Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1881-01-26
Take Care Of Mother.
From the Lowell Courier. I

We stood with hushed breath And
senses strained, to catch those last words
so precious always from the lips of the
dying.
It was not brave youth stricken in
his prime, whose heart, in the supreme
moment, turned away from the shadow
in the Dark Valley, on the confines of
which his feet fingered, towards the
mother he loved passing we'll; nor was it
maiden fair, who, leaving her young life,
still chung to earthly loves and to the
gentle being, who, bearing that hottest
of ties, wept over her dying child, as
from pallid lips, and with the last culver
ing sigh, were uttered the words, s'Take
care Of MOTHER There were no raven
locks, nor golden, clinging with 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 palsied ere they had been
touched by the chills OF death. He had
run his course, full three-score-yearsa and
ten, drawing nigh upon those days of
which it is said that strength shall be-
come "but labor and sorrow" and now,
| with the breath of the summer time
around him, and amid the many things,
animate and inanimate, which all of
these years he had loved and tended, he
he was dying.
Around his bedside we stood, his chill
dren to the third generation, sorrowiug
alike, for he had been at once parent,
companion, and friend to each and all;
and though we had seen his locks silver
over, and those burrows come one by one
and deepen on his 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 years, and
we had beenslow to realize that "grand-
pa was growing DID," Beside him, her
hand held in his loosening clasp, stood
the wife of more than fifty years. Here
to the old home he had brought her, a
youthful bride, and here they had shared
alike the good and the ill of life, tighten
ing each others burdens. Here their
children had entered upon life, and hence
for veal or woe had gone out into the
world, and now, within those walls, in
the room even, sacred to almost every
| JOY and 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 suddenly his eyes,
dim in death, assumed an unwonted
brilliancy, as they opened upon the tear
upon the hand he held grew frmer, and
| No. C n
the sound of the words had died away
the spirit that had prompted their utter
ance had fled. Loyal in death to the
love of his youth, and of his life, her
name had been the last word upon his
lips. Not the pretty girish name that
had been so dear to him in the days of
long ago ''when they were first aquaint, -
nor yet one of the fond names his love
gave her in after years, but that most
sacred one of all, which when he num-
bered around her their children and
their grand children, and when she
seemed fairest in bis eyes, he had loved
to give her" Mother"
| AS it is true that great men, in dying,
have sometimes uttered sentences or
words memorable az giving key to the
lives and characters which have won the
respect or admiration of their fellow
beings, so is it that others, equally great
| in their true and unassuming nature,
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
sacredness of the charge he gave to us
in his dying words" Take care OF
mother"