That grandfather had not lived a clean life, and so broke a mother's
heart and forced her in agony to pray for the death of her own child.
When I had finished I walked quietly away, leaving the boys to their
own thoughts, and as I walked I breathed the wish that my boys may
live such clean, wholesome, upright, temperate lives that no child or
grandchild may ever have occasion to reproach them, or point the
finger of scorn at them, and that no mother may ever pray for death
to come to her baby because of a taint in their blood.
CHAPTER XXIII
GRANDMOTHER
My grandmother was about the nicest grandmother that a boy ever had,
and in memory of her, I am quite partial to all the grandmothers. I
like Whistler's portrait of his mother there in the Luxembourg--the
serene face, the cap and strings, and the folded hands--because it
takes me back to the days and to the presence of my grandmother. She
got into my heart when I was a boy, and she is there yet; and there
she will stay. The bread and butter that she somehow contrived to
get to us boys between meals made us feel that she could read our
minds.
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