In the city of Washington lived a mother and her little children. The father, a hard cruel man, had acted so violently against his wife and family that she had to take the children and live elsewhere.
One day the angry father visited the home and carried off two of the youngest. He took them to Baltimore and put them in a boarding house. He told the lady in charge of the home that the children had to be taken away from their wicked mother. She was charged to keep a strict watch over them, to prevent their mother from getting possession of them again. Little Paul and Eileen, were neatly dressed, clean, and showed no marks of bad treatment. “Surely,” reasoned the lady, “a mother who takes such a good care of her children cannot be a bad woman.”
At night she took them up to bed. But with a true mother’s heart she was constrained to linger near the room, and peeping in through a crack in the door, she watched, unobserved, these lonely children in the quiet of their bedroom. They got ready for bed. “Now, Eileen,” said little Paul, “let us pray like mamma taught us.”
So they knelt side by side and repeated a prayer they learned at their mother’s knee. Their prayer was soon ended. Then there was a pause. The children remained on their knees. Then Paul prayed again, “God bless dear mamma; and please send us back to her again. Amen.”
The Lord heard that little prayer, and answered it very speedily. The silent listener’s eyes were moist with tears, and her mother heart determined a noble resolution.
Said she to herself, “A mother who teaches her children to pray cannot be the bad woman that the mother of these children is supposed to be. That boy’s prayer shall be answered sooner than he thinks.”
Her mind was made up. She had been imposed upon, as well as the mother of the children. She immediately sent a telegram to the mother, who was frantic at the loss of her children, and informed her where she could find her loved ones.
The next morning, as the beams of the rising sun dispelled the darkness of night, a happy, thankful mother kissed away on her darlings’ cheeks the lingering tears of childish grief over their separation.
ML 09/24/1967