Our Own Mothers by Mrs. Annie A. Preston

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 19, 1883

Our Own Mothers.

By Mrs. Annie A. Preston

"WHO does the horrid ugly creetur belong to, anyway?"

At sound of the shrill voice I glanced from my phaeton in front of the post-office, where I was waiting for the morning mail to be distributed, across the white, dusty, country road to the top of a picket fence, where was perched a queer little old woman in quaint black dress and funny black bonnet, from which floated a long, voluminous black veil. She was talking rapidly and brandishing a crutch toward a peaceable looking horse that was feeding quietly by the roadside.

The men grouped about the little railway station near by, and those standing in front of the village store laughed heartily at the queer spectacle which was, indeed, ludicrous in the extreme.

"That ugly creetur don't belong to nobody, auntie," called a rude boy from the top of a load of cord wood. "He is an escape from that circus advertisement over yonder on the blacksmith shop, and it is not a horse at all, but a widow eating ryosonos."

"Look out for him, black bonnet and crutches are his regular diet," shouted another young fellow who was loading lumber.

"For shame!" exclaimed a third young man, who then called politely to the old woman on the fence: "The horse is perfectly gentle madam, he will not hurt you."

Thus reassured, the poor woman clambered down, and still holding her crutch in a defensive attitude, shouted:--

"How long is he going to be round here?"

"All day, I presume," replied another man, mischievously.

"Then how am I to get home, anyway?"

"We don't know, grandma."

The bystanders laughed with evident enjoyment. The poor woman looked perplexed enough, until the gentlemanly youth, who had reassured her before, said:--

"I will go with you, if you would like to have me."

"Oh, thank you! thank you!" cried the woman. "I left bread in the oven, and Nancy Jane is sick, and I've got medicine here for her; and I ought to be at home this minute."

The young man crossed the road, picked up her parcels from the damp, dewy grass, and walked beside her as she swung herself rapidly along, her black veil streaming back like a banner.

"I would pitch into anybody who called me a coward," said one of the railroad boys, doubling his fist in a pugilistic way; "but I wouldn't have gone over there and walked across the bridge with that old woman for fifty dollars."

"I don't know as I would," said a middle-aged man who had lost an arm at Antietam; "but I suppose no one disputes that moral courage goes far ahead of physical courage. I do not think I am lacking in the last."

They were still talking upon this point when the young man returned, evidently expecting to be chaffed by all hands. He blushed a little at the remark of one of the older men.

"We should all have been glad to have done just what you have done, but we were afraid of the laugh."

"I was as foolishly afraid of that as any of you in the first place," he replied, frankly; "but, in my mind, I changed the saying, 'Do as you would be done by,' so that it ran, Do as you would have your own mother done by, and then, of course, I went right along with the poor, nervous, timid old woman, as any of you would have done had you put it in that way."

"That is so," chorused the men, and one said, solemnly:--

"I don't care how rough a fellow may be, he always keeps a soft place in his heart for his own mother."

"I think we should all get along better if we would always make a point of following our best impulses," said the gentlemanly young man.

The locomotive sent out its shrill call, and the young freight hands ran to take their places on top of the long sinuous line of smoky cars, each one, I was sure, with a softened heart under his rough, begrimmed jacket.--Mrs. Annie A. Preston.