Did you say you wished to see me, sir? Step in; 'tis a cheerless place,
But you're heartily welcome all the same; to be poor is no disgrace.
Have I been here long? Oh, yes, sir! 'tis thirty winters gone
Since poor Jim took to crooked ways and left me all alone!
Jim was my son, and a likelier lad you'd never wish to see,
Till evil counsels won his heart and led him away from me.
'Tis the old, sad, pitiful story, sir, of the devil's winding stair,
And men go down--and down--and down--to blackness and despair;
Tossing about like wrecks at sea, with helm and anchor lost,
On and on, through the surging waves, nor caring to count the cost;
I doubt sometimes if the Savior sees, He seems so far away,
How the souls He loved and died for, are drifting--drifting astray!
Indeed,'tis little wonder, sir, if woman shrinks and cries
When the life-blood on Rum's altar spilled is calling to the skies;
Small wonder if her own heart feels each sacrificial blow,
For isn't each life a part of hers? each pain her hurt and woe?
Read all the records of crime and shame--'tis bitterly, sadly true;
Where manliness and honor die, there some woman's heart dies, too.
I often think, when I hear folks talk so prettily and so fine
Of "alcohol as needful food"; of the "moderate use of wine";
How "the world couldn't do without it, there was clearly no other way
But for a man to drink, or let it alone, as his own strong will might say";
That "to use it, but not abuse it, was the proper thing to do,"
How I wish they'd let old Poorhouse Nan preach her little sermon, too!
I would give them scenes in a woman's life that would make their
pulses stir,
For I was a drunkard's child and wife--aye, a drunkard's mother, sir!
I would tell of childish terrors, of childish tears and pain.
Of cruel blows from a father's hand when rum had crazed his brain;
He always said he could drink his fill, or let it alone as well;
Perhaps he might, he was killed one night in a brawl--in a grog-shop hell!
I would tell of years of loveless toil the drunkard's child had passed,
With just one gleam of sunshine, too beautiful to last.
When I married Tom I thought for sure I had nothing more to fear,
That life would come all right at last; the world seemed full of cheer.
But he took to moderate drinking--he allowed 'twas a harmless thing,
So the arrow sped, and my bird of Hope came down with a broken wing.
Tom was only a moderate drinker; ah, sir, do you bear in mind
How the plodding tortoise in the race left the leaping hare behind?
'Twas because he held right on and on, steady and true, if slow,
And that's the way, I'm thinking, that the moderate drinkers go!
Step over step--day after day--with sleepless, tireless pace,
While the toper sometimes looks behind and tarries in the race!
Ah, heavily in the well-worn path poor Tom walked day by day,
For my heart-strings clung about his feet and tangled up the way;
The days were dark, and friends were gone, and life dragged on full slow,
And children came, like reapers, and to a harvest of want and woe!
Two of them died, and I was glad when they lay before me dead;
I had grown so weary of their cries--their pitiful cries for bread.
There came a time when my heart was stone; I could neither hope nor pray;
Poor Tom lay out in the Potter's Field, and my boy had gone astray;
My boy who'd been my idol, while, like hound athirst for blood,
Between my breaking heart and him the liquor seller stood,
And lured him on with pleasant words, his pleasures and his wine;
Ah, God have pity on other hearts as bruised and hurt as mine.
There were whispers of evil-doing, of dishonor, and of shame,
That I cannot bear to think of now, and would not dare to name!
There was hiding away from the light of day, there was creeping about at
night,
A hurried word of parting--then a criminal's stealthy flight!
His lips were white with remorse and fright when he gave me a good-by kiss;
And I've never seen my poor lost boy from that black day to this.
Ah, none but a mother can tell you, sir, how a mother's heart will ache,
With the sorrow that comes of a sinning child, with grief for a lost one's
sake,
When she knows the feet she trained to walk have gone so far astray,
And the lips grown bold with curses that she taught to sing and pray;
A child may fear--a wife may weep, but of all sad things, none other
Seems half so sorrowful to me as being a drunkard's mother.
They tell me that down in the vilest dens of the city's crime and murk,
There are men with the hearts of angels, doing the angels' work;
That they win back the lost and the straying, that they help the weak to
stand,
By the wonderful power of loving words--and the help of God's right hand!
And often and often, the dear Lord knows, I've knelt and prayed to Him,
That somewhere, somehow, 'twould happen that they'd find and save my Jim!
You'll say 'tis a poor old woman's whim; but when I prayed last night,
Right over yon eastern window there shone a wonderful light!
(Leastways it looked that way to me) and out of the light there fell
The softest voice I had ever heard: it rung like a silver bell;
And these were the words, "The prodigal turns, so tired by want and sin,
He seeks his father's open door--he weeps--and enters in."
Why, sir, you're crying as hard as I; what--is it really done?
Have the loving voice and the Helping Hand brought back my wandering son?
Did you kiss me and call me "Mother"--and hold me to your breast,
Or is it one of the taunting dreams that come to mock my rest?
No--no! thank God, 'tis a dream come true! I can die, for He's saved
my boy!
And the poor old heart that had lived on grief was broken at last by joy!
_Lucy M. Blinn._
Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud!
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!
Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willows shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high
Shall moulder to dust, and together shall die.
The child whom a mother attended and loved,
The mother that infant's affection who proved,
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,
Each--all are away to their dwelling of rest.
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye
Shone beauty and pleasure--her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
The hand of the king who the scepter hath borne,
The brow of the priest who the mitre hath worn,
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave
Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.
The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap,
The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep,
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
So the multitude goes--like the flower and the weed
That wither away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes--even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
For we are the same things that our fathers have been,
We see the same sights that our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun,
And we run the same course that our fathers have run.
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think,
From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink,
To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling,
But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.
They loved--but their story we cannot enfold,
They scorned--but the heart of the haughty is cold,
They grieved--but no wail from their slumbers may come,
They joy'd--but the voice of their gladness--is dumb.
They died, ay, they died! and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwellings a transient abode
Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.
Yea, hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile, and the tear, and the song and the dirge
Still follow each other like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath
From the blossoms of health to the paleness of death;
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud--
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!
_William Knox._