BABY'S SKIES BY M. C. Bartlett Would you know the baby's skies? Mother, keep your eyes from tears, ON A PICTURE OF AN INFANT PLAYING NEAR A PRECIPICE FROM THE GREEK of Leonidas OF ALEXANDRIA, TRANSLATED BY SAMUEL ROGERS While on a cliff with calm delight she kneels, HIS MOTHER'S APRON-STRINGS * BY ISABEL C. BARROWS They were never taut, unless, when he was a little boy he used them as thongs to bind her as the "white captive" when they played Indian. Indeed, his mother was sometimes criticised because she held them too slack, leaving the little fellow to his own devices. Her fear that when the hour of freedom struck he might slash and toss them away in the joy of independence had influenced her to give him a share of that independence as the childish years melted into youth and youth approached manhood. "You are spoiling him," folks said, but her instinct was her safe guide. The boy might be restrained by love, but not by bonds which by and by he could break. So the years sped and the friendship between mother and son strengthened, and the ties that bound them to each other held firmer as life hurried on. He had not been given to her by birth, though his baby head had rested on her breast, but the dear mother who bore him and died could not have loved him more. People said poor people who did not know the joys of adoption on both sides "How queer that he should still be tied to her apron-strings!" They did not say which was the slave, because there seemed really no compulsion either way, the strings were so slack. It was always the same when he was in school in France (sending her a postal card every day) or at boarding-school, in his own land; in the public high school, or at college; in the university, or away in the forest and among the mountains busy with Government duties, the bonds that held the mother and son together were lightly worn, yet through them ran an electric cord that pulsed as it felt the heart-beats of the two. The mother was twoscore when the baby boy came into her arms. She is now nearly threescore and ten. The Psalmist's limit stands in full sight of her unabated vision. The son is in the prime of his strength. I saw them the other day as I passed through Canada. Which one had gathered up the apron-strings and drawn the other I could not tell, but here they were, one coming from the South and one from the East, for ten days of Indian summer on a Northern lake. I accepted their hospitality and saw the comradeship between them. : A log cabin with an open fire was their shelter. The surrounding hills were gleaming with frost and the mountain tops were hooded with snow, but the sun smiled on the wintry landscape, as the fire in the cabin cheered the hearth. Life in this little camp was at its simplest. A farm a mile away supplied milk, butter, eggs, and honey, and a neglected garden still held potatoes, beets, carrots, and onions, all to be roasted in the hot cinders and ashes, while a shivering cabbage yielded up its heart for salad. Biscuit browned before the fire and drenched with cream and maple syrup made the "guiltless feast" as Goldsmith's hermit calls it, surpass those described by the Latin poets. Agate-ware dishes, washed and wiped in companionship by mother and son, matched the homely fare. Ticks filled with oat straw, with heavy blankets, furnished the beds, whose only luxury consisted of white-covered pillows. Peace reigned within and without. No human sound reached the cabin hidden in the woods. The wild things drew near unafraid, for no gun would frighten them thence. Loons and ducks plashed in the cold water of the lake. Wild geese honked their way southward in a great "V" overhead. In the cedar-bush partridges were feeding, while robins, chickadees, blue jays, and crows were rejoicing in the prolonged Indian summer, and bear and deer were not far off in the denser wood. - I came upon mother and son unexpectedly as I walked over the hills. The sound of sawing drew me down to a pretty growth of young pines. They were trimming up the trees. The mother would saw off the branches within her reach which would not be very high up-and the taller, stronger sawyer would take the upper limbs. It was a picture one does not see every day. The beautiful trees will remember it as they spread out their arms to wider air and sunlight. Another day I found them, one on each side of a fallen ash, which stroke by stroke they were cutting up into fireplace lengths with a great cross-cut saw, while the wind played through the gray locks of the one and over the curly pate of the other. When next I saw them, they were far out on the lake in a canoe, each with a paddle, and I heard a cautious old man who was collecting eggs for the fish-hatcheries sing out to her, "Ain't ye afeard to be out in a canoe in winter?" and I heard her quick response, tinged with pride, "Not when I am with my son." The blue jay in the maple top shrieked with delight, and the fish-hawk swooping down for a black bass tumbled over himself with pleasure. They were all birds of one feather. With a lantern to guide me down the stony path, though the full moon ought to have done it, I made bold to seek their cabin after the early shades of evening had fallen. A glorious fire roared up the chimney, before which the son was stretched out in creature comfort. A good light was on the rustic table, and in a low chair the mother was reading "Pickwick aloud! No daily paper penetrated into their corner of the silent world. The ten days' holiday must be over now, and mother and son again separated by weary miles, with the din of trolley cars and automobiles in their ears. Only a memory of the Indian summer remains, but it will remain long enough, perhaps, for the legend to be handed down to generations yet to come, that papa and grandmamma went camping in winter, just by themselves, because he was so tied to her apronstrings." * Reprinted by courtesy of "The Outlook." MATER AMABILIS BY EMMA Lazarus Down the goldenest of streams, The fair cradled man-child drifts: |