The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-06
Our Daily, Sbort Story

1 was a graceless ne-er.do-well scamp, and that she was a fool to slave for him. To be sure sometimes she her. self had thought a little bitterly of him, when i'll, weary and heartsick. he had failed to give her helping hand or even to come to her with word of cheer.
 But she had reasoned in her great
 mother heart that the boy had been bereft of a fathers care and that the !! great necessity that always had con- fronted her had made 1t impossible to give him the attention she should and would have done. So if he was a lit-
 tic wild was 1t not her fault and the fault of fortune rather than his. Anyway she loved him with all the passionate violence of Q starved nature 1 and never once did she lose her abid- ing faith that he would come back
 to her and be her staff and comfort. It was sorry trial, indeed. when he joined the army after the call for
 troops at the sinking of the Maine.
 that never once had he come to her. Never once had she seen him in the
 uniform of his country. Never did
 poet or painter have vision half so
 fair as her dreams of Johnnie in his
 regimentals. For many nights sleep
 did not visit her ragged cot The |
 of the thought that Johnnie, her John.
 nie, was q soldier and a hero forbade
 sleep and threatened her very life. But
 the days passed and although the post
 where Johnnie had enlisted and where he was stationed was near at hand he
 never came to see her and never had she seen him in his uniform. She had seen
 many regiments march through the
 streets on the way to Cuba and as she gazed upon the soldiers so straight and
 tall and noble she had imagined how
 brave Johnnie must look and she had wished, ah so ardently, that she might see him In the garb of his coRntrys
 defenders. But he had marched away
 without so much as coming to see her or even to write her and with the same
 sigh of resignation into which all her
 castles had vanished she had taken up her hum-drum life of toll again. But still the germ of hope had sur-
 vived in her old heart. He was young
 and wild. After the war he would
 steady. down and would come back to
 her and be her comfort and joy. She
 had chung to that idea with an in-
 tensity which stopped little short of
 mania. That hope was all that en-
 abled her frail body to hang over the
 wash-tub by day and her trembling
 fingers to ply the needle by night, all that had enabled her dim eyes to see the work before her, all that kept the fires of life burning within her on the scant food and little sleep she allowed herself.
 But now 1t was all over. That brief epigrammatic notice of his death
 struck her to the heart as keenly as ever did the loss of the most model
 boy to loving mother. Johnnie was
 dead. There was nothing more to work for. to sacrifice for, to hope for,
 to live for. Through her blinding tears she did not see the form of a man clothed fin the khaki uniform in Cuba,
 but pretty blue-eyed boy in dresses. And in her ears rang the prattle of a
 childish voice. Johnnie was dead dead and buried in foreign soil, where
 she could not have even the poor com
 fort of mourning over his grave.
 The paper dropped from her lap. She leaned forward heavily and her head the table. The tears and the sobs ceased.
 Presently good neighborly Mrs. Hem
 derson came in with a cup of tea and
 a bit of toast and g cheery word to
 comfort the stricken mother. Mrs. Bradley did not stir and when the neighbor placed her hand with rough gent1eness on her head it was cold and stiff. The tray dropped to the floor | and Mrs. Henderson started back with
 frightened look and hastily crossed herself.
 Mrs. Bradley's earthly trials and struggles were over.