Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-01-07

monuments and crosses. Each OF these
pilgrimageS only made him worse. He
would get even-the boy would cl1nch
his fists and curse the Lord in Heaven
he would get even with a world which
had treated his mother like this.
Over her narnelesS graNc zIe 'aad
promised to get ever tie was keeping
his word.
The father was well meaning man,
but his thoughts were with the living
and not the dead. His slender wage
barely suficed to feed the hungry
mouths dependent on him. He tried to
clothe them decently and made a ter
rible job Of it, to judge by Peter.
Not Hungry or Cold.
Every time the boy had suggested
that a headstone be placed over his
mother the father had dismissed the
idea rather CURLY. She was dead,
wasn't she? She wasn't hungry or cold
any more. She was comfortable enough
there Is the ground. Why bother with
her when the kids needed clothes?
He was not an unkindly man, but he
had no motherlipeSs about him. He
was too tired to mother the kids when
he came back from his days work.
The human touch had rome out OF
Peters life the day his mothers body
in a bare wooden box had beEn carried
out of the door of the shack where
they lived.
The spiritual, Christ-like Peter had
gone out Of the skinny, unwaShed little
body and crept into the coffin. There
all these years he had Struggled in her
arms. The poor dead woman had
crooned to her baby there in the grave
yard.
The Peter of the District schools, the
Peter who swore at teachers, stole every
thing he could lay his hands on and
assaulted girls, was not Peter at all.
Peter was in his mothers ARMS in her
nameless grave.
Fife gave the boy money to finish the
cross, to buy paint and other trim
mings. 1t was a work of art when it
was done. There was a soul in it.
One day the teacher and the boy
went out together and cleared away the
weeds from the grave. But for the
setting up of the cross Peter went alone
one Sunday.
Cross of Gold.
"It looks better than any of the
others in the cemetery" he said when
he came to school the next morning
do you think she knows about 1t?
LIZ yOu tiAlIlh size Will ike ~ U6CduSG
it's wood and not Stone?"
THAT cross Is made Of gold, Peter"
the teacher said. "She will known 1t
Is made Of gold"
So the soul of Peter was raised from
his mothers grave on the cross his
hands had carved.
He has never given any trouble since
IT have known many boys" says Mr..
Fife, "but never knew another so
spiritually minded as Peter is today.
He Is all spirit. And he is the one boy
sent here for whom nobody had any
hope"
Fife hesitates to psycho-analyze this
strange case Of dual personality in a
child.
One school would explain it perhaps
in terms Of mother f1xation twisted In
some curious way.
Another would find an inferiority
complex-the motherless child, whom
the world so despised that it would not
even accord his mother the poor honor
OF cross over her grave, developing a
superiority complex in compensation
which drove him to make the world pay
attention to him by the very extent of
his depravity, the way which offered
the line OF least resistance at the time
But the mystic would find here the
symbols Of holy and unseen things-of
Christ descending into hell at the be-
hest OF the Holy Mother.
Perhaps all are right. Who knows?