News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1882-11-30
TAKE ME TO DEAR MAMMA.
A Touching Little Sketch.
From the Detroit Free Press. I

/
It was threefold cord of love and ten
derness that bound the heart of the grave
and silent father to that of his little son
Harry, for the boy was motherless nay,
worse than motherless, since his loss
came through living death Sometimes
it seemed to the sorrowing man as if he
could not endure the anguish of the
child's presence.
Again, he would pour out upon him all
the pent-up love of his deep, strong
nature. and VOW in his heart that he
would be father and mother both to his
boy.
Fond delusion between the heart
mother and child vibrates an electric
chord over which nature sends her
strange, mysterious messages, borne
hither and thither by angels of light.
Theirs is a joy in which a stranger inter-
meddleth not.
The child yearned hourly for the
mother who was lost to him; of whom
his latest memory was of kisses bedewed
with tears; the young, pretty, gentle
mother, who, amid the gay revelry of
the pleasures of a season, would sudden
ly clasp her hands over her dark, passion
ate eyes, and cry out ''Hush Is that
baby's voice? p and shudder when a lit
tie child looked at her with its pure, in
nocent smile.
It was another bitter drop in the
fathers cup of sorrow when the boy would
turn YEARLY from his endearments to cry
over and over again, with longing voice,
Take me to mamma p
But at last, worn out by disappoint-
ment, the little fellow ceased to talk of
her, and his father hoped he had for
gotten, and would become the merry
romping boy of the old happy days
before any serpent had entered their
Eden; then all at once it dawned upon
him that Harry was drooping-grown
strangely white and quiet. In sudden
alarm the father took his boy to sunny
France, to balmy Italy, hoping that
change of air would cure him. He never
mentioned his mamma now; but he faded
day by day, and at last they went back
to the old home, the somber, brick
walled house in the heart of London.
1t seemed to do Harry good to be back
again among his own precious things
his eyes were brighter, his strength re-
turned, and a lovely red came into the
thin cheeks, but he ran about no more,
only laid still in his fathers arms and
looked away, away beyond the houses
and streets to glimpse of western sky
that he was never weary of watching.
One night he seemed to be talking in
his sleep; his father bent down close,
close to the feverish lips, and shrunk as
he heard the old familiar cry, Mamma. "
"What is it, darling?" asked the |
stricken man, and there was all of a |
tenderness in his quivering |
voice.
The child opened his eyes-his breath !
came fast and hard. -
Papa ="
"What is it, my own boy?"
Papa-am-I to see mamma before I |
go to heaven ?"
Oh what agony wrung the fathers |
soul, but he controlled himself to answer
"Do not talk of dying, Harry; papa
cannot spare his baby"
But the child asked the question again, |
and so imploringly that his father was
fain to say:
eff you go to heaven, Harry, you will
find mamma there"
Then a sweet content, peace like " the
shadow of great rock in a weary land"
fell on the dear face; he folded the tiny
hands with sigh, and said family in a
tired voice:
Dear Jesus take me-to- my
mamma"
A sudden chill wind seemed to pass
over the fathers heart-he looked into
the eyes opened wide, and full of new,
glad light, ''the light that never was on
sea or land" and he knew then that he
held in his arms only the sweet, precious
form of his dead boy!
And the mother.
I do not know; the little life that was
SO soon over may have had a holy mission
here to be carried on sin land
that is fairer than day."
''Ah Saints in heaven may pray with earnest
will,
And pity, for their weak and erring brothers;
Yet there is prayer in Heaven more earnest
still
The little children pleading for their Mothers