The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-01-22

she had put silver plate with his name
engraved upon il. I noticed that the child
felt no fear of Miss Balfour but with
unerring instinct made his way straight to
her, climbed upon her lap and murmured
friendly remarks in an unknown tongue
into her ear trumpet When l saw Ter
beautiful face light up with a smile and
her kind eyes brighten, l understand why
she was beloved by all the younger genera
ton.
Chief of our aunts not only l,
But all your other musings cry,
What did the other children do.
And what were childhood. wanting you?"
"Cummy."
Miss Alison Cunningham came to the
Stevenson family as nurse when the little
boy Louis was but year and a half old,
so that his earliest recollecuons are of her
| kind voice and comforting hand. He was
a delicate child, and as ne grew older and
reached the age when most children would
! have left the nursery, he had recurring at
lacks of illness that threw him back on
"Cummys" hands. "Cummy' he called
| her affectionately.
! My second mother, my first wife"
She was an energetic, devoted, anxious
nurse, and guarded the child jealously
from every i'll. She slept in his room, that
she might be at hand to speak to him
| should he waken in the night. In an old
diary of Mr.. Stevensons, begun in an
idle moment and never finished, I find this
reference to his childhood ct has never
been printed before:
MY recollection of the long nights when
I was kept awake by coughing are only re-
| lieved by the thought of the tenderness of
my nurse and second mother (for my first
will not be jealous), Alison Cunningham.
| She was more patient than 1 can suppose
of an angel; hours together she would
help and console me, and ! remember
with particular distinctness, how she
| would lift me out of bed and take me.
rolled in blankets, to the window whence
I might look forth into the blue night,
starred with street lamps, and see where
the gas still burned behind the windows
of other sick rooms. The sight of the
outer world refreshed and cheered me, and
the whole sorrow of the night was at an
end with the arrival of the first Of that
long string of country carts that, in the
dark hours of the morning, with the neigh
ing of horses the cracking of whips, the
shouts of drivers and hundred other
wholesome noises, creaked, rolled and
pounded past my window.
Dummy had difficulty in making her del
icate charge eat his meals, as he had but
little appetite She bought picture OF a
round faced-child, dipping a spoon into a
wooden bowl and hung it up in the nur-
sery as a good example See his rosy
cheeks" she would say that is because
he is eating his dinner like a good chid."
| Then she would entreat. "Only a wee
bite of this beautiful bread. See! 1t is
made of the finest of the wheat"' When
the furniture was sent out to Samoa from
Scotland, among the papers and books
this little picture was found. I remember
! Mr.. Stevenson's pleasure when he saw 1t
again, and how he murmured looking al
It. "the very finest of the wheatl
Dummy had strong religious beliefs,
which she instilled into the mind of her
young charge and one, strangely enough,
was that novels were wicked. When read
ing aloud to him she would explain: This
is no a novel, We ken; they're just family
stories" She was reading a particularly
exciting one from CasseIs family
paper. called ''The Soldier of Fortune"
about the Crimean war, then lately end
ed, when she stopped suddenly and ex-
claimed:
"Hoots I'm afraid this will turn out a
| regular novel;
That night Louis had pain in his side,
and following the doctrine Of Cummy,
cast about in his mind for the reason.
| The only crime that could account for
such state of things was evidently the
novel The next morning he surprised
| and somewhat Disconnected his nurse by
declaring that he would have no more of
that story. After that the two would
walk down Princess street and look in at
| the stationer's window and gaze dejectedly
at the pictures in succeeding numbers.
! The story haunted him, and years after he
mentioned the name in a magazine article,
when some sympathetic reader sent him
the bound volume of Cassers Family
paper for that year; he re-read "A
| Soldier of Fortune" from beginning to end
and declared it to be a rafting good
J story"
When we were visiting Edinburgh last
year. and the name Miss Cunningham"
| was announced by the little Scottish maid
1 rose and looked with interest al the door
! A tall, slender, handsome woman came in,
| dressed in full mourning, which she has
| always worn since the death Of her lad
| die" There was very little gray in her
brown hair, she carried herself with dig
nifty, and spoke with broad Scottish ac-
cent in a singularly sweet voice. OF
course she talked Of him; her eyes would
fiji with tears and then again She would
laugh at some amusing memory Of his
youthful days.
1.-THE last time I saw him." she said "he
told me before a room full of people IT'S
yourself that gave me a passion for the
drama, Dummy SAYS he Me Master
playhouse in my lifep Aye, woman says
he, but it was the grand dramatic way we
had Of reciting the hymns Then,
Strengthening herself up she said very Sc
riously: Would we like to hear his IA
vorite hymn?
She recited It quietly at first, then say
ing this is the way he preferred it, be-
gan again In broad Scotch, with a thrill
in the voice, with awful pauses, and an
occasional deep whisper. ] can imagine
the little Louis holding his breath to lis
ten.
And so we talked of him, as those who
loved him talk, as though he were near
at hand. In his own beautiful words,
written to console a bereaved one:
"IIe is not dead, this frlend-not dead,
But in the path no mortals tread
Got some few trihing steps ahead
And nearer to the end,
So that you, too, once past the bend
Shall meet again. as face TO face this
friend
You fancy dead"