A MOTHER'S REVERIE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 23 November 1915, Page 3

A MOTHER'S REVERIE.

HER BOY. At THE DARDANELLES

Sometimes I would that I could fly over to that craggy peninsula of Gailipoli just foir a few minutes to peep at him as I used to about 18 years ago, to see that he is warm and safe —no, I do not want him to be safe. What has an English, mother to do with safety—now —in her thoughts about her son —her boy? Mrs B 's son is safe. She drove over to see me after Boy had gone off to the Dar- . danelles." Her son is a first-class clerk, or something like that, in a Government department. He leaves office every day at 5 o'clock. You can set your watch by his stepping—well wrapped up—from the portals of his office. His mother has no anxiety about him. That is, one would think not. She does not go down on her knees at night in the solitude of her room and pray for his safety and for the victorious issue of his cause. He dees not seem to have a cause. His boots are shone .every morning and his meals are set for him with icy regularity, with minute precision. She is able to see that he has the right thickness of woollen wear for every tinge of change in the temperature.

September is very trying to her. When he has that tiny touch of dry cough that comes to him when he has smoked too many cigarettes, it is to her as a tragedy deep and dark. I was a "silly mother"—so I am told —in those far-off days before the war. What a long time it is: only about 13 months. It has been well said that no time seems so long ago as yesterday. Tragedy! Woollens! No, I do not envy Mrs B the safety of her son. Yet sometimes

The mellow September sunlight is touching the creeper round the gables and flecking the lawns with silently falling leaves, red and gold. The old gardener—too old to fight—wants to cut and trim aw.ay from the windows, arid I look up and say, "Yes—yes, Holmes, do as you like." "Sometimes I do not seem to mind how things look in the gardens and round the old home, and then I am seized with a swift determination to have everything just so, that his eyes may be gladdened when he comes home from the Dardanelles.

That morning—the day my boy went off—the maids seemed to pity me. Yet they saw the truth, the country's need, the glory of a strong youth in the fight, this greatest of all fights. That morning was long weeks ago. Then I received the news of the landing at Suvla Bay. It seems such a long way where my boy is, out in the Dardanelles. Such a distance— great tumbling seas and vast lands and other climates—so far from his home to him. I thank God I have a son at the front—and such a front.

It is most difficult to see time in its due proportion, especially for mothers. Some things of. last week seem much further away than those days when I nursed him in my arms and taught him the English language. English is his mother tongue in a deep, special sense. I, his mother, taught him his first accents. Long ago? No, it was only yesterday. Time races away. The cradle and two smiling eves looking up at me. Boyhood and his first suit of tweeds and knickerbockers. School and hopes and fears. College and hopes and fears. The big, fascinating outlook to the future as he stood with sunny face on the threshold of si career. ' Plans for learning, for fashioning a career for the boy.

A child yesterday, Now a man, a! fighting man. How I remembered! when he was a very little mite that sublime, simple vers*e from the early chanter of Genesis, when Eve bore a son and she said, "I have gotten a Man from the Lord." Yes, that is it, a man. He is a man gone forth to the fight. I cannot help thinking at this moment of a verse of Kipling's his father quoted to him a year or two ago:—

Stand to your work and be wise, Certain of sword and pen, Neither as children nor "gods, But as men in a world of men.

When I crooned over him as a baby.,' and dreamed soft golden dreams of1 his future, how could I have dreamed for him aught so great as this? A man striking blows. Striking blows in the greatest fight of all the ages. How small the Vikings, the warriors of Charlemagne, the Normans with their few miles of land, even the daring sea heroes of Elizabeth in their frigates and their galleons. M~y Boy My Boy in the middle of the world. My Boy fighting in the hottest vortex of the toughest struggle of mankind. Yet in a selfish moment, a moment of the weak woman, if I could stretch out my arms and call him back ! —English paper.