Today I want to talk to the boys who neglect their mother. They are not
all bad boys, but all are careless and thoughtless boys. At an early age
these wayward boys go away from home and leave a fond mother to worry
and fret and grieve over their absence. Some times they neglect to write
home for years and years, leaving the dear old mother to nurse her lonely
and hungry heart and hug the old, old memories when her boy was but a
child. If any wayward and wandering young man should chance to read these
lines—any wayward boy who knows of a mother waiting at home—won’t he sit
down this very day and write her a few lines?
I have for a neighbor a loving mother who is wasting her life in grieving
for her wayward son. He went away two years ago, and has never written
her a single line. He is a wanderer on the earth, working a few weeks at
one place, then jumps a freight train and rides to new scenes. About a
year ago the mother dreamed an awful dream about her boy. In that vision
she was in a strange land sitting under a large tree on a sloping hill,
around whose base a railroad curved and stretched out for miles on either
side. She looked away to the east, and saw the smoke of an approaching
train. It was coming like the wind.
Then she heard the whistles of a locomotive in the west, and looking in
that direction she beheld another train sweeping down the track to meet
the one coming from the east.
There was only a single track. One of the trains must pull into a switch,
or there would be a collision. The trainmen could not see around the
curve, and were not aware of the other train’s existence. She rushed to
the brow of the hill where she could look down upon the track and took
off her skirt and waved it aloft to signal the on-coming trains. Neither
engineer saw her, and the trains came rushing onward to their inevitable
doom. As the train from the east passed where she stood she saw a man
sitting on the bumpers between two red cars. He looked up and waved his
hand to her. She recognized the face—it was her son Edward!
Then came the shrill whistles of the two locomotives. The engineers had
discovered their danger when too late to save the trains. She stood
fascinated and watched the two iron monsters come together with an awful
crash. They stood up on end like two angry animals in deadly combat, and
the sound of crashing, tumbling cars drowned the noise of the escaping
steam. The two locomotives tumbled over, tearing and wrenching iron
bars from each other as they fell and then lay with heads together like
two giants of the woods who had fought to the death and lay with tooth
and claws imbedded in each other’s body. A few freight cars that were
standing on end fell over with a crashing sound, a cloud of dust arose
from the awful wreck, a hissing sound of escaping steam continued for a
few minutes, and then all was still. The hand of death seemed to grasp
trains and crews, and silence settled down with an awful significance.
She felt herself fainting, just as the moans and cries of human beings in
distress reached her ears.
When she came to and looked down upon the wreck it was night, but
lanterns flitted here and there on both sides of the dead engines, and
a voice asked: “Have we found all the men belonging to the ill-fated
crews?” and a voice just below where she stood replied: “Yes, all of
the two crews, and the body of a hobo besides—they are all dead but two
brakemen, and they are still unconscious.”
She looked down the embankment and saw the dead stretched out upon the
ground and at the east end of the line she recognized her son Edward—dead
and covered with his own blood.
She screamed aloud and her daughter came into the room to see what was
the cause of her alarm. That was a year ago. Her boy has never written
since, and she firmly believes her Edward was killed just as she saw in
her dream. If he is still alive somewhere in the world, think of the joy
he could send her in just a short letter—just enough to show her that he
is still alive. Boys, write to your mother. She may be dreaming of you.