrils and is welcome to her dear old bones.
 A sense of holy recollection comes on that
 breath of heat of making the cabin fire those many years ago when this baby awoke and the embers were out and the wood was gone and she wrapped her wools around her and took the ax and opened her door at dawn. There stretched the gray sky above the plain of snow and monotonous forest, and cold and penury seemed blinking together at her as If &<- l. A%or9 NtnkS~ in the future for you? This comes of love and marrying. The top of the cold March morning to you, Widow Garfield" But the brave young heart was already graphing with the knot of oak, and the wood saw and the ax trenchantly handled aroused her blood, till the billets of firewood filtered the snow, and the baby, storming for his mamma, stood in the cabin doorway and up braided her. Then, amid his roaring and clambering about her knees, her blue-cold hands work long to start the stubborn wood | into a flame, which will not take the rattling spark from the assisting flint Again and oft again the fire goes out. Her temper rises now, and now her tears, but it is fire or hun l ger, and she returns to the combat. At last l the obstinate splinters catch the spark and | burst into combustion and fight upon the cabin rafters the intruding daylight, as her soul almost exhausted speaks, ''Thank God | for the fret
 | They leave the little old lady in her luxu-
 rious room, and she is very weary with riding all night. "Ahl heaven is good to me- she
 thinks, "but am weak. Tomorrow, and | tomorrow, and then my son and daughter | will be here, for this house is too large with | out them" She lays her head upon the bed, | and the sleep which follows us into the world
 and precedes us leaving it comes like mes merle hand upon her temples, and the voice | of dream repeats Honor thy father and thy
 mother, that thy days maybe long in the
 land which the Lord thy God hath given thee.'