Where Chumship Should Reign

WHERE CHUMSHIP SHOULD REIGN [In The Valve World, published by Crane Company, Chicago, we find this confession of a father in relation to his "Little Feller." It is copied from the pages of the South Works Review, /published by and for the em- ployees of the Illinois Steel Company. The attention of the Improvement Era has been called to it by a loving father, Elder Sylvester Q. Cannon, Pre- siding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who re- marked in a note, "This appears to me very admirable for the Era." We agree with him, and pass it on to our readers,, for the benefit of fathers and mothers and "little fellers," the growing "Jimmies" and "Janes" of this very good world of ours. — Editors.] "Listen, son: I am saying this to you as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a hot, stifling wave of remorse swept over me. I could not resist it. Guiltily I came to your bedside. "These are things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when I found you had thrown some of your things on the floor. "At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a little hand and called, 'Good-bye, Daddy!' and I frowned, and said in reply, 'Hold your shoulders back.' "Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the hill road I spied you, down on your knees playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boy friends by making you march ahead of me back to the house. Stockings were expensive — and if you had to buy them you would be more care- ful! Imagine that, son, from a father! It was such stupid, silly logic. "Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in, softly, timidly, with a sort of hurt, hunted look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. 'What is it you want?' I snapped. The Good-night Kiss "You said nothing, but ran across, in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, again and again, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. "Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from

50 IMPROVEMENT ERA my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. Suddenly I saw myself as I really was, in all my horrible selfishness, and I felt sick at heart. "What has habit been doing to me? The habit of complaining, of finding fault, of reprimanding — all of these were my rewards to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I ex- pected so much of youth. It was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. "And there was so much that was good, and fine, and true in your character. You did not deserve my treatment of you, son. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. All this was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, choking with emotion, and so ashamed! "It is a feeble atonement, I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours, yet I must say what I am saying. I must burn sacrificial fires, alone, here in your bedroom, and make free confession. And I have prayed God to strengthen me in my new resolve. Tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: 'He is nothing but a boy — a little boy!' "I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much. "Dear boy! Dear little son! A penitent kneels at your infant shrine, here in the moonlight. I kiss the little fingers, and the damp forehead, and the yellow curl: and, if it were not for waking you, I would snatch you up and crush you to my heart. "Tears came, and heartache and remorse, and I think a greater, deeper love, than when you ran through the library door and wanted to kiss me!" The Shrine of Sleeping Childhood "I do not know of a better shrine," adds the editor of the Valve World, "before which a father or mother may kneel or stand than that of a sleeping child. I do not know of a holier place, a temple where one is more likely to come into closer touch with all that is infinitely good, where one may come nearer to seeing and feeling God." Here And There With the person who knows it all, it is always too late to learn. The still, small voice can be heard even by those who are totally deaf. No wonder humans are jazzy! It is enough to jazz anyone when he stops to realize that Niagara Falls, rubber tires, brick walls, molasses runs, soap boxes, time flies, wine vaults, organ stops and marble busts. Don't turn in disgust from a small job; the mighty oak was a little nut once. — Dorothy C. Retsloff, San Diego, Calif.