orning, I found three
barn cats writhing in their death agonies, and Jason galloping off on a
stick-horse, brandishing a shinny-bat. His explanation that he was
Bellerophon, the stick Pegasus, and the cats the three heads of the
Chimaera failed to mollify me. I gave him his first taste of "the rod,"
and did not "spar'" it. Evidently the child has a poetic imagination,
which must not be permitted to run riot.

X

ABOUT MOTHERS

_Saturday Night._

The little Salyers, while really fond of one another, have queer ways
sometimes of showing it. This afternoon Keats called up wearily from the
back yard, where for eight hours he had been carrying water and keeping
up fires for the wash-girls, to Hen in the doorway, "What time is it,
son?" to receive the affectionate reply, "Time all dogs was dead,--haint
you sick?"

To-night, sitting around our lamp, eating peppermint candy, the boys got
to talking about their mothers, living or dead,--Keats and Hen of course
about Nervesty, Taulbee, Killis and Hosea about their good mothers at
home, Geordie and Absalom about theirs who is married again and lives
in Virginia, and Philip, Joab, Iry and Jason about theirs who are dead.
Nucky alone did not talk,--it seems impossible for him to speak of his
mother.

Iry told many little incidents his remarkable memory enables him to
recall, though his mother died when he was only three. One is, standing
beside her while she fed him beans and sorghum from a spoon; another,
having a small paddle and helping her "battle" the clothes as she washed
them beside the branch; still another, being left by her in a pen made
of rails and a log high up on the mountainside where she was hoeing
corn, seeing a beautiful, shining, spotted thing come out on the log to
sun itself, and amusing himself poking his finger at the pretty creature
to make it lick out its tongue, rattle its tail, and "quile" itself up,
till suddenly something fell on the bright head, and his mother, with a
terrible scream, threw down her hoe and caught him to her bosom. These
and other scraps of recollection the "pure scholar" treasures so
tenderly it seems hard indeed that his mother should have taken the
"breast-complaint,--some calls it the galloping consumpt'," and died so
young, missing his love.

"You know," I said to him, "that being dead isn't really being dead, but
just gone out of sight. Your dear mother still lives and loves and
watches over you constantly,