"MOTHERS APRON STRINGS."

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 241, 13 October 1886, Page 4

"MOTHERS APRON STRINGS."

" Charley, Charley I" clear and sweet as a note struck from a silver boll the voice rippled over the common.

"That's mother," criod one of ths boy?, and he instantly threw down his bat, and picked up his jacket and cap. "Don't go yet! Have it out I" " Finish the game I Try it again I" cried the players in noisy chorus

["I must go—right off—this minute. I \ told her I'd como whenever she called." ' Make believe you didn't hear !" they exclaimed. " But I did hear." " Sho won't know you did." " But I know it, and " " Lot him go," said a bystander; "you can't do anything with him ; he is tied to his mother's apron strings." "That's so," said Charles, " and it's to what every boy ought to be tied, and in a hard knot, too."

" I wouldn't bo such a baby as to run the minute she called."

'• I don't call it babyish to keep one's word to his mother," answered tie obedient boy, a beautiful light glowing in his blue eyes. " I call that manly; and the boy who doeen't keep his word to hor will never keep it to anyone else—you see if he does," and ho hurried away to his cottage home. Thirty years have passed since those boys played on the common. Charley Gray is a properous business man in a great city, and his mercantile friends say of him that his word "is hi* bond.". We ask him how he acquired such a reputation. " I never broke my word when a boy, no matter how great the temptation, and the habits formed then have clung to me through life."