A BIT OF NEWSPAPER VERSE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 484, 23 September 1909, Page 4

A BIT OF NEWSPAPER VERSE.

She took up one of the magazines and glanced through it casually, but somehow it did not appeal to her and she laid it down again. There was a volume of poems, handsomely bound, on the table by her side, and for a little while the story of gallant knights and lonely maidens, told in its pages fascinated her. But soon the weight of the book began to tire her feeble old hands, and it also was laid on the table. Then, almost as a last resort, she took up the evening paper and glanced through it just to while away the time. She had never taken much interests in politics — the latest Parisian fashions did not interest her in the least. Presently three little verses, wedged in between a lurid account of a murder and a patent medicine advertisement caught her eye. The poem was Eugene Field’s ‘ ‘ Eittle Boy Blue” and at the very first lines of it the old lady became all attention. The little toy dog is covered with dust, But sturdy and staunch it stands, And the little tin soldier is covered with rust, And his musket moulds in his hands. Very slowly, as she read on, the tears came into her eyes and dimmed her spectacles so that she could scarcely see the lines of the second verse. “ Now don’t you go till I come,” he said, “And don’t you make any noise !” Then, toddling off to his trundle bed, He dreamed of his pretty toys, And as he was dreaming, an angel song Awakened our little boy. Oh. the y ars are many — Yes, they were many ! It was more than half a century ago now. The paper dropped from the old lady’s hand and rustled to the floor. There was no use in trying to read any more, for her thoughts had flown away now to the time when she had just such a little Boy Blue as that. Since then she had had several other children. Even now, as she sat there in the twilight, she could hear the shouts of her little grand children at play, not far away.

But little Geordie had been her first-born and somehow the others were different, and nobody knew just how but herself. She had daughters to console her in her widowhood, and when her married daughter had died her children had been left. But with little Goordie it was different. They only knew of him by the little headstone in the graveyard. But to her —why, after reading that little poem, it seemed as though it were only yesterday that he was toddling along beside her, racy, and bright and full of fun. And he used to say just those things—she remembered. “Wby, mother,” said her daughter, as she came in, “You’ve been crying ! Wbat’s the matter ?” “It was nothing, dear,” answered the old lady, as she wiped her eyes. “I was reading, you, know, and it npset me a little. It was only a bit of newspaper verse, but it made me think of the past —the past of long, long ago ; and of things that happened in bygone years, the recollection ot which made me a little sad. I was dreaming, I think, about an angel song that awakened my little boy that’s dead. That’s all.”