SORRY HE FOUND FAULT WITH MOTHER.
I was obliged to wait at a railway station, says a traveler, so fell to talking to a young man who was in charge. He was a bright, stirring fellow, evidently bound to get on in the employment which he had chosen. His first service had been in his home town, and this was his earliest experience away. “So you are really your own man now, and are free from home restraints,” I said, to try him. “Yes,” he said, “but I am not overwell pleased with the change. I used to think it would be fine to live at a boarding-house and eat fine dinners and have a latch-key; but I would gladly give them all and ten times more for the things at home. We did not have much money, but mother put something into her cooking that I don’t find in boarding-houses; money does not buy from laundry-women the careful darning that mother gave to my clothes. I have a pleasant room—pictures and all that; but I would rather have mother’s face. Look here! Here is a letter giving me an appointment with a large raise in pay. My greatest pleasure in good luck has always been telling it at home; and now I am a hundred miles off. I know, of course, that it is right that I should push off for myself. I could not possibly have earned a living at home; but I wish I had seen how good home was when I was there, and never found fault with mother.” The youth was now obliged to signal a train and left me; but his words kept coming up: “I wish I had seen how good home was, and had never found fault with mother.”—Northwestern.