score of times in the night to stand looking at her as she slept.
We did not see her becoming little then, nor sharply turn our heads
when she said wonderingly how small her arms had grown. In her
happiest moments - and never was a happier woman - her mouth did
not of a sudden begin to twitch, and tears to lie on the mute blue
eyes in which I have read all I know and would ever care to write.
For when you looked into my mother's eyes you knew, as if He had
told you, why God sent her into the world - it was to open the
minds of all who looked to beautiful thoughts. And that is the
beginning and end of literature. Those eyes that I cannot see
until I was six years old have guided me through life, and I pray
God they may remain my only earthly judge to the last. They were
never more my guide than when I helped to put her to earth, not
whimpering because my mother had been taken away after seventy-six
glorious years of life, but exulting in her even at the grave.


She had a son who was far away at school. I remember very little
about him, only that he was a merry-faced boy who ran like a
squirrel up a tree and shook the cherries into my lap. When he was
thirteen and I was half his age the terrible news came, and I have
been told the face of my mother was awful in its calmness as she
set off to get between Death and her boy. We trooped with her down
the brae to the wooden station, and I think I was envying her the
journey in the mysterious wagons; I know we played around her,
proud of our right to be there, but I do not recall it, I only
speak from hearsay. Her ticket was taken, she had bidden us
goodbye with that fighting face which I cannot see, and then my
father came out of the telegraph-office and said huskily, 'He's
gone!' Then we turned very quietly and went home again up the