_The Singer Mother

A Singer sang a glorious song So grandly clear and subtly sweet, That, with huzzas, the listening throng Cast down their tributes at her feet.

The Singer heard their shouts the while, But her serene and haughty face Was lighted by no flattered smile Provoked by homage in that place.

The Singer sang that night again In mother tones, tender and deep, Not to the public ear, but when She rocked her little one to sleep.

The song we bless through all the years As memory's holiest, sweetest thing, Instinct with pathos and with tears-- The song that mothers always sing.

So tuneful was the lullaby The mother sang, her little child Cooed, oh! so sweetly in reply, Stretched forth its dimpled hands and smiled.

The Singer crooning there above The cradle where her darling lay Snatched to her breast her smiling love And sang his soul to dreams away.

Oh, mother-love, that knows no guile, That's deaf to flatt'ry, blind to art, A dimpled hand hath wooed thy smile-- A baby's cooing touched thy heart._

Lest my readers should conclude from these early specimens of Field's fondness for lilting lullabies that the gentler sex and "mother love" blinded him to the manly attractions and true worth of his own sex, let the following never-to-be-forgotten ode to the waistcoat of the papa of the hero of the two preceding songs bear witness. Mr. Davis has been a manager of first-class theatres and theatrical companies for a score of years, and there are thousands to testify that in the rhymes that follow Field has done no more than justice to the amazing "confections" in wearing apparel he affected in the days when we were boys together:

_Of waistcoats there are divers kinds, from those severely chaste To those with fiery colors dight or with fair figures traced: Those that high as liver-pads and chest-protectors serve, While others proudly sweep away in a substomachic curve, But the grandest thing in waistcoats in the streets in this great and wondrous west Is that which folks are wont to call the Will J. Davis vest!

This paragon of comeliness is cut nor low nor high But just enough of both to show a bright imported tie: Bound neatly with the choicest silks its lappets wave-like roll, While a watch-chain dangles sprucely from the proper buttonhole And a certain sensuous languor is ineffably expressed In the contour and the mise en scene of the Will J. Davis vest.

Its texture is of softest silk: Its colors, ah, how vain The task to name the splendid hues that in that vest obtain! Go, view the rainbow and recount the glories of the sight And number all the radiances that in its glow unite, And then, when they are counted, with pride be it confessed They're nil beside the splendor of the Will J. Davis vest.

Sometimes the gorgeous pattern is a sportive pumpkin vine, At other times the lily and the ivy intertwine: And then again the ground is white with purple polka dots Or else a dainty lavender with red congestive spots-- In short, there is no color, hue, or shade you could suggest That doesn't in due time occur in a Will J. Davis vest.

Now William is not handsome--he's told he's just like me. And in one respect I think he is, for he's as good as good can be! Yet, while I find my chances with the girls are precious slim, The women-folks go wildly galivanting after him: And after serious study of the problem I have guessed That the secret of this frenzy is the Will J. Davis vest.

I've stood in Colorado and looked on peaks of snow While prisoned torrents made their moan two thousand feet below: The Simplon pass and prodigies Vesuvian have I done, And gazed in rock-bound Norway upon the midnight sun-- Yet at no time such wonderment, such transports filled my breast As when I fixed my orbs upon a Will J. Davis vest.

All vainly have I hunted this worldly sphere around For a waistcoat like that waistcoat, but that waistcoat can't be found! The Frenchman shrugs his shoulders and the German answers "nein," When I try the haberdasheries on the Seine and on the Rhine, And the truckling British tradesman having trotted out his best Is forced to own he can't compete with the Will J. Davis vest.

But better yet, Dear William, than this garb of which I sing Is a gift which God has given you, and that's a priceless thing. What stuff we mortals spin and weave, though pleasing to the eye, Doth presently corrupt, to be forgotten by and by. One thing, and one alone, survives old time's remorseless test-- The valor of a heart like that which beats beneath that vest!_

Playgoers of these by-gone days will remember the name of Kate Claxton with varying degrees of pleasure. She was an actress of what was then known as the Union Square Theatre type--a type that preceded the Augustin Daly school and was strong in emotional rôles. With the late Charles H. Thorne, Jr., at its head, it gave such plays as "The Banker's Daughter," "The Two Orphans," "The Celebrated Case," and "The Danicheffs," their great popular vogue. Miss Claxton was what is known as the leading juvenile lady in the Union Square Company, and her Louise, the blind sister, to Miss Sara Jewett's Henrietta in "The Two Orphans," won for her a national reputation. She was endowed by nature with a superb shock of dark red hair, over which a Titian might have raved. This was very effective when flowing loose about the bare shoulders of the blind orphan, but afterward, when Miss Claxton went starring over the country and had the misfortune to have several narrow escapes from fire, the newspaper wits of the day could not resist the inclination to ascribe a certain incendiarism to her hair, and also to her art. And Field, who was on terms of personal friendship with Miss Claxton, led the cry with the following: