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.
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