--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 20 number: 7 published: 1917-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Mother," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 7 (May 1917): 569–570.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2007unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2007unse start_page: 569 end_page: 570 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2007unse publication_year: 1917 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1917, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Mother Mother A writer in The Fra speaks of "Captain Jack" Crawford, and incident- ally tells a good story of Jack's loyalty to his mother. Captain Jack Crawford died just a few weeks after "Buffalo Bill" Cody had passed the divide. They were born the same year, lived much the same life, and achieved much the same kind of fame. However, they were greatly different. Cody was a showman all the time, and with his "Wild West" perhaps lured many a boy to leave home to fight Indians. But Jack was more serious and kind, and is said to have exercised a wonderful influence for good among boys. "His attitude," says the Fra writer, "was anti-smoke, anti-booze, and anti-go-west and shoot Indians." He considered "Bill" Cody a vain pretender, and be- lieved him to have a bad influence on the American boy. Captain Jack was chief of the U. S. Scouts in the Custer campaign. He served when a young boy in the Civil war, and later went West and fought Indians for twenty years, with Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn, and the Apaches in New Mexico. Recently, when about seventy years of age, he visited East Aurora, where it was that Felix Shay heard him tell this story of taking a long trail, without food, the last half without water. Toward evening, he saw smoke over a mountain range. 'Round the camp fire were a dozen good enough white men, just a little bit -tipsy. They invited Jack to eat and to drink — and to drink first. Jack was a teetotaler. He refused. To refuse to drink with a man was a reflection on the man's character — an insult. His host "drew" on him! "Before you shoot," commanded Jack, "let me tell you a story." Quickly he sketched his boyhood, his army life, and then his moth- er's death: "It would take too long to tell you the kind of angel my mother was. She has been the guardian of my life. How often have I looked up when on the Trail and thought I could hear my mother's voice whispering to me. She said to me that last day : 'My dear, wild, reckless boy, Johnnie, did you know that your mother was going to heaven?' My heart was torn to pieces. 'Mother, when you are gone" I am afraid of myself. I am afraid I will go wrong.' She said: 'Give me one promise — I believe God will take care of my boy. Promise me that you will never touch intoxicants. Then it won't be so hard to leave this world.' I gave that promise. I folded my arms and looked into the muzzle of a six-shooter. 'Boys, as God is my judge, you have got the drop on me ; you can kill me, but you can not make me break a promise I made to my dying mother.' " * * * The men turned the angles of their guns, and each gave six sure shots into the heart of the Little Brown Jug! "Then," said Captain Jack, "we had a supper that was a supper, and, " whimsically, "after my story, my companions were sober as judges!" The Fra writer adds: "You may discount this story all you please, for facts, sentiment, or construction — that is your privilege! But, I wonder can you hear it as I heard it: that dying mother sobbing— 'My dear, wild, reckless boy, John- Copyright by Geo. Edward Anderson, Springville, Utah. • THE SACRED GROVE— SCENE OF JOSEPH SMITH'S FIRST VISION The grove is located a short distance west of the old Smith home, near Palmyra, New York. The woodman's ax has never touched it since the vision, except to remove fallen and decaying timber. See Comprehensive History of the Church, by B. H. Roberts, in Americana.