I read further, sidewise and backwards, in these pamphlets,
without exhausting them. I have not ceased to think of the great
warm heart that sends them forth, and which I, with others,
sometimes tag with satire, and with not being warm enough for
this poor world;--I too,--though I know its meltings to-me-ward.
Then I learned that the newspapers had announced the death of
your mother (which I heard of casually on the Rock River,
Illinois), and that you and your brother John had been with her
in Scotland. I remembered what you had once and again said of
her to me, and your apprehensions of the event which has come. I
can well believe you were grieved. The best son is not enough a
son. My mother died in my house in November, who had lived with
me all my life, and kept her heart and mind clear, and her own,
until the end. It is very necessary that we should have
mothers,--we that read and write,--to keep us from becoming
paper. I had found that age did not make that she should die
without causing me pain. In my journeying lately, when I think
of home the heart is taken out.
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