The Path to Home | Page 8

Mother Watch
She never closed her eyes in sleep till we were all in bed; On party
nights till we came home she often sat and read.
We little thought
about it then, when we were young and gay, How much the mother
worried when we children were away.
We only knew she never slept
when we were out at night,
And that she waited just to know that

we'd come home all right.
Why, sometimes when we'd stayed away till one or two or three, It
seemed to us that mother heard the turning of the key;
For always
when we stepped inside she'd call and we'd reply, But we were all too
young back then to understand just why. Until the last one had returned
she always kept a light,
For mother couldn't sleep until she'd kissed
us all good night.
She had to know that we were safe before she went to rest;
She
seemed to fear the world might harm the ones she loved the best. And
once she said: "When you are grown to women and to men, Perhaps I'll
sleep the whole night through; I may be different then." And so it
seemed that night and day we knew a mother's care-- That always when
we got back home we'd find her waiting there.
Then came the night that we were called to gather round her bed: "The
children all are with you now," the kindly doctor said. And in her eyes
there gleamed again the old-time tender light That told she had been
waiting just to know we were all right. She smiled the old-familiar
smile, and prayed to God to keep Us safe from harm throughout the
years, and then she went to sleep.
Faces
I look into the faces of the people passing by,
The glad ones and the
sad ones, and the lined with misery, And I wonder why the sorrow or
the twinkle in the eye;
But the pale and weary faces are the ones that
trouble me.
I saw a face this morning, and time was when it was fair;
Youth had
brushed it bright with color in the distant long ago, And the goddess of
the lovely once had kept a temple there, But the cheeks were pale with
grieving and the eyes were dull with woe.
Who has done this thing I wondered; what has wrought the ruin here?
Why these sunken cheeks and pallid where the roses once were pink?

Why has beauty fled her palace; did some vandal hand appear? Did her
lover prove unfaithful or her husband take to drink?
Once the golden voice of promise whispered sweetly in her ears; She
was born to be a garden where the smiles of love might lurk; Now the
eyes that shone like jewels are but gateways for her tears, And she
takes her place among us, toilers early bound for work.
Is it fate that writes so sadly, or the cruelty of man?
What foul deed
has marred the parchment of a life so fair as this? Who has wrecked
this lovely temple and destroyed the Maker's plan, Raining blows on
cheeks of beauty God had fashioned just to kiss?
Oh, the pale and weary faces of the people that I see
Are the ones that
seem to haunt me, and I pray to God above That such cruel desolation
shall not ever come to be
Stamped forever in the future on the faces
that I love.
The Lost Purse
I remember the excitement and the terrible alarm
That worried
everybody when William broke his arm;
An' how frantic Pa and Ma
got only jes' the other day
When they couldn't find the baby coz he'd
up an' walked away; But I'm sure there's no excitement that our house
has ever shook Like the times Ma can't remember where she's put her
pocketbook.
When the laundry man is standin' at the door an' wants his pay Ma
hurries in to get it, an' the fun starts right away.
She hustles to the
sideboard, coz she knows exactly where
She can put her hand right
on it, but alas! it isn't there. She tries the parlor table an' she goes
upstairs to look,
An' once more she can't remember where she put her
pocketbook.
She tells us that she had it just a half an hour ago,
An' now she cannot
find it though she's hunted high and low; She's searched the kitchen
cupboard an' the bureau drawers upstairs, An' it's not behind the sofa

nor beneath the parlor chairs. She makes us kids get busy searching
every little nook,
An' this time says she's certain that she's lost her
pocketbook.
She calls Pa at the office an' he laughs I guess, for then
She always
mumbles something 'bout the heartlessness of men. She calls to mind a
peddler who came to the kitchen door,
An' she's certain from his