The New Hampshire Gazette

Miscellaneous

THE MOTHER.—A SKETCH.

By Joseph R. Chandler, Esq.

Early in one of those beautiful mornings of last May, that called forth from the city so much of its youth, beauty, and even its decrepitude, to inhale and gratify a refined taste, I was riding leisurely along the narrow road that skirts the Schuylkill, about a mile above the princely and hospitable mansion of Mr. Pratt. Solitude and the darkening foliage of the surrounding trees, gave a solemnity to the scene, that even those whom grief and habits of reflection render fond of retirement, so dearly love. Not a breath of air disturbed the leaves of the branches that stretched across the pathway. It was the true silence of nature in her secret places, and the mind undisturbed by outward objects grew busy in the solitude. An opening in the bushes on the left, showed the summit of the hills on the opposite banks of the river, just touched with the tints of the rising sun; and the dew gems upon its luxuriant grass glanced its beams in all their prismatic beauty; but below and between, the mist of the night, settling upon the bosom of the river, hid the placid stream, or rolled heavily off towards the opening of a distant interval. And such, thought I, as I checked my horse to contemplate the scene, such is my course—darkened now and solitary; but beyond me, and beyond this life, are scenes of happiness lit up like that hill, with the rays of hope and promise; yet between me and these enjoyments lies a fearful passage, darkened by the mists which the night of ignorance has caused to settle upon it, deep and dangerous as my errings have made it. A train of reflections was following—reflections such as one who had sat for months in the contemplations of near approaching decay, may be supposed to indulge; when my eye, dropping from the sun-lit eminence above, rested upon an object at the distance of a few yards from us, between the road and the river. A slight breeze dissipated the mist from the spot, and I discovered a female, apparently lifeless, stretched on the ground.

Alighting from my horse, I approached within a few feet of the woman, when she raised her head suddenly from the little eminence upon which it had rested, and showed a face that once been beautiful, marred by continual sorrow, and inflamed by recent indulgences of grief. With a hasty apology for what might appear an impertinent intrusion, and proffering what aid I could bestow, if any should be needed, I withdrew a few yards; but whether the lady felt that there was something in her appearance and situation that required explanation, or whether my wasted, consumptive form, and hollowed sallow cheek forbade a thought of intrusion, and invited confidence I cannot tell—she hastily adjusted her hair and dress, and beckoned me with the solemnity of grief to approach. With those feelings that affliction ever excites, I complied with the intimation, and soon discovered that I was in the company of one for whom education and affection had done much, but deep and lasting sorrow more. I respectfully tendered anew to the female whatever assistance her circumstances might demand, and mine would allow.

"I am alone," said she, "in the world, and the little that nature requires is easily obtained. All that life held valuable, has been taken from me; and death which to come is a dreadful consideration, I contemplate with pleasing satisfaction, while I wait it with resigned patience. Not my affliction, but their consequences, have prepared me for the event; and I looked with pleasure to the rapidly approaching time when I shall lie beneath the hillock from which I have now risen, and none shall be able to call me back to the bitterness of my earthly lot. All that was dear to me in life is there, and where my earthly treasures are deposited, there my heart is also."

I learned from the lady, that her husband had left England with a view of establishing himself in this country; and, after residing in Philadelphia a few months, he sent to her a letter, acquainting her with his prospects of business, directing her to dispose of whatever property she had, and to come with the children to him. She complied with his request, and arrived in America ten days after the death of her husband. A stranger and a widow, unused to depend upon herself, she at first almost sunk beneath the afflictive stroke of Providence; but the claims of five children called a mother to a sense of her duties. She exerted herself, but still found that the little remaining of her limited store was daily wasting, "and," said she, "I knew not the power that would give the prolific blessing to the last measures of meal in my barrel, or that could bid me still pour out abundance from a widow's exhausted cruse. To protract life then, scarcely able to save it, I left the city and took yonder miserable hut, that had been deserted by a family of blacks. Here, with rigid economy and unsparing labor, I might have raised my children, imparting to them the rudiments of an useful education, but your climate, at best unfriendly to health, and rendered still more deleterious by our contiguity to the river, and exposed to the morning and evening moisture, proved too powerful for my children. The eldest wasted away with racking chills, or almost shrivelled by burning fevers, expired in my arms, with a blessing upon me mingled with his last accents. We laid him in the grave, and when the dirt was heaped upon him, I returned to renew my watching with the next.

"Death was busy with my household in three months four of my children were brought to this spot. And perhaps the last would have been with them, but for a change of the atmosphere that checked the progress of disease. How strong is a mother's love! All the affection which had diffused itself over my four children, had concentrated with deep intensity upon him that had been spared, my youngest boy. Let a mother indulge her fondness. He was beautiful; poverty had not crushed his spirits; and, knowing little of other joys, he had moulded even his childish sports to my wishes. How often as I threw back the clustering curls, to impress upon his polished forehead a mother's kiss, has my heart ached at the thought that we must separate: that before long I must be with those dear ones that had gone, and then who would watch over my Albert. The old
charities of public provision, meted out to him among a squallid race, cradled in misery, and matured in crime; what were these to one—poor, poor indeed, but endowed with an appetency for good, and taught to love virtue, not for its reward, but for its existence?

