The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1895-08-09
HIS MOTHERS GRAVE
CONCLUDED FROM FIRST PAGE.


said no." And poor Mupsey's mind,
too, went out in darkness.
These books, then, were to him what
Isaac was to Abraham, and so Thursday
afternoon he went to the woods, and
made him an altar, and placed upon it
the books and burned them, and then,
he said, came moment of rapture
which, however, be continued, was inter
rupted by those who would have taken
him back. For there were several pa
tents about him, and he said they
laughed his offering to scOrn, and would
not listen to the words Of Munsey, as he
repeated them from memory.
So he came over the hills to the city;
he said he wanted to see either Rev. DR..
Cole or Rev Mr. Branson, and seek
comfort from them. He could not find
DR.. Cole, and though he saw Mr. Bran
son on the street he did not accost him.
Then he went his way to the Tab
ernacle where there was a meet
ing, and, entering, waited until
after the exercises were over, and he
joined DR., Simms, the pastor, on the
way home. DR.. Simms, he said, promised
to come to see him and try to comfort
him, and he took his way back to the
home where the crazy people live, and
stood for a moment looking at the great
black building. Then through the rain
he went again to the cemetery where he
had heard the clods fall, and thoughts
went back to his mother: she could help
him, he thought to solve his problem.
He was sure she could: it was then near
midnight, with no light in sight except
the one he had in his heart. He follow
ed it over field and brook and bog and
dusty road, till daylight, till san light,
down through the cornfelds of Johnston
county, that seemed, too, to laugh with
the same scOrn of his congregation in the
woods, as he hurried on. He travelled
all day, and plunged into an
other night, and he thought he
was near the little grave in Beaufort.
He thought be was under the live oaks
there, swept wild with many a sea wind
He ran with hands outstretched. But it
was not there. He fell and fell and fell
and grew foot sore through the days and
nights, grew lame. and weak, he knew not
where he walked, but the grave kept still
ahead. Is it possible that only the spirit
unimprisOned in that narrow house
could translate the weird laments Of her
bOy2 Was a ear, open to sounds unheaTd
here, able to make harmony out of the
discords that swept through the riteous
woods
Perhaps so.
He knew not how be got there, but he
could get the far away breath of the
ocean, and he could see the ivy tremble
about the slab in that old grave-y yard Of
age and angles.
"And the same sweet song will come to thee
From that aged home of sancitity."
Some such thought probably mellowed
its way through his mind-his mind that
was all winter and storm with only this
shaft of spring to soften it.
Thus it was that he reached Havelock.
He could not tell how, exactly, or when,
exactly, but he was at HaVelock, and
last night he was at his sisters home in
Morehead
He did not get to his mothers grave
just across the channel, where rich
moonlit waves played upon the bleak
sides of wreck of No. wegian bark.
He took the train this morning for
Raleigh, and, looking out Of the car win
dow, he saw the wreck standing there,
the waves still tapping its sides.
But they were the waves Of the morn
ing, and let it be hoped that in their
golden notes he caught some whisper
that whisper whose simple song has been
the same from the beginning the whis-
per that the motherless catch, the world
over, from every billow, or bird, OF
bought love you with that love the
world cannot give!"
W. E. CHRISTIAN.