University of Virginia Library

LEGEND SECOND.
THE MOTHER'S PRAYER.

A mother on her knees, stretching forth her
hands over her slumbering child, while through
the gloom of twilight her soul, shining from her
uplifted eyes, ascends in voiceless communion
with God —

Was it in a Palace, where a Royal Babe,
wrapped in purple, clutches a seeptre for a
plaything, and only uncloses its eyes to behold
scenes of luxury — trains of liveried and titled
lacquies — magnificent halls, looking out from
their lofty windows upon gardens peopled with
armed vassals?

Was it a royal mother, like that doll of legitimacy,
Maria Louisa, whose veins were stagnant
with the royal blood of ten centuries,
whose silken vestment never once moved to
one throb of womanly feeling, warm from a
Mother's heart?

Was it an imperial babe that met her gaze;
a tiny thing, fated to be King of Rome to-day,
and to-morrow but the child of an Imperial
Outeast, chained by British hands to an isolated
rock in the centre of an ocean?

No. The Mother was neither Queen nor
Empress; she knelt at the evening hour, in a
chamber of her home, where the last ray of
sunset, trembling through an opened window,
bathed with the same flush her face and the
face of the sleeping babe.

And the breeze that came over fields, just
blooming into verdure, was imbued with the
delicious perfume of early summer. And the
sun which, setting, flung its beams upon the
faces of Mother and Child, was sinking in a
blue vault, undimmed by a single cloud. And
the Home was a plain wooden building, one
story in height, standing amid trees and gardens
near the water-side.

One hundred and sixteen years have passed
since that hour, and yet the scene is fresh before
us still. Let us invoke the memory of
the Past, and paint that scene upon the heart
of every American Mother.

In a room, whose old fashioned furniture —
pictures on the wainscot walls, a couch in one
corner, floor white as snow, and table on which
was placed a Bible — was shadowed by the
gloom of twilight, the Mother knelt, her face
toward the setting sun.

Through an open casement — fringed with
a young vine, amid whose tender leaves, delicate
flowers, white and beautiful as snow-drops
in the moonlight—came the breeze and sunshine,
filling the dim room with gleams of light and
odours of leaves and flowers.

The Mother was kneeling in the recess of
that window — a pale woman, whose matronly
forehead was radiant with the divine tenderness
of a Mother's love, whose eyes uplifted
— shining in their tears — were instinct with
a Mother's Soul. Her cheeks glowed with a
flush of crimson, as she stretched her thin
white hands above the child.

And the child, resting on a pillow, its tiny
hands clasped and its eyes sealed in slumber
— it was altogether a fragile thing, a frail embodiment
of an immortal soul. As the sunshine
stole in glimpses over its face, and turned the
marble whiteness of its little hands to coral, a
solitary flower fell from the vine above, and
trembled down upon it, and rested like a Blesing
upon its breast.

Altogether, this humble apartment, furnished
in the plain style of the olden time — the open
casement fringed with vines — the Mother
kneeling, and the Babe slumbering with the
white flower on its bosom — presented a scene
not at all worthy of the sage Historian who
can only picture intrigue and bloodshed, but
rather the simple chronicler, whose pencil and
whose heart lingers ever amid the holy quietude
of — Home.

And as the breeze lifted the brown hair of
the Mother, she stretched forth her hands, and
her soul went up to God in a voiceless Prayer.

Oh, there was a world of eloquence in that
pale face, glowing in sunset, and impassioned
with a Mother's Love!

Shall we translate that Prayer into the lame
word of sound? "Father in Heaven! Behold
this Babe that slumbers now, with an
Immortal Soul beating silently in its bosom.
Shall this child, now dawning into life, ripen
into virtuous manhood, and sleep after the toil
of this world in a blessed grave ? Or, shall he
live to curse his race, and after a life of infamy
moulder to dust, with no tear to sanctify his
ashes?"

It was this Thought that gave such divine
eloquence to the Mother's face—The Future
of Her Child

And as her voiceless prayer went up to God,
it seemed to her that the sunset sky, and the river flowing among fields of corn, passed suddenly
away. All became dark night around
her. And through the dead stillness of night,
came a voice which spoke not so. much to her
ear as to her soul—"Mother! Behold the
Future life of this child, which now slumbers
beneath your gaze."

