She had to know that we were safe before she went to rest; She seemed to fear the world might harm the ones she loved the best. And once she said: "When you are grown to women and to men, Perhaps I'll sleep the whole night through; I may be different then." And so it seemed that night and day we knew a mother's care-- That always when we got back home we'd find her waiting there. Then came the night that we were called to gather round her bed: "The children all are with you now," the kindly doctor said. And in her eyes there gleamed again the old-time tender light That told she had been waiting just to know we were all right. She smiled the old-familiar smile, and prayed to God to keep Us safe from harm throughout the years, and then she went to sleep. Faces I look into the faces of the people passing by, The glad ones and the sad ones, and the lined with misery, And I wonder why the sorrow or the twinkle in the eye; But the pale and weary faces are the ones that trouble me. I saw a face this morning, and time was when it was fair; Youth had brushed it bright with color in the distant long ago, And the goddess of the lovely once had kept a temple there, But the cheeks were pale with grieving and the eyes were dull with woe. Who has done this thing I wondered; what has wrought the ruin here? Why these sunken cheeks and pallid where the roses once were pink? Why has beauty fled her palace; did some vandal hand appear? Did her lover prove unfaithful or her husband take to drink? Once the golden voice of promise whispered sweetly in her ears; She was born to be a garden where the smiles of love might lurk; Now the eyes that shone like jewels are but gateways for her tears, And she takes her place among us, toilers early bound for work. Is it fate that writes so sadly, or the cruelty of man? What foul deed has marred the parchment of a life so fair as this? Who has wrecked this lovely temple and destroyed the Maker's plan, Raining blows on cheeks of beauty God had fashioned just to kiss? Oh, the pale and weary faces of the people that I see Are the ones that seem to haunt me, and I pray to God above That such cruel desolation shall not ever come to be Stamped forever in the future on the faces that I love. The Lost Purse I remember the excitement and the terrible alarm That worried everybody when William broke his arm; An' how frantic Pa and Ma got only jes' the other day When they couldn't find the baby coz he'd up an' walked away; But I'm sure there's no excitement that our house has ever shook Like the times Ma can't remember where she's put her pocketbook.