is mother a moment, and patted her cheeks as he
hummed in German the first two lines of the "Lorelei," and then said,
"We have come a long way since then--eh, mother?" She held his hand
to her cheek and then to her lips, but she did not reply. He repeated
it, "A long, long way from the little home of one room here!" After a
pause he added, "Would you like to go back?"

A tear fell on the hand against her cheek. He felt her jaw quiver, and
then she said, "Oh, yes, John--yes, I believe I would."

He knew she did not care for his wealth, and there were many things
about his achievements that he felt she might misunderstand; her
attitude often puzzled him. So he sat a moment on her chair arm, and
said, "Well, mother, I have done my best." It was a question more than
a protest.

"Yes, dear," she replied, "I know you have--you have done your
best--your very best. But I think it is in your blood."

"What?" he asked.

"Oh, all this," she answered; "all this money-getting. I am foolish,
John, but some way, I want my little boy back--the one who used to
sit with me so long ago, and play on the guitar and sing 'Sleeping, I
Dream, Love.' I don't like your new music, John; it's so like clanging
cars, and crashing hammers, and the groans of men at toil."

"But this is a new world, mother--a new world that is different,"
protested the son, impatiently.

And the mother answered sadly as she looked up at him: "I know,
dear--it is a new world; but the same old God moves it; and the same
faith in God and love of man move men that always have moved them, and
always will move them; there are as many things to live and die for
now, as when your father gave up his life, John--just as many." They
rocked together in silence--the boy of forty and the mother of sixty.
Finally she said, "Johnnie, play me 'Ever of Thee I'm fondly
Thinking,' won't you, before you go?"

He sat with his foot on the soft pedal and played the old love song,
and as he played his mother wandered over hills he had never seen,
through fields he had never known, and heard a voice in the song he
might never hear, even in his dreams. When he finished, she stood
beside him and cried with all the passion her years could summon: "Oh,
John--John--it will come out some way--some day. It's in your soul,
and God in His own way will bring it out." He did not understand her
then, and it was many years before he prayed her prayer.

The next day he went to the City and plunged