O! beautiful and wondrous was the Vision, or the
Dream, or the Reality, which then came gliding upon
the Mother's eyes.

It was a prospect of green hills, undulating
beside tumultuous waters, and centred in the
bosom of a silent wilderness. And on a
rock beside the waters, which, plunging over a crag,
howled in the abyss far beneath, stood a youth
of eighteen years, clad in back-woodsman's
garb, staff in hand and pilbrim's wallet on his
back. His face turned to the setting sun,
glowed at once with the beauty of youth and the
silent beauty of precocious Thought.

The Mother's eyes lingered long upon this
lonely boy, standing over the abyss, in the
drear wilderness.

She clasped her hands—she asked the
meaning of this scene. "It is in the wilderness
that the heart of the boy will ripen into virtuous manhood. For as he walks the wilderness
—alone with God and his own Soul
—God's voice will speak to him, with the memory of a Mother's Prayers."

The scene was gone—gone the hills, the
abyss, the boy of eighteen, standing on the
isolated rock.

The scene which the Mother beheld made the blood run cold in her veins. It was a Battle
among wild hills—clouds of lurid smoke,
rolling over heaps of dead, whose glassy eyes
shone mockingly in the red light. Red men
were there, murdering in stealth, from the
shelter of a log or tree—and there legions of
armed men, in scarlet array, marched in exact
order to their certain Death.

But there was one form, a youth of twenty-three,
mounted on a dark bay horse, who won
at once the Mother's eye.

Where the fight was most terrible, where
the yell of dying men mingled most fiercely
with the red man's war-whoop—he was there.
Ever the same, a gallant youth of magnificent
form, and grey eyes dilating with a hero's soul.

And the dying raised their pale faces to behold
him as he went by, and their lips grew
cold forever in the act of blessing his name.

How the Mother's heart expanded in her
bosom, as she beheld this scene!

But ah, sad and fearful change ! His horse
is wounded—he totters, he reels, and buries
his rider under his writhing body. There is a
terrible pause. At last, covered with blood,
the fallen Rider springs to his feet and beholds
the foe who wounded his horse, and aimed the
bullet at his own heart—he beholds the foe
on his knees, beaten down by a friendly sword.

Does he slay the fallen foe ? The Mother
holds her breath as she watches the issue of
the scene. Ah, he raises his hand, the youth
of twenty-three, but it is to bear his enemy
aside from the roar of the conflict, and rest his
shattered limbs by the river side, under the
shade of a great oak tree.

And then, once more through the silence
comes a voice—"Behold your son in Battle!
Strong in the Right, he prepares himself on
the dreary hill-side for a wider field, a nobler
cause. He cannot strike the fallen, nor pursue
the suppliant foe, for the for the memory of his Mother's
Prayer is with him now."

And thus, from scene to scene, the Mother
beheld spreading before her, the great drama of
her Child's Future. The scenes that she saw,
the battles she beheld, would crowd a volume.

There was a dark river, burdened with ice,
and heaving sullenly in the grey winter's dawn.

Her Son, the Babe which sleeps before her,
grown to mature manhood, was upon that river,
guiding the wreck of an army to the opposite
shore, and speaking to half-naked and starving
men the bold thoughts of Freedom.

There was a scene of cheerless hills, crowded
by miserable huts, whose rugged timbers rose
gloomily from amid a wide waste of snow.
Starvation was there, and Plague and Cold,
doing their three-fold work upon a band of
heroes. But there, upon his knees, in his
warrior uniform, praying to God for his men —
offering up his life as a sacrifice for his country
— there was the leader of this band, whose
great soul shone in his form and features, and
in his more than kingly presence.

The Mother knew that Face! It was her
son; and the voice which she had heard before
she heard again — “Your son, become the
Leader of a People, defies Hunger, Plague,
and Cold, and holds the serenity of his soul
against foes abroad and traitors at home, for
God's voice speaks to him again in the Memory
of his Mother's Prayer.”

