NO PLACE AT HOME | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 31.

NO PLACE AT HOME.

I met him on a street corner—a bright, black-eyed lad of perhaps fourteen summers. I had seen him there evening after evening, and wondered whether there was no one who knew the temptations he encountered. I made friends with him, and won his confidence. Then I questioned him kindly in regard to his spending so much time in the streets.

“I know,” he said, looking up at me in such a frank, winning way, that I could not help thinking what a noble man he might make, “the street is not the place for a boy, but you see there's no place for me at home.”

I was surprised and pained at the answer.

“How is that?” I asked.

“Well, I have two grown-up sisters, and they entertain company in the parlor every evening. They give me to understand that I am ‘a third ‘party,’ and not wanted. Then papa is always tired, and he dozes in the sitting-room, and does not like to be disturbed. It's pretty lonesome, you see; so I come down here. It was not always so,” he went on. “Before grandma died, I always went up to her room, and had a jolly time. Grandma liked boys.”

There was a quaver in the voice that told of a sorrow time had not yet healed.

“But your mother!” I suggested.

“O, mama!—she is only a reformer, and has no time to spend with me. She is always visiting the prisons and work-houses, trying to reform men, or writing articles on how to save the boys.”

“And her own boy in danger?”

“Yes, I am not half as good as I was before grandma died. I am getting rough, I am afraid. There does not seem to be any one to take an interest in me, so it does not much matter.”

It was hard, bitter truth; and yet I knew that this was not the only boy who needed a wise, gentle hand to guide him through the dangerous period.

Mothers, make home the brightest spot on earth for your children. Take an interest in their sports; make yourself young for their sakes.

I think the saddest, most hopeless thing I ever heard from a boy's lips was that sentence: “There is no place for me at home.”—The Household.