No one knows how all my dreams followed this bird that left the nest.
No one knows how long seemed the nights when sleep would not
come to my eyes and I wondered what would come to my boy in that
far-off land, a strange land with strange, unloving people, who would
not care to put him on the pathway when he strayed. Thou
rememberest how I battled with his father in regard to sending him to
England to commence his foreign education. I said, "Is not four years
of college in America enough? Why four years' separation to prepare
to go to that college? He will go from me a boy and return a man. I will
lose my son." But his father firmly said that the English public
schools gave the ground-work for a useful life. He must form his code
of honour and his character upon the rules laid down for centuries by
the English, and then go to America for the education of the intellect,
to learn to apply the lessons learned in England. He did not want his
son to be all for present success, as is the American, or to be all for
tradition, as is the Englishman, but he thought the two might find a
happy meeting-place in a mind not yet well formed.
But thoughts of learning did not assuage the pain in my mother-heart.
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