performing the functions for which nature intended her, and for which she was so well prepared.

The ax was about to fall. The wagon was backed up at the door. Trim nurses entered to take the babies from their mother's arms, in all probability forever, when something happened.

During the progress of the "trial" two men entered. One of them was Judge Henry Neil, who for a year had been watching this destruction of families - the punishment of women and children for poverty, and all in the name of "kindness.”

That very week Governor Deneen had signed a bill that was to revolutionize the practice of the juvenile court and to prevent the separation of mothers and their children in the name of sweet charity — a habit that had become so common that it was then a vested right of the charity organizations.

Neil had presented the bill to the legislature, and it was such a little thing that it crept through almost unnoticed. Organized charity experts knew nothing of it. It was an amendment to the juvenile court act in these words:

"If the parent or parents of such dependent or neglected child are poor and unable to properly care for said child, but are otherwise proper guardians, and it is for the welfare of such child to remain at home, the court may enter an order finding such facts and fixing the amount of money necessary to enable the parent or parents to properly care for such child, and thereupon it shall be the duty of the county board, through its county agent, or otherwise, to pay to such

parent or parents, at such times as said order may designate, the amount so specified for the care of such dependent or neglected child until the further order of the court."

This law was to go into force July 1, 1911. The Brian family was to be broken up, nevertheless, because poverty can not wait three weeks. Neil conferred with the judge. He agreed to pay Mrs. Brian $25 a month until the pension law went into effect, and on July 1, the very day the act became useful, Mrs. Brian was pensioned, the first woman who ever drew a pension for being a mother. She still lives with her own children, and since then almost 2,000 mothers have been pensioned in Chicago alone, and the system to-day is at work from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

THE MOTHER

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

All day her watch had lasted on the plateau above the town. And now the sun slanted low over the dull, blue sheen of the western sea, playing changingly with the angular mountain which rose abruptly from its surge.

The young matron did not heed the magic which was transforming the theater of hills to the north and lingering lovingly at last on the eastern summit. Nor had she any eyes for the changing hue of the ivyclad cubes of stone that formed the village over which her hungry gaze passed, sweeping the length and breadth of the plain below.

She seemed not much above thirty: tall, erect, and lithe. Her throat, bared to the breeze, was of the purest modeling; her skin of a whiteness unusual in that warm climate. Her head, a little small for her rounded figure, was crowned with a coil of chestnut hair, and her eyes glowed with a look strange to the common light of every day. It was her soul that was scanning that southward country.

From time to time she would fondle a small object hidden beneath the white folds of her robe. Once she threw her arms out in a passionate gesture toward the plain, and tears overflowed the beautiful eyes. Again she fell on her knees, and the throes of inner prayer found relief at her lips:

"Father, my Father, grant me to see him ere the dusk!"

Once again she sank down, moaning:

"He is in Thine everlasting arms. But Thou, who knowest times and seasons, give him to me on this day of days!"

Under the curve of a shielding hand her vision strained through the clear, pure air,- strained and found at last two specks far out in the plain, and followed them breathlessly as they crept nearer. One traveler was clad in a dark garment, and stopped presently, leaving his light-robed companion to hasten on alone toward the hungry-eyed woman on the plateau. All at once she gathered her skirt with a joyous cry and ran down through the village.

They met on a low, rounded hill near the plain. "My son, my darling!" she cried, catching him

passionately to her bosom. "We have searched, and waited, and agonized," she continued after a pause, smiling at him through her happy tears. "But it matters nothing now. I have thee again."

"My mother," said the boy as he caressed her cheek, looking at her dreamily, "I have been with my cousin. Even now he waits below for me. I must bid thee farewell. I must pass from thy face forever."

His lip trembled a little, but he smiled bravely. "For it is the will of God, the Father."

The mother's face went ashen. She tottered and would have fallen but for his slender arm about her. Her thoughts were whirling in wild confusion, yet she knew that she must decide calmly, wisely, quickly. Her lips moved, but made no sound.

"Oh, lay Thy wise and gracious hand upon me!" was what she breathed in silence.

Then her voice sounded rich and happy and fresh, as it had always sounded for him.

"His will be done. Thou comest to bid farewell to thy brothers and father?"

"It may not be," he answered. "My lot henceforth is to flee the touch of the world, the unsympathetic eye, the ribald tongue of those like my brothers the defilement of common life."

-

The mother pressed him closer.

66

'Say all that is in thine heart," she murmured. "We will bide here."

They sank down together on the soft, bright turf,

facing the brilliance of the west, she holding her child as of old in the hollow of her arm.

He began to speak.

"For long and long a voice within me said, 'Go and seek thy cousin.' So I sought and found, and we abode together in the woods and fields, and were friends with our dear brothers the beasts, and the fishes, and the birds. There, day by day, my cousin would tell me of the dream that filled his soul and of the holy men who had put the dream there."

The mother's eyes grew larger with a swift terror, but she held her peace.

"And at the last, when the beauty, the wind, the sun, the rain, and the voice of God, had purified me in some measure, my cousin brought me to visit these holy men."

The clear, boyish voice rose and began to vibrate with enthusiasm.

"Ah, mother, they are the chosen ones of God! Sweet and grave and gentle they are, and theirs is the perfect life. They dwell spotless and apart from the world. They own one common purse, and spend their lives working with their hands and pondering and dreaming on purity, goodness, and the commands of the great law."

He sprang up in his excitement and stood erect and wide-eyed before her.

"Ah, mother, they are so good that they would do nothing on the Sabbath, even to saving their own lives or the lives of their animals, or their brothers.