Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1893 — JUST A LITTLE TOO LATE. [ARTICLE]

JUST A LITTLE TOO LATE.

A Tale with a Moral for Wanderers from ... ,7 r - Home. ■ It; was no vary exacting ambition that Robert Young’s mother had cherished all her life. She lived very quietly op the Western prairie farm to which ’ she and her husband had gone .together when they were both young. She did not expect to be rich, or even think about it. She was content i with the homely round of her daily life. Sometimes her husband used to soy that if they had only happened to go here or there, where some of the friends of his youth had found copper or silver, or struck oil, they also might have been worth millions; but the wife always answered, “It- wa’n’t to be, John, it wa’n't to be. And we’ve done pretty well, as things go; but I should ’a’ liked one good black silk dress.” This was the only wish that Robert Young had ever heard his mother express, and he used to say to himself when a hoy: “Bless the dear mother! She shall have it the very first money I earn.” Robert’s father, too, planned in his own mind the same thing; but one year the harvest turned out badly, and another-the children had diphtheria, and so it was that the good black silk had never been bought. It was a strange thing that the son of John and Itachel Young should have been an artist; but Robert began to draw before he could write, and at last he got hold of a box of colors through the kindness of one of his Sunday-school teachers, and then he made pictures that dazzled the eyes of his prairie neighbors. As he grew older he got orders for portraits from proud parents who were willing to give five dollars for a daughter’s or a son’s likeness; and he saved these small sums until, by the time he was eighteen, he had enough money to take him to Boston, where ho hoped to find a good teacher, and to do something really worth while. His struggle in the city was hard enough, Jto begin with. Every snowstorm was a friend to him, for wherever he shoveled off steps and sidewalks they were sure to want him again, he did his work so "cheerfully and so well. lie paid for his lessons by taking care of the studio of the artist under whom he studied. He was ready to do any honest thing to earn an honest;peuny, and at last, even In Bostoh, people found out that he had a special talent of his own, and began to IVqy ijvjs pictures. Them,were so many things at first to do with the money he earned! He must have a little studio of his own where people could come, and it would not answer for the artist who had his own studio to live like the youth who used to shovel off sidewalks. Ho did not forget the good black silk dress, or the mother who Was to wefir it; he only waited.

At last'came a spring when he had been fairly prosperous, and he planned to go home tor his mother's birthday in August, and to carry the dress with him. But just then he received an inVjtqtiion that flattered him. His former teacher was going to Ipswich for » summer of sketching, and asked Robert to go with him. It seemed an opportunity too good to be lost. So. he went to Ipswich, and the summer flew by as if on wings, and Robert did not go home in August; he only wrote a letter. It was October before he started for the far-off prairie farm. Once on his way, he hurried forward by night and day until he reached the little station that was nearest to his home. He had written when he should arrive, but jhe ; did not see his father waiting for him as he had expected. He felt a momentary sense of injury; but just then an old neighbor came up“l s’pose you might as well ride home ’long with me,” he said. “I told ’em I’d fetch ye, as long as yer pa couldn’t” “Couldn’t! Why?” “Waal, I sort ’er hate to tell ye, but yer mother she had a shock er palsy yesterday, and yer father don’t like ter leave her jest ylt.” There was a strange choking in Robert Young’s throat. The good black silk dress was in his valise, but he had brought it too late.