The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1907-12-25
OUR TEMPERANCE COLUMN.
REPORTS OF PROGRESS OF THE
BATTLE AGAINST RUM.
Thomas A. Bagshaw Writes an Elo-
quent and Touching Narrative
Entitled: "Her Boy; Damned by
NJ.

InOnlaS a. BaSSldW "TlCes ah Gio-
quent and Touching Narrative
Entitled: Her Boy; Damned by
Drink
Her boy. He had been hers in his
youth. They said he was like her,
and he loved her then. She had often
sat for hours by his cradle and read
out of that beautiful face his future
and hers, for what was hers be-
longed to him, and what he had or
made was hers. They were one hear.
She had sacrificed her youth to give
her boy a chance, and her JOY had
been the tears she shed on his pillow
while he slept. He didn't know, and
If he did, he forgot. Most boys DO.
She had built air castles for him
sleeping and waking-not of fancy,
though her fancy retouched them.
She knew his genius, and she knew
as well the taint in his blood. She
counted him up without it, and it was
mother-like to forget it. She loved
him as she loved no one else, and
mothers love is not stern: II she
made a mistake she didn't know 1t
then. But in the wreck of the years
she remembered, and it smote her.
To-day her boy is lost in sodden,
uncouth man Of thirty. You would
scarcely know him in the blue-eyed,
dimpled child whose portrait hangs
over the sofa where he lies in torpid
slumber. The light is gone from his
eyes, his face is pale, and IN it is the
dark tragedy of a beaten manhood.
And the mother, bent not with the
weight of her years, but with the
burden of a great sorrow, gray with
SHOWS that have come in cruel haste
on the very heels of summer, sits be-
side him-her boy. She loves him
still-for what he was. She keeps
the memory. No part of her early
vision is left to her. Her day dreams
have melted, and to-day she gathers
the broken threads together and
seeks to weave them into the vague
vision Of other years.
If you had seen him you would
have wondered if this could be that
mothers boy. Faded she is and
marked with the years, but she is
beautiful, compared with this soiled
garble of a man buried in the fetid
fumes of his own debauch. The wind
howls against the caves as if to twist
the roof from the cottage shell 1t
had been pledged to protect. The
windows rattle in their sockets, and
the lamp on the rude table where she
sits answers every gust of wind that
blows. The shadow trembles on that
pale, wan face. and she shivers. 1t Is
not because the little room Is cold,
nor because she fears the uncanny
noises that the storm is tattooing on
the old stovepipe chimney, nor does
she dread that the ragged form upon
the sofa will rise from his heavy
sleep. 1t is the bitterness of memory
that chafes her sad heart and makes
her tremble. Her boy-still hers
but somehow tonight she wishes for
death for him and her. She thinks
of the then and the now, the days OF
her youth and her childhood-the
first night ne disclosed the appetite
she dreaded, the kiss with which he
had sealed her lips as he left her, her
long delirium of wakefulness, the
heavy football, the PROSTATE form ly.
ing in the hallway amid the shadows
Of the midnight, her own tears and
the agony that filled her soul, and
then the shame and humiliation OF
that morning meeting.
And now age had come and gray
hairs. Now her child was a man
and such a man! The world despised
him, and in his sober moments he
despised himself-but to the mother
he was still her boy. Battered and
broken, the semblance of what he
might have been, friendless and poor.
he had still mother, and she had
still-a boy.
Rum may shatter homes and break
friendships. 1t may damn and poison
everything that clean hand cares tc
touch. But there is citadel that II
has not taken, where, while life lasts
the prodigal may find an. asylum fol
his penitence and his misery. The
saloon has never yet damned back the
fountain of a mothers tears, nor has
it stified the full and free affection OF
q mothers heart.-Home Herald.