MOTHER AND SON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

MOTHER AND SON.

(Hall-crown prize to Phyllis Hughes, Feflding; age 16.) It hangs in a dark corner of the parlour, and lias hung there for years. A little gilt-framed picture of "Mother and Son." Ouce I shifted it to the place of honour above my bed, not because it was suitable for a bedroom picture, but because I wanted to be able to lie and gaze at it during my waking houre. Yet somehow it found its way back to the parlour, and there it has remained ever since. The dark corner looked so empty without it- —so bare and uninteresting. Not that there is anything very beautiful in this little picture of mine—unless it is the beautiful love it portrays. Somehow it is not the actual picture itself which fascinates me, but the story which liefs behind the picture. Not so much what the artist has painted, as what the artist lias left unpainted. The visitors who come to our house scarcely glance at it. It is so very insignificant. . The frame is scratched and chipped; the glass ie cracked; it does not even always hang straight, and yet of all the pictures in our house I love it the best of all. We all love it —that is the strange thing—for we are wide apart in our tastes and

opinions. Mother loves it because it jr so beautifully painted; Una —for the faithfulness of its outline; Dad for the rugged strength it portrays; and J, as I have said before, for the Story that lies behind the artist's brush. "What is the picture?" you ask. I will tell you. It is only this—on a wide, lonely stretch of moorland stands an old white mare, and in front of her, sheltered from the bleak wind by her body, is a youug colt. Behind them are the grey, pearly skies of dawn, and a sea of galloping green breakers, foam-crested and shot with silver from the rising sun. The colt is a long-legged, Roman-nosed little fellow, whose quaint little face expresses great curiosity and wonderment toward the new world into which he has been so lately introduced. And the mare —well, it is in that staunch protecting form, and upflung

head, that the beauty of the painting is concealed. She stands with her back to the sea. Her wind-blown mane and tail are long and shaggy. Her ears are pricked. One can almost see her nostrils quiver as they sniff the breeze. There is apprehension in her big intelligent eyes. Someone or something its approaching. Whether it is a friend or foe she does not know. But if need be she will protect her son with her own life. There is courage in the

proud carriage of her head, and if her mother-heart throbs with fear it is not for herself that she is afraid.

And so she stands, waiting and watching, while the grey dawn breaks and the green waves hurl themselves against the cliff—braced against the cutting wind whilst the unseen n: :nace

What it is that threatens her motherhood will never be known. Almost I am glad that it is only a painting after all, and that God's .masterpiece of mother-love can never be destroyed from that little square of canvas bearing its "Mother and Son."