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The Sick Mother

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 13, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 33.

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The Sick Mother

THE German Baron von Karlstine, in his book about New York, relates that on Washington’s birthday he was standing in a crowd on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, waiting for the grand procession to arrive. The first drums were heard in the distance, when a young man, hatless, and in his shirt sleeves, passed through the assembled multitude, and addressed the policeman who kept the people back.
“Officer,” he exclaimed, “my mother is sick in a house near Sixth Avenue; she has suddenly been taken much worse, and the doctor says that if the procession passes our house, the noise will kill her.”
“O. K., young fellow,” said the policeman, and left him to run up the avenue, where he stood some twenty feet before the procession and screamed, “Halt!” holding up a light rattan cane with both hands.
The word was passed along the line, an adjutant galloped forward, bent over his horse’s neck, and exchanged a few words with the policeman.
Suddenly the command, “Forward! march!” was heard, and the immense body of men proceeded to the corner of Fourteenth Street, without any music, except the lightest possible tapping of drums. Then came, “Right wheel!” and nearly fifty thousand men, whom immense crowds were waiting to see and cheer, wheeled up Fourteenth Street to Broadway, and down Broadway they marched without music until they were beyond the distance at which they might disturb the sick woman.
No one asked why an army of well-drilled, admirably equipped men, many of them battle-scarred veterans, turned out of their path at the simple request of a single policeman, armed with a little rattan cane. It would have been but a trifling matter for them to have taken the city; but no, the general in command, when he received the young man’s thanks, reminded him that his very natural request was addressed to gentlemen and soldiers. And a gentleman, be he soldier or not, reveres the sacred name of “mother.” — Treasure-Trove.