Page:Field Poems of Childhood.djvu/96

 At the last donation party, the minister opined

That, if he'd half suspicioned what was coming, he'd resigned;

For, though they brought him slippers like he was a centipede,

His pantry was depleted by the consequential feed!

These are the things I'll write him—our boy that's in the West;

And I'll tell him how we miss him—his mother and the rest;

Why, we never have an apple-pie that mother doesn't say:

"He liked it so—I wish that he could have a piece to-day! "

I'll tell him we are prospering, and hope he is the same—

That we hope he'll have no trouble getting on to wealth and fame;

And just before I write "good-by from father and the rest,"

I'll say that "mother sends her love," and that will please him best.

For when I went away from home, the weekly news I heard

Was nothing to the tenderness I found in that one word—

The sacred name of mother—why, even now as then,

The thought brings back the saintly face, the gracious love again;

And in my bosom seems to come a peace that is divine,

As if an angel spirit communed a while with mine;

And one man's heart is strengthened by the message from above,

And earth seems nearer heaven when "mother sends her love."