EARLY IMPRESSIONS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 20, 1877

EARLY IMPRESSIONS.

A FEW years ago a company of Indians were captured on the Western frontier. Among them were a number of stolen children. They had been with the savages for years. Word was sent throughout the region inviting all who had lost children to come and see if among their little captives they could recognize their own. A long way off was a woman who had been robbed of her darlings, a boy and a girl. With mingled hope and fear she came; with fast-throbbing heart she approached the group. They were strange to her. She came nearer, and, with eyes filled with mother-love and earnestness, peered into their faces, one after another; but there was nothing in any she could claim. Nor was there anything in them to light up their cold faces. With the dull pain of despair at her heart, she was turning away, when she paused, choked back the tears, and, in soft tones, began to sing the touching hymn which she had long been wont to sing to her little ones. The first stanza was not completed before a boy and a girl left the group and ran up to her, exclaiming, “Mamma! mamma!” and she folded her lost ones to her bosom. So lives a mother’s early influence in the hearts of her children.—Sel.