At last there came a scene which filled every
avenue of her heart with joy — joy too deep
for words or tears.

A man of more than regal presence stood
among a countless multitude of freemen, and
while their shouts went up to Heaven, he gave
back into their hands the sword which had
achieved their Freedom.

And in that moment, his large grey eyes
flashing as they gazed upon the countless multitude,
brightened with a kindlier, holier lustre,
as the heart of the Great Man was filled with
the Memory of his Mother's Face — of that
gentle voice which had whispered Religion in
his ear — of that Soul which had infused its
holy nature into his own breast —

These scenes the Mother beheld with every
varied emotion. But the last scene fired every
pulse with a calm rapture, and shed the baptism
of unutterable peace upon her soul.

But once more that voice, which came
through darkness and silence, spoke to her —

“Mother! This will be the life of your
babe, in case you are true to your trust.
For God gives into every Mother's hands the
life, the Destiny of her child.”

Then, after the voice was still, came a scene
at once dark and crushing. With chilled blood
and a heart slowly struggling under an overwhelming
Terror, the Mother beheld it — a
Dream composed of a succession of vivid pictures.

First, a wild boy standing upon a vessel's
deck, amid the darkness of an ocean storm.
His defiant lip and blasphemous eye, his hand
uplifted in scorn at the lightning which circled
over him — twining among the clouds like a
fiery serpent over a pall — all attested a reckless
and outcast soul.

No Mother's Prayer shed its blessing on his
corrugated brow — no memory of a Mother's
teachings came to bless the heart of the Outcast
Boy.

And the Outcast Boy ripened into a Murderer
before the Mother's eyes — and the Murderer
became a Pirate — and at last the dread drama
terminated on a desert island, on whose bleak
shore a skeleton, washed by the waves from
its rude grave, glared whitely in the tropic sun.

And the skeleton — all that remained of the
Murderer and the Pirate — was her son, the
Babe which now slumbered beneath her outspread
hands!

“There is no blessing upon the Skeleton,
for no Mother's Memory comes to blossom
in good deeds over the dead”—

She heard the voice once more —

“And this, O Mother, will be the Future of
your child, deprived of a Mother's teachings
and a Mother's prayer.”

With the last accent of that voice her vision
passed away.

The Babe was still there — slumbering in
the twilight hour — with its hands clasped and
the white flower upon its heart.

An image of Peace — a glimpse of Eden —
centred in the serenity of the summer twilight,
seemed that Child slumbering beneath its Mother's
gaze.

Her mind still agitated by her Dream —
with its terrible picture of a child unblest by a
Mother's Prayer; and its divine picture of a
child hallowed by that Prayer — she turned
from the window, leaving the Babe in the
shadowy recess.

The ray of a candle trembled through the
gloom.

The candle stood upon a table, which, covered
with a white cloth, resembled an altar.

Upon the cloth, beside the candle, appeared

a white urn, or vase, filled with clear cold
water.

And there stood a man of venerable presence,
a Minister of God, with the father of the babe
at his side. The wrinkled face, the white hair
of the Preacher, were in strong but not unpleasing
contrast with the young manhood of
the Father.

Around were grouped a few friends — men
and women, whose faces appeared in the dim
light, and who had come to witness the Baptism
of the Child.

And the Mother bore the Babe from its resting
place — it opened its eyes as she raised it,
and clutched the stray flower with its tiny hand.

And she stood by the baptismal vase, while
the holy words were said, while the withered
hand of the Priest sprinkled the blessed drop
upon the white brow of that sinless babe, and
all the while it gazed wonderingly around
clutching the stray flower in its little hand.

And that tiny hand should one day clutch a
Battle Blade, and carve a Nation's Freedom
with a Hero's Sword.

Holy were the words which fell from the
lips of the Preacher — holy the baptism which
he sprinkled upon the brow of unconscious
innocence — but the Mother, as she girdled the
Babe to her bosom and remembered her dream,
could not banish the thought — that the holiest
baptism which Earth could offer up to the eye
of God — holier than words, or forms, or
sprinkled water — was the Baptism of a

Mother's Prayer.