Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1917-02-01
Death W1pes Out
By DOROTHY DIX.

II, among all its weaknesses and its
failures, humanity keeps one angel
trait still unsullied, it, is the sublime
forgiveness it accords Ahe dead. 1t is
as if the tears that are Ahed above ev-
cry grave turned into 4 kind OF rain
bow glory through which we looked
back upon an ended life and saw 1t
TRANSPORTED
No need to speak only good OF the
dead. Death itself becomes the cruel
ble in which our faults are transmitted
into virtues.
1t is never the unkind word we re-
call, but the gentle deed; never the
faltering act, but the high and noble
purpose, and the bestof US may be
thankful to feel that when our time
comes, too, to join the vast majority,
compassion will turn its plying eyes
away from our faults and see only the
good we fain would have done. To be
Judged tenderly when we are gone is
the great boon that all--rich and poor,
high and humble-must ask OF their
kind, and that is never asked in vain:
Sometimes there is a great deal OF
heart breaking pathos in this loyalty
to the dead. There may have been
years Of cruelty, of estrangement or
neglect, but death wipes it all out, and
we 20 back to some simple and quiet
hour that we many remember without
shame or remorse. = i
The mother who sobs above the
dead body OF her hayward son recalls
nothing Of the agony, of the disgrace
/ he may have brought her. She sees
nothing of the Summarized face. She
has returned to the days when, little
child, he lay upon her breast and
looked up into her face with eyes that
were still full of the mysteries OF
heaven.
Sometimes we see wife who has
been betrayed, degraded, neglected,
insulted, kneeling at her husbands
bier. To her death has blotted out
the memory of her wrongs, and she
mourns the lover of her youth, the
hour that made the world an Eden,
rose sweet with Loves young dream,
and most OF all her tears are for the
dreamed and the dream, the love that
faltered, the light that failed, the i'll
cense of the soul that wasted itself
upon the desert air
A story is told Of drunken hood
lum who lay dead in the poor place
he called home. 1t was the end OF
life that had begun and ended in
sin, and whose days had known moth
ing save evil. Not one gentle deed
shed its perfume above its waste !;
not one high aspiration shone like a
star across it's murky way, but none
the less weeping woman chung to
the senseless clay and broke above
it the alabaster casket of her love.
Bill was always so good to me, y
she sobbed. "In all the beatings he
gave me, he never hit me where the
marks would show SO the neighbors
could see EN-" ~
! Think of the pathos of such story
as that! How often he had come
home crazy drunk, with curses and
abuses for the poor creature who
had set her heart upon him! How she
must have covered away from his
anger; how often she must have
crouched in the dark closet on the
stairs and hidden until he slept off
his drunken fury, afraid OF her very
life.
Often and often he had beaten her,
so that very dog, if so treated, might
have turned upon him and slain him;
but her patience and love never fall
tered. She covered the poor, bruised
shoulders with her ragged frock. She
told futile little lies about falling and
hurting herself and her eyes dared
one to doubt the story they knew to
be false. Loyalty and devotion and
love could go no further.
And now Bill was dead. Nothing
more to fear from the heavy hand;
nothing to dread; nothing, one would
say, to remember but cruelty and
brutality.
But not so. Her heart went back
over the long, long years, and plucked
the one poor flower that bloomed
along the arid pathway. He had never
| beaten her so that the marks would
showl 80.
! Death wiped out the score against
him.