With Love--From Mother

There’s a letter on the bottom of the pile,

Its envelope a faded, sallow brown,

It has traveled to the city many a mile,

And the postmark names a’way up country town.

But the hurried, worried broker pushes all the others by,

And on the scrawly characters he turns a glis- tening eye.

He forgets the cares of commerce and his anx- ious schemes for gain,

The while he reads what mother writes from up in Maine.

There are quirks and scratchy quavers of the pen

Where it struggled in the fingers old and bent,

There are places where he has to read again

And think a bit to find what mother meant.

There are letters on his table that inclose some bouncing checks;

There are letters giving promises of profits on his “specs.”

But he tosses all the litter by, forgets the golden rain,

Until he reads what mother writes from up in Maine.

At last he finds “with love--we all are well,”

And softly lays the homely letter down,

Then dashes at his eager tasks pell-mell,

--Once more the busy, anxious man of town.

But whenever in his duties as the rushing mo- ments fly

That faded little envelope smiles up to meet his eye,

He turns again to labor with a stronger, truer brain,

From thinking on what mother wrote from up in Maine.

All through the day he dictates brisk replies,

To his amanuensis at his side,

--The curt and stern demands and business lies,

--The doubting man cajoled, and threat de- fied.

And then at dusk when all are gone he drops his worldly mask

And takes his pen and lovingly performs a wel- come task;

For never shall the clicking- type or shorthand scrawl profane

The message to the dear old home up there in Maine.

The penmanship is rounded, schoolboy style,

For mother’s eyes are getting dim, she wrote;

And as he sits and writes there, all the while

A bit of homesick feeling grips his throat.

For all the city friendships here with Tom and Dick and Jim

And all the ties of later years grow very, very dim;

While boyhood’s loves in manhood’s heart rise deep and pure and plain.

Called forth by mother’s homely words from up in Maine.