“You Never Said so Before, John”
A venerable clergyman said lately, “Men of my profession see much of the tragic side of life. Beside a death-bed the secret passions, the hidden evil as well as the good in human nature, are very often dragged to light. I have seen men die in battle, children, and young wives in their husband’s arms, but no death ever seemed so pathetic to me as that of an old woman, a member of my church. I knew her first as a young girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirit and vigor. She married and had four children; her husband died and left her penniless. She taught school, she painted, she sewed, she gave herself scarcely time to eat or sleep. Every thought was for her children, to educate them, to give them the same chance which their father would have done. She succeeded―sent the boys to college and the girls to school. When they came home, pretty, refined girls, and strong-young men, abreast with all the new ideas and tastes of their time, she was a worn-out common-place old woman. They had their own pursuits and companions. She-lingered among them for two or three years, and then died of some sudden failure in the brain. The shock woke them, to a consciousness of the truth. They hung over her, as she lay unconscious, in an agony of grief. The eldest son as he held her in his arms cried, ‘You have been a good mother to us!’ Her face colored again, her eyes kindled into a smile, and she whispered, You never said so before, John,’ Then the light died out and she was gone.”
How many men and women sacrifice their own hopes and ambitions, their life itself, to their children, who receive it as a matter of course, and begrudge a caress, a word of gratitude in payment of all that has been given to them t.. Boys, when you come back from college, don’t consider that your only relation to your father is to “get as much money as the governor will stand.” Look at his gray hair, his uncertain step, his dim eyes, and remember in whose service he has grown old. You can never pay the debt you owe, but at least acknowledge it before it is too late.