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4.
In July 1888 when I was only eleven years old, was when the chill hand of
death first touched our family. The baby boy, Walter, now seven months old, was
noticed not feeling well. He had "Summer Complaint," an ailment that often made
little children sick in those days. On Sunday, about 3 0'clock, mother picked the
little lad up from his cradle and found he was dead. Oh what grief and sorrow.
Mother cried bitterly, and we all cried to think our little brother was gone from
us forever.
The funeral and laying the little coffin in the ground made a very deep impression
on our lives. as we were all young. The first cloud had darkened the
horizon of our lives as if to warn each of the brevity and uncertainty of life. But
this was to happen again twice in the next three years. First little Annetta, and
then little Carol Roy, who lived with us for but a few months and then passed on.
At this time. factory made clothes had not come on the market or only to
a very limited extent. So mother and father bought cloth by the roll and mother cut
out and made up all our clothes by hand. All the washing and ironing of the clothes
also had to be done by hand. I can remember the old style iron with its solid iron
handle which was kept hot over the stove. The handle had to be wrapped with cloth
to keep it from burning your hand. This, with all the baking and cooking and mending
for seven of a family kept my mother working all day, and even then, she never
could say the work was all done.
All this proved too much for mother's health, and she began to have attacks
of pleurisy. Her skin became yellow, and she got very thin. Then one day in May of
1892, I had been away working for Uncle Sam. When I arrived home in the evening
Fred and May met me and told me the sad news. Father and mother had been
away to see a lung specialist in Peterboro. This man had told them that mother
had consumption. Oh what a sadness and disappointment this terrible news
brought to our home, for at that time there was no cure and no hope for anyone
who had consumption.
Mother just had to rest, and May, now not yet 17, had to take on all the
responsibility of preparing food and clothing for the family and look after mother
as well. Time passed on. Mother took her daily walks on fine days. In July she
could walk out as far as the turnip field and rest awhile under the big elm tree
and watch us while we were hoeing and thinning the turnips. By August she could
only walk out and sit in the sun by the pump stand. Soon we did not see mother
outside the house.
September came. I can still remember my last talk with mother by her
bedside. As I left her room, she said, "Now don't work too hard Jim. Mother's
strength failed rapidly each day. On the night of September 20th we wer€
called down from our beds to have our last look upon our mother alive. Her
strength was gone. The stout heart that had stood so loyally by her family was
making its last struggle. God was calling mother away. In the morning, life had
gone. Those hands that had made and mended and washed our clothes -- baked for
us all those big loaves of bread -- now lay still. They would never move again. All
mother's labours were over .
Two days later we followed the black hearse, drawn by two black horses,
to the grave side. After a short service, we watched them lower mother's coffin
into the ground, and the earth was filled in. How very sad our hearts were that
September afternoon. And as we drove home in the carriage, we all felt so sad and
wondered how we could ever get along without our mother.
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