Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1885-12-24
CHARLEY AND HIS MOTHER.

He Did Not Understand Her, But She
Loved Him All the Same.
She had certainly been a trying
mother. While there are trying peo-
pie in the world, it follows naturally
that some of them will be mothers, and
Deacon Hanson's wife was one of
them. The deacon was of German
descent-and perhaps some of the
composure of his nature came from
that. He was a stolid sort of man,
some people said; but that was jus
what Deacon Hanson was not.
He was simply patient man, be-
lieving that God ruled the world, and
that it was an i'll thing to pull against
providence. Moreover he had in him
a wonderful capacity for unselfish and
long-enduring love. He had married
Jane Grey because he loved her, and
he loved her still, when she was fifty
years old, a wiry, fretful woman, in
whose worn and worried aspect no sug-
gestion of her sweet youth was left in
any other eye than his. He looked at
her through the mist of vanished years.
and saw, with some second-sight OF
the heart, the roses of long ago on her
cheeks, and the light of other days in
her eyes.
But that was what her son could not
do. He had no memories of days old
er than himself; and ever since he could
remember she had been fretful and
hard to please. Only when he had
been i'll, at times, she had nursed him
so tenderly that he began to find out
the mother side of her nature. and half
longed to be i'll over again, when he
got well, and all this unwonted soft
ness vanished. He used to envy boys
who could 60 to their mothers with all
their little troubles and joys-their fail
ures and their successes. His mother
desired, indeed, to be informed of his;
but she seemed to him in the first place
to claim his confidence as right, and
then to use it as text for fault-finding.
So-instead of trying to thaw her
out with the sunshine of his love-he
shut his heart away from her, and new
er spent a moment with hef that he
could possibly avoid. Thus there grew
up between them sort of wall, over
which she looked at him sometimes, as
he then thought, sullenly. He knows
now, too late, that il was With dumb
longing in her eyes. For suddenly she
and short Her son was away from
home. They sent for him; but when
he came it was too late for her to turn
back from the gate of the other world
to speak some last word for this. He
went into the house, into the we'll
known room, and there he saw her w.
ing dead.
'Did she leave any last message for
mep" he asked his father, who sat beside
the bed, gray with his unspoken sorrow.
''Not exactly. She only cried out,
just as she was going: oh, if Charley
and could only have been like other
sons and other mothersr And then,
before / could answer her, she was
gone. I always knew you didn't I'M
derstand her, Charley; but she loved
you, all the same. She never had one
day of really good health after
you were born, and she suffered so she
couldn't be gay and clipper and easy
going. But she did love you, Charley
And there she lay, dead-and the
boy felt that if he had but drawn
nearer to her, and warmed her with his
love, he might have found out her suf-
fering, and cheered her with his ten
derness. and warmed her with his love,
and tasted the sweetness of being ''like
other sons with other mothers" And
so knowing, over his heart there fell
the shadow of a sorrow and self-con-
demnation which will not leave him
while life shall last.
All, let us be tender and pitiful to
our own, now, to-day, and not wait
until we see them lying dead. = Youths
Companion.