Mexico Missouri message., 1903-03-05
Death Of a Child.

One Of the prettiest things ever
written by William Allen White
was an editorial in the Emporia
Gazette of Thursday on the death
Of little child. 1t is well worth
reading and is herewith reprodu-
ced;
A tentline item appeared in last
nights paper, away down in one
corner that brought more hearts
together in acommon bond-the
bond of fear and sympathy and
sorrow, than any other item has
done for a long time. The item
told Of the death, by scarlet fever,
of little Flossie Yengst. Probably
the little child was not known out
side her little group Of play
mates; her father and mother are
not of that advertised clique
known of men as prominent
people; he is an engineer on the
Santa Fe, and the mother moves
i'll that small circle of her friends
and neighbors which circumscribes
A merican motherhood of the best
type. And yet last night when
the little ten | ne item was read by |
a thousand firesides in this town,
thousands.and thousands of hearts
turned to that desolate home by |
the track, and poured upon 1t the
b enedictiOn of their sympathies. |
That home was the place where the
rich and poor, great and weak,
good and bad, stood equals. For
there is something in the death of |
little child, something in its inf
mite pathos that makes all human
creatures mourn. Because to ev-
cry heart that is not dead heart,
eallOused to all joy or sorrow,
some little child is enshrined-eith-
er dead or living-and so child |
love is the one universal emotion
of the soul, and child death is the
saddest thing in all the world.
A child's soul is such a small
thing, and the world and the sys-
TENS of worlds and the infinite
stretches of iliimitable space are
so wide for child's soul to wan
der in, that sane as we may be,
st old as we may try to be, we
think in imagry and the figure of
little feet setting off on the far
track to the end of things, hunting
God, wrings our heart strings and |
makes our Threats grip and our
eyelids culver.
Aud then a child dying, leaving
this good world of ours, seems to
have had so smallssa chance for it.
self. There is something IN all of
us struggling against oblivion,
striving vainly to make some i'm
press on the current Of time aud a
child dying can ouly clutch its
hands about it aud go down-for-
ever. 1t seems so mefciless, so I'M
fair. Perhaps that is why all over
the world the little graves are
cared for best. 1t is to the little
graves that we turn, not to the
larger mounds in our keenest an
flush; to the little graves that
our hearts are drawn in our hours
of triumph. And so the child,
tho dead, lives its appointed time
and dies only in the fullness of its
years. The little shoes, the little
dresses, the "litrle tin soldier COW
cred with rust" and the memoir
les sweeter than dreams of a honey
moon, these are alife's immorteles.
that never fade. And tho men
and women come and go upon the
earth, tho civilizations may with
er and pass, these little images re-
main; and the sun and stars which
see men come and go, may see
these little idols before which ev-
cry creature bows, and the sun
aud stars knowing no time, may
think these children's relics also
eternal
1t is desperately lonely home,
that Yengst home with the little
Girl gone on its long Journey; but