Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1882-05-17
SHAOD0WlNG A SHADOW.

Robert Gaines hadtravcled win hi
mother ever since hc could remember
His first childish memory was Of th'
stormy Channel passage from Englant
to France,
lie remembered putting his little soi
white hands together TO say his evening
prayers he remembered his kind nurse
his lovely but sad-looking mother
standing II little apart from them and
gazing down upon him with wealth
Of love shining in her eyes and lingcr.
ing around her lips.
As he remembered that he was fright.
cncd at the noise Of the wind and
waters outside, and thought how differ
cnt il was from home, he must have
had then II memory of home. But later
that memory had faded away into the
unknown and forgotten blank Of in
fancy. Ills earliest memory, as boy
and rs Il man, was of the stormy Chan
ncl passage from England to France.
There was break in his memory after
that.
Probably only the markedly strange
events of early life abide with us as
memories. Later he had seen great
mountains, which he knew years after
ward, must have been the Alps.
Coming down the years, his memory
showed him events more and more
closely connected. They had spent an
entire year .iourneying over England {;
thny hnA seemed to avoid the usual
routes of travel, and to visit the poor
est and most untidy towns.
A year OF this, and then long Jour-
ney with only the shortest of prepara-
ton. lie had grown old enough to
know that the long voyage had taken
them to Australia. And yet they had
remained there only one week, coming
back then to continue their travels in
another part Of the world.
Mrs. Gaines journeys had always
seemed peculiar to the few friends she
made while on her travels. TO the boy
who had grown up to manhood by her
side, the idea of peculiarly and strange
ness had been of slow growth. He
had never had any other instructor
than his mother, but his studies had
not suffered.
Still, when he met other boys and
Young men who studied in schools, he
had grown to wonder why he had never
been allowed to stop and study in
schools himself.
His mothers care and love had never
failed him, her patience had never
given way; but she never remained
long enough in any one place to make
friends.
Boyhood wins friends sooner than
more mature age; but Robert had
scarcely any friends, and changed his
acquaintance so frequently that he
could remember but few of them, and
those were people whom he had met in
late years.
Then the method. or want of method
which characterized Mrs. Gaines ac-
tiops was growing stranger and stran.
ger to her son as he grew older and
knew more of life, and more Of the way
in which people usually travelled.
His mother was not woman who
would have been called liberal by the
people around hotels and public resorts.
She would pay a hackman exactly what
she had promised or exactly what she
knew he had a right to charge, and not
one cent more. She would seek the
humble rather than the best hotels in a
place. She dressed plainly. She was
economical.
Still, Robert remembered IL certain
occasion when she had ordered car
riage at the last moment in New York,
and driven in all haste to the steam
boat just starting for England, leaving
tickets for San Francisco on the table.
And he remembered several occasions
on which tickets for shorter journeys
had gone in the same way--gonc with
out word-apparently without a
thought.
She was a great reader: she never