The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1891-07-15
MOVE ON--REST.

] 80 "gi "hA eiiO Soiloit pan Oh misery
and suffering is often spread within arms
reach of dancing sunbeams The ear
catches the sound of childish laughter.
happy in the exuberance of hope and
freedom from care, and before the echo
has died away on the restless breeze,
comes wall of sorrow from homeless
waif whom God has kissed and babe to
suffer.
At the city police station one night
during the recent cold spell were an old
man and little boy. who were picked
up while wandering aimlessly about the
streets.
They were father and son. Tie old
mans hair was white as snow, and his
body was bent almost double by chronic
! rheumatism, which rendered one arm
and one leg partially useless. A white
bandage around his head concealed a
terrible cancer which had despoiled one
eye of its sight, and was rclentlessly eat
ing an inroad to the brain.
The little boy was scarcely more than
Z years of age. His face was hard and
pinched from hunger and exposure, and
his clothes hung in tatters about his frail
little body.
The couple seemed an impersonation
of late winter and early spring. But I'M
hike spring there was no sunshine in the
face of the little fellow. He looked as
though such thing as the bright and
genial glow of sunshine had never fitted
across his rugged pathway.
After blinking his eyes for awhile in
the light of the warm station house fire
he threw himself on the floor at the feet
of his aged companion and sank to
sleep, not dreaming, perhaps, Of the hun
dreds OF little boys in Atlantal who were
at that moment being tucked away in
downy beds with ruby lips bathod in the
warm incense of a mothers kiss.
While the child slept the old man told
his story.
They were tramps-foot balls of fate
on forced march before the goading
blasts of adversely, their troubled sleep
broken at every resting place by the in
aXolable command to ''move ON
1t had not always been thus. On
green sward in dear old Kentucky there
was once a home which the old man
called his own. 1t was surrounded with
everything to make life comfortable.
tfhe old mans color came and went as
he pictured how the honeysuckle and
the rose linked their tendrils about the
yeranda mingling their fragrance with
that OF the violets how mocking birds
and nightingales sat in the tall cedar
near the front gate and sang love songs
to the shimmering moonbeains, and how
at eventide he used to sit with lis happy
family and watch the sun as he Grim
soned the western hilltops with the halo
of his dying glory
But change came over the beautiful
scene. The flowers refused to bloom in
response to the kiss of spring the songs
OF the birds we're hushed and the DAVIS
grew dark and dreary. Every breeze
that swept through the boughs of the
tall cedar seemed to be freighted with
disaster A bank in which the old man
had deposited the earnings of his toll
failed and with it came terrible epi-
demic that fastened its fangs on the de-
voted family circle. First, the wife of
his bosom was stricken down: then. one
by one, the children, till all had closed |
their eyes in that wakeless sleep, save
the little homeless waif that slumbered
at his feet Then it was that pimple
on the old mans face began to inflame.
ana rheumatism fastened its ruthless
grasp on his worn-out limbs. Closing
the doors of his desolated home, he /
sought relief at the hands of medical !
skill till the remnant of his broken for
tune was gone. Fate found him stand !
ing on the threshold of his home when |
the remorseless hammer of the sheriff |
transferred it to other hands.
After breathing a prayer over the
graves of his loved ones, and casting
last lingering look on the cherished sun
roundings, he and his child turned their
backs on the scene, never to return save
in their dreams.
Through shadowy wales, over rugged
hills the wandering pilgrims trod their
lonely way, going they knew not where,
and greeted at every pause with the in
evitable mandate, "move on
Thus came they to Atlanta, and thus
they went away.
With tears running down his weather
beaten cheeks, the kind-hearted station
house keeper approached them and said,
You must move on. God knows if /
lad my way, old man, | would not send
dog out this kind OF night, but Atlanta
has poor of its own who are crying for
all the charity it can spare. Here is
pass to Birmingham where you came
from, and the train viii leave in twenty
minutes
The words "move on sped like
lightning flash to the unconscious brain
of the sleeping child, and. throwing his
little hands up to ward off an expected
blow, he scrambled to his feet and stood
trembling by the side of his aged father.
The sentinels of the black watch who
had assembled at the station house to 90
out on their beat at the hour of II, step
ped forward, one by one, and dropped a
helping coin into the palsied hand of the
old man.
A few moments later the tramps
moved on, never again to sit in the glow
OF Atlanta's warm station house fire.
4 Out into the cheerless night-with pitt.
less clouds above them and bowling
winds around them--Fate led them to
read on scowling faces and stern lips at