Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1883 — “lron John’s” Grief. [ARTICLE]

“lron John’s” Grief.

The tenderness of Lord Lawrence to his little children, to all little children indeed, was exquisite and unfailing. The small Bertie, Ids youngest son, born during his residence in England before his appointment as Governor General, was especially dear to the father’s heart. "The moment,” says the biographer, "that Sir John returned from his work at the India office he might have been seen, if it was a summer’s evening, tramping over the fields with his young child over his shoulders, and as the boy grew older, and was able to walk alone, he would follow his father about like a dog, trying to walk as he did, with his hands crossed behind him. In the winter evenings he would keep a keen lookout for his father’s arrival at the door, and follow him into his room, where they would Slay together by the hour; and after ir John had been called away to India, it was long before the child could be persuaded that the usual hour in the afternoon would not bring his father to the door of the house again. Of all the trials which the new Governor General had to face in leaving his home, I am inclined to think that there was no trial equal to that of leaving this child permanently behind him. ‘I shall never rec Bertie again!’ he said, and, once more the strong-hearted man burst into tears. Not that he was looking forward to his own death in India, but that he knew that the child whom he did look forward one day to see again in the flesh could not be the same child. The infant would have grown into a boy; tbc long hair, ahd the half-formed words, and the simple child-like trust, and the hundred nameless charms w'hioh go to make up t a young child, would be clean gone! There was something in the thought which was almost as hard to bear as the thought of death itself.”— Life of Lord Lawrence.