A MOTHER'S GREATEST REWARD

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 14, 8 April 1909, Page 557

A MOTHER'S GREATEST REWARD

A certain boy niatriciila-ted in one o£" the Catholic universities of the United States. -He was poorly clad. When, this boy paid the board, tuition, and the price, of the second-hand books, he had jiist ~ five ' dollars left. . > At the end of the fourth year he took the M.A. degree. His poor, old, widowed mother sold one of the plough horses to pay him through the fifth year. But at the end of that year he sat among the graduates in his plain brown linen coat and trousers and no vest. But he was the honor graduate, and at the head of the-class. ~ • • When a beautiful gold medal was handed to him ha stepped from the rostrum and -walked straight to the back of the room, where right by the door sat a homely old woman in black, and tied the blue ribbon with the great glittering medal around her neck. She buried her wrinkled face in her old drawn hands, and wept like ,a child. . It seemed the applause would never die away. And. now he has a high position at £1500 "a year, his mother sits happily in the gloamings of a beyond, and the picture .of her noble son hangs on the wall of his alma mater. , • •