"It is now three weeks since, finding some necessity to visit the seat of our opulent neighbor, I left my Albert in care of the house, with especial charge to guard the enclosure. My errand was unusually fortunate: and as I hastened home I thought of the delight that my child would evince on contemplating an acquisition which by the kindness of a lady, I had made. I thought of the smile that was to play over his features, as he should come bounding along the pathway to greet my return, and aid me in carrying my well stowed bundle."

From behind a tree to surprise me, and even conned the little monition which I should give him on the importance of vigilance. But undefinable fears, I hastened forward, when of a large tree, For the moment my blood curdled about my heart, and thoughts thick coming had passed my mind with a rapidity that none but a parent; an afflicted and suffering parent, can know. The woman paused inquiringly—"You are a father?"

I bowed assent,

"And have mourned the loss of a child?" again she asked.

The tears that smote her hand, as it still rested on my arm, told her that I could sympathize with her.

"I may then proceed, or only to a parent may a parent tell her woes. But still you cannot know it all. No, a mother only, only a mother may drink of that cup! Oh! how a mother loves her boy—and that one, one spared from all—I have held him to my bosom in moments of deep feeling, when sorrow, poverty and despair have chilled every current from the heart. I have pressed my Albert there, and, one by one, the remembrance of those fled away, a smile lighted up my countenance, and the blood gushed through my veins, with the elastic play of youth.

"But let me not weary you—I stepped towards the child—he was asleep. I gazed with a mother's fondness and with a mother's pride. The sun was pouring his setting beams upon his face, and the wind scattered the curls of that hair that lay in such profusion on his shoulders. I kneeled to kiss and bless the boy, and thanked God that he had spared me.

"That night Albert awoke with a hoarseness, and other indications of a cold, caught probably while sleeping in the open air. I resorted to the usual applications, but in vain. The next day saw him worse, and the medical adviser who visited him on the third day, expressed serious apprehensions. Let me hasten to a close. The night succeeding, as I sat with my Albert on my knees, I noticed that the filmy whiteness which had rested on his eyes during the day, had passed off; and they were brilliant beyond the brightness of health. I knew the approaches of death too well to be deceived, yet I gazed with agonizing intensity. The lamp poured a pale light, upon his visage, over which the hectic flush was passing. "Mother, dear mother," died away, half articulated by the angel: a slight convulsion distorted his lip, and I was left alone. When the physician came next morning he found me sitting in my chair, and Albert on my knees.

"They buried him here—here within my flock—all in one grave—over which I kneel so often that no blade of grass springs above them—nor must it—the earth will soon be removed for me; and I sleep with my babes; the grass will grow over us; for there will be none, no, not one, to shed a tear at our resting place—for I am alone—all, all alone."

When the paroxysm of passion had passed on, I asked whether she had no relations in England. She replied in the negative. Her brother and her oldest son left the country for India more than twelve years since, though certain intelligence of their death had not been received, still there was not a doubt that they had fallen victims to disease incident to the interior of Hindostan.

When I turned to leave the scene of affliction that I had witnessed, the mist of the morning had passed away from the river, and the whole width of the stream lay before me, glistening in silvery whiteness with the rays of the rising sun. Half an hour before, absorbed in my feelings, I had likened the river and its dark folds of mist, to death, does not sympathy in the woes of others tend to diminish the burden of our affliction, and to chase even darkness and fears from that passage which all must tread?

A few days subsequent to the interview which I have described, an advertisement in the public papers called for information relative to a family, the description of which answered in many particulars to that of the afflicted mother. I called at the "Mansion House," for the advertiser, and found a young and interesting stranger, the son who was supposed to have died in India. I acquainted him in haste with his family, and could scarce restrain him from setting out immediately to find his parent. I knew too well the state of her health to allow such rashness.

As he approached the abode of his mother, I proposed alighting first, and preparing her in some measure for the interview. When we arrived in the opening in the bushes through which I had discovered her, kneeling beside the unsodded grave; I urged my companion to pass on. The noise of our horses disturbed her; she raised her head and a smile of recognition rested upon her face as she rose to meet me.

"Still," said she, "still like Rachael mourning for my children, refusing to be comforted."

"Yet, madam," said I, "there may be comfort; the survivors may, by kindness and sympathy, teach you if not to mourn for the loss of the dead, at least to live for the living."

"There is no such hope," said she, "I can say with the afflicted one of old—Lord thou hast put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness."

"But you mention a son in India."

"I mentioned him as dead," said she.

"But madam." I replied. "I have reason to believe, nay to know, that he did not die at the time to which you refer."

"Does he live now? is he alive?" asked the mother with haste.

"The young man who accompanies me has seen your son, and can give certain information of his welfare. Shall I call him hither, or will you see him at the house?"

"Here, even here; my home is on the grave of my children."

"You have seen my son, you know him—you can tell me, his mother, of his welfare?"

The youth lifted his dark eye, swimming with tears, and vainly attempted to reply. He scarcely articulated his name, and the mother and the son rushed into each other's arms, and knelt down into a convulsive embrace upon the grave, the altar of her morning sacrifice.

When the son attempted to rise, his mother fell from his arms pale and lifeless. The gush of pleasure had been too strong, she had breathed her last upon the bosom of her son: and now lay unconscious of joys or sorrows.

The son in a few weeks returned to India. The mother is buried with her children upon the banks of the Schuylkill; and many young readers will perhaps lengthen their morning walk in the coming summer to see whether there is "a rose upon the bush that I have placed at the head of the grave."