In Reading, Nothing Goes To My Heart Like Any True Account Of A Mother
And Son's Love For One Another, Such As We Find In That True Book I
Have Already Spoken Of In A Former Chapter, Serge Aksakoff's _History
Of My Childhood_.
Of other books I may cite Leigh Hunt's
_Autobiography_ in the early chapters.
Reading the incidents he
records of his mother's love and pity for all in trouble and her self-
sacrificing acts, I have exclaimed: "How like my mother! It is just
how she would have acted!" I will give an instance here of her loving-
kindness.
Some days after her death I had occasion to go to the house of one of
our native neighbours - the humble rancho of poor people. It was not in
my mind at the moment that I had not seen these people since my mother
died, and on coming into the living-room the old mother of the family,
who had grandchildren of my age, rose from her seat with tottering
steps to meet me, and taking my hand in hers, with tears streaming
from her eyes, cried: "She has left us! She who called me mother on
account of my years and her loving heart. It was she who was my mother
and the mother of us all. What shall we do without her?"
Only after going out and getting on my horse it occurred to me that
the old woman's memory went back to the time when she first knew my
mother, a girl-wife, many years before I was born. She could remember
numerous acts of love and compassion: that when one of her daughters
died in childbirth in that very house, my mother, who was just then
nursing me, went to give them whatever aid and comfort she could, and
finding the child alive, took it home and nursed it, with me, at her
own breasts for several days until a nurse was found.
From the time when I began to think for myself I used to wonder at her
tolerance; for she was a saint in her life, spiritually-minded in the
highest degree. To her, a child of New England parents and ancestors,
reared in an intensely religious atmosphere, the people of the pampas
among whom her lot was cast must have appeared almost like the
inhabitants of another world. They were as strange to her soul,
morally and spiritually, as they were unlike her own people outwardly
in language, dress, and customs. Yet she was able to affiliate with
them, to visit and sit at ease with them in their lowliest ranches,
interesting herself as much in their affairs as if she belonged to
them. This sympathy and freedom endeared her to them, and it was a
grief to some who were much attached to her that she was not of their
faith. She was a Protestant, and what that exactly meant they didn't
know, but they supposed it was something very bad.
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