Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1886 — His Mother. [ARTICLE]

His Mother.

Captain Jack Crawford, the poet scout, pays the so lowing eloquent tribute to his mother: “I had a Christian mother, my earliest recollections of whom was kneeling at her side praying God to save a wayward father and husband. That mother taught me to speak the truth when a child, and I have tried to follow her early teachings in that respect. It would require a much larger book than this to tell the story of my life and the sufferings of one of God’s good angels—my mother. To her I owe everything —truth, honor, sobriety, and my very life. Her spirit seems to linger near me always; she has been my guardian angel. In the camp, the cabin, the field and the hospital, on the lonely trail hundreds of miles from civilization, in the pine-clad hills and lonely canyons, I have heard in the moaning night winds and in the murmuring streamlets, The voice of my angel mother whispering soft and low. “And these sacred thoughts have made me forget at times that there was danger in my pathway. Nor will I ever forget The day that we parted, mother and I, Never on earth to meet again; She to a happier home on high, I a poor wanderer on the pjain. “That day was perhaps the greatest epoch in my life. Kneeling by her bedside, with one hand clasped in mine, the other resting on my head, she whispered, ‘My boy, you know your mother loves you. Will you give me a promise that I may take it up to heaven?’ ‘Yes, yes, mother, I will promise you anything.’ ‘Johnny, my son, I am dying,’ said she; promise me that you will never drink intoxicants, and then it will not be so hard to leave this world. ” Dear reader, need I tell you that I promised ‘yes;’ and whenever I am asked to drink, that scene comes up before me and lam safe.”— Ex.