"The Head of the Company"
The Story of One Mother's Work
MAY I have Harry Gould for a partner, mother? I like him, and he is interested in things I am. I just feel sorry for him. He don't have any chance at all!" "A partner, did you say? A partner in what, Ralph?" the mother asked, smiling across the table. "Why, a partner in my work, in my experiments, in my learning about things and how to do things," the boy answered with the fire of earnestness and enthusiasm flashing up in his eyes. "What! Am I to be dropped?" asked his mother, still smiling over her teacup. "O, of course not, mother. You're the head of the business—always was, and always shall be! But I just thought maybe you could help two boys as well as one. Harry and I would be doing the same things, you see." "But what is the matter with Harry?" the mother asked, not in the least objecting to Ralph's plan, but, like a wise diplomat, wishing to understand fully the case in hand. "Why, doesn't Harry have all he needs? You say he has no chance." "Well, mother, it's just like this: There isn't a place in their big house on Nob Hill for a boy's room and workshop. You know I went home with Harry last night. They have parlors, and a library, and a music-room, and a smoking den, and all that sort of thing. Harry's room is nice, too. But, honest, mother, it's so awful nice that he can't have any good times in it. He took me up-stairs to see a hangbird's nest and some curious rocks he found in the country. When we got up there they were gone. He went to his mother about it, and, if you'll believe it, she just laughed and said, 'We can't have such rubbish in your pretty room!' And she or the maid had burned up his bird's nest and thrown away the curious stones. My! but he looked glum, but he didn't say half I wanted to. I'm downright sorry for him. They might just as well throw him into the street along with the stones." During Ralph's long speech a shadow swept over his mother's face, and Ralph read her sympathy before her answer came. "Certainly, I shall be glad to have you take Harry Gould for a partner, if this is what you mean. But do you think his father and mother will be quite willing that he should spend his spare time here?" said his mother. "They won't either of them care, I'm sure. I don't s'pose they know where he is, anyhow. He told me his father went to business before he and his mother were up in the morning, and came home so late that he sometimes didn't see them for a week. His mother goes off to parties and clubs, and Harry says he gets awful lonesome, and so he goes 'most anywhere evenings." "Bring him here, Ralph; I want him as much as you do," said Ralph's mother. All through the day thoughts of Harry Gould brought a shadow to the face of Mrs. King, Ralph's mother, and her heart warmed toward the boy who "didn't have any chance." She knew his father to be a prominent business man in the city, and his mother's name often appeared in the society columns of the Daily Leader. In her thoughts of Harry there came thoughts of other boys of well-to-do families, as unhelped as was Harry. "O," she said to herself, "the rich need helping as much as the people of the slums." Business had kept Ralph's father out of the city for weeks at a time for much of Ralph's life, and to the mother had fallen most of the care and training of the "Little Prince," as the more immediate friends of Mr. and Mrs. King had dubbed the boy since he first came to be one of the Kings' household. So "Little Prince" he still was, and he had learned, as well as any son of a royal house, that he was being trained to a kingdom—a kingdom of usefulness, where truth and faithfulness are armor and crown. When the boy first lay upon his mother's breast, she felt her insufficiency, as every mother must, but she felt the greatness of this gift divinely committed to her care. Prayer led her to the Wise for wisdom, and, as the boy grew, he did not grow away from his mother. Ralph was now fourteen, and with his mother he had learned the beauty of the world, and the days were all too short to hunt out its treasures, and to study its wonders. Museums and parks and menageries and libraries were visited; excursions into the country came into Ralph's training and education; access was arranged to machine-shops and printing-houses and factories. And all these visits were supplemented by home study, experiments, and attempts to make or put into practise something he had learned. In all his investigations and work, Ralph's mother was, as he had said, "at the head of the company." "How do you ever get time for it all?" an intimate friend had asked when she found Ralph and his mother one day arranging a battery and running telegraph-wires from room to room. "You must have to study day and night." "Study!" laughed Mrs. King. "I never studied harder in school, nor was it ever so delightful. I never began to study so in my Browning club, nor in my sorosis. But," she added, with a voice sweet and very earnest, "my Browning club and sorosis were interesting and helpful, yet not to be compared with this. This work is preparing the 'Prince' for his kingdom, you know." That night Harry Gould came to the study room and the workshop. To him it was the beginning of a new life—the opening of doors into a world of which he had all along had dreams, and for which he had been hungry all his life. There the boys worked out experiments, turned inventors, and learned to use their brains and their hands. There they telegraphed—startling messages the world was yet to hear. There they built boats stanch enough to carry cargoes that were to help in life's long voyage. And there it was that Harry's father found his boy, weeks later, when he "came to himself." And this is the way it happened: Mr. Gould left the counting-room earlier than usual one evening. A spirit of unrest seemed to have settled upon him. His usually accurate brain refused to do its duty, and, closing books and desk, he went home. "A beautiful home!" he said in his heart, as he lingered a moment in the bright light that streamed from its windows, and the thought of Harry gave a warm thrill to his heart. As a little later he entered the parlors and saw a group of friends, he remembered that his wife had told him that the card club were to meet there that evening. None was playing, however, and a heavy gloom shadowed the place. "Not playing?" he said. "How's this?" "O, George, you haven't heard!" exclaimed his wife. "Such a dreadful thing has happened! You know Rose Dale belongs to our club; she was to have been here to-night. Mr. Bruce called for her, and it is he who has brought us the word. They have just learned that her brother, David, has shot himself. He had become a gambler, and had lost his own and his employer's money. He could not bear it. Poor, poor boy! Poor Rose! You know what a brilliant young man he was—a young man of such promise; and—don't you remember?—he came with Rose and learned to play—here—at our club. I recall his wonderful skill; he seemed a born player. How we cheered him on! And it has come to this!" Mrs. Gould could say no more for weeping. A pallor came into the man's face as he listened, and the shock to him, as to them all, was terrible. But somehow his own boy's face seemed ever to rise before him, until at length he asked: "Where is our Harry, Grace?" "Why, really, George, I don't know," his wife answered. "He has been out evenings a great deal lately, with Ralph King, on Granger Street, I think." With a half groan the man went out. Somehow the tragedy whose shock was upon him, compelled thoughts of Harry, and he realized how little was being done to save his own boy. A grip like a hand of steel seemed upon his heart as he rang the bell at the little house on Granger Street. "Can you tell me where Harry Gould is?" he asked, as his ring was answered.13The door of a large room just across the hall stood open. This was the boys' room. Harry, surprised, heard his father's voice, and called in answer, "O papa, come in here and see what we are doing." An angel's song could not have been sweeter at that moment to the father's ear. Mrs. King led the way, and for a moment the man stood in the door. He saw half-finished boats, miniature engines, cases of tools, and the meaning of the room flashed upon him. "See, papa, we are printing our own newspaper," said Harry proudly, pointing to a hand-press which the young printers were manipulating. "Isn't this a nice room?" he went on, "and it's all Ralph's, and I'm his partner, and we're learning so much! Ralph's mother helps us. It's the best place I ever went. I just wish all boys had such a chance!" "I wish so, too," said Mr. Gould, with a mist shining in his eyes. After that night things were changed at the Goulds' home. There was no more danger of a hangbird's nest ever going into the fire again, or of specimens being thrown away, and when Mr. Gould took both boys to Yellowstone Park that summer, they went as three good comrades.—Christian Herald.