THE following is a sketch full of touching interest, of a little ragged newsboy, who had lost his mother. In the tenderness of his affection for her he was determined that he would raise a stone to her memory.
His mother and he had kept house together, and they had been all to each other, but now she was taken, and the little fellow’s loss was irreparable. Getting a stone was no easy task, for his earnings were small; but love is strong. Going to a cutter’s yard, and finding that even the cheaper class of stones were far too expensive for him, he at length fixed upon a broken shaft of marble, part of the remains of an accident in the yard, and which the proprietor kindly named at such a low figure that it came within his means. There was much yet to be done, but the brave little chap was equal to it.
The next day he conveyed the stone away on a little four-wheeled cart, and managed to have it put in position. The narrator, curious to know the last of the stone, visited the cemetery one afternoon, and he thus describes what he saw and learned:
“‘Here it is,’ said the man in charge, and sure enough, there was our monument, at the head of one of the newer graves. I knew it at once. Just as it was when it left our yard, I was going to say, until I got a little nearer to it and saw what the little chap had done. I tell you, boys, when I saw it there was something blurred my eyes, so’s I couldn’t read it at first. The little man had tried to keep the lines straight, and evidently thought that capitals would make it look better and bigger, for nearly every letter was a capital. I copied it, and here it is; but you want to see it on the stone to appreciate it.
MY MOTHER
SHEE DIED LAST WEEK SHEE WAS ALL I HAD, SHEE SED SHERD Bee WAITING FUR—and here, boys, the lettering stopped. After awhile I went back to the man in charge, and asked him what further he knew of the little fellow who brought the stone.
“‘Not much,’ he said, ‘not much.’ Didn’t you notice a fresh little grave near the one with the stone? Well, that’s where he is. He came here every afternoon for some time, working away at that stone, and one day I missed him, and then for several days. Then the man came out from the church that had buried the mother, and ordered the grave dug by her side. I asked if it was for the little chap. He said it was. The boy had sold all his papers one day, and was hurrying along the street out this way. There was a runaway team just above the crossing, and—well—he was run over, and lived but a day or two. He had in his hand, when he was picked up, an old file, sharpened down to a point, that he did all the lettering with. They said he seemed to be thinking only of that until he died, for he kept saying, ‘I didn’t get it done; but she’ll know I meant to finish it, won’t she? I’ll tell her so, for she’ll be waiting for me and, boys, he died with those words on his lips.’”
When the men in the cutter’s yard heard the story of the boy, the next day, they clubbed together, got a good stone, inscribed upon it the name of the news-boy (which they succeeded in getting from the superintendent of the Sunday school which the little fellow attended), and underneath it the touching, expressive words: “He loved his mother.”
When the stone was put up, the little lad’s Sunday school mates, as well as others were present, and the superintendent, in speaking to them, told them how the boy had loved Jesus and tried to please Him, and gave utterance to this high encomium: “Scholars,” said he, “I would rather be that brave, loving, little newsboy, and lie there with that on my tombstone, than to be a king of the world, and not love and respect my mother.” That newsboy has left a lesson to the world.
Human love is great, but divine love is greater.
In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
ML 03/25/1906