TOO MANY OF WE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 10, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 36.

“TOO MANY OF WE.”

“MAMA, is there too many of we?” The little girl asked with a sigh, “Perhaps you wouldn’t be tired, you see, If a few of your children would die.”

She was only three years old—the one Who spoke in that strange, sad way, As she saw her mother’s impatient frown At the children’s boist’rous play.

There were half a dozen who ’round her stood, And the mother was sick and poor, Worn out with the cares of the noisy brood, And the fight with the wolf at the door.

For a smile or a kiss, no time, no place— For the little one, least of all; And the shadow that darkened the mother’s face O’er the young life seemed to fall.

More thoughtful than any, she felt more care, And pondered in childhood’s way How to lighten the burden she could not share, Growing heavier day by day.

Only a week, and the little Claire In her tiny, white trundle-bed Lay with blue eyes closed, and the sunny hair Cut close from the golden head.

“Don’t cry,” she said—and the words were low, Feeling tears that she could not see— “You won’t have to work and be tired so, When there ain’t so many of we.”

But the dear little daughter who went away From the home that for once was stilled, Showed the mother’s heart, from that dreary day, What a place she had always filled.

—Woman’s Journal.