Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 November 1897 — PASSING OF LORD FAUNTLEROY. [ARTICLE]

PASSING OF LORD FAUNTLEROY.

The Mother Tried to Bte Brave When the Golden Cbblb Fell. The scene was in a UKnth street barber shop and the time was a morning earlier In the week. The “tonsor.tal artist” nearest the door had just called out “Next!” when there-entered a very purity young womam leading by the hand a 4-year-old boy,, with long; gold ea ringlets. He was a manly-looklng little fellow, and his. hair was. >st the shade of the young woman’s, although she looked almost too young, to be his mother. “Are you the mat who-cuA. this little boy's bangs last time?” she asked. “Yas’m; want eni cut ag’Sa?” “No, not this time. I want his hair cut short all over. Aad won't you try to cut each curl off separately, for 1 want tri send some of them out of town, and one to bls grandmother.” She had a pasteboard box in her hand in which to .'take away the gold that was more precious to her than any that has Come from Klondike. She said she wanted the little boy's hair cut. It was probably the lad’s father who wanted it; she had only acquiesced.

Several of the ebony-hued art’sts gathered around to watch, -while the lad took Uis seat in a big chair, as proud hs "Pvpcljj for he was to be Ji “mother’s little Lord Fauntleroy’’ no longer. He smiled, but there was a suspicious tremor about his mother's lips as she took a brush, and for the last time curled his beautiful ringlets about her slim and tapering finger. Snip, snip! went the scissors, and one by one the curls were carefully laid away in the box. Before the last one was gone the young mother was huddled up in the bootblack's chair crying as ifjier heart would break. There was no doubt now that she was the child’s mother. He was a baby no longer. It was much more comfortable for the child, and it was time it was done, and all that, but just the same he would never be'mamma’s little baby again, and she could not see the wealth of falling gold for tears in her eyes. Not a man in the place smiled, and even the “Shine, mister,” seemed to see a bit of pathos in the scene. The barber over in the corner had to stop a moment while the man be was shaving wiped a sudden tear from his own eye. The man, gray-haired and somewhat crusty, was thinking of a lock of gold tucked away in the back of his desk in a busy downtown office, and his memory had gone back to the time when he tucked that strand beneath his blue soldier’s blouse and with musket on his shoulder had started for the front. “Next!”—Washington Star.