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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 38 THE DROPPED STITCHES. O'er rugged roads and mountain-steeps her pilgrimage pursued; Content, nay, glad, to toil and climb, though oftentimes oppressed, Since she was in the path that led to victory and rest. SITTING alone in the corner, In her own old easy-chair, With the firelight softly falling On her beautiful gray hair, She 's knitting away at a stocking, Rounding a heel to-night; And nobody knits like mother, Though age is dimming her sight. Glancing like silver, the needles Backward and forward go, And the rings on her thin white fingers Are flashing to and fro. There 's the golden band that has never Been off since her wedding-day, And the hoop encrusted with diamonds, From Tom, when he went away. THE DROPPED STITCHES. 39 Away at the beck of fortune, To the far-off China seas, While his mother compassed his out-bound ship Day and night on her knees. Pleading that wind and weather For Tom might ever be fair, And that never the boy might wander Out of reach of his mother's prayer. This blue-mixed sock ?it reminds her Of some she sent to the camp, For Willie to wear, poor soldier-boy, To keep his feet from the damp. And Willie he never wore them; His tired feet were still ?- Oh, so still in a narrow grave On the side of a Southern hill. It's wonderful?she remembers The first little sock she knit, A wee thing, white and dainty, Marvelling, "Would it fit?" Tucking it by in her basket, As if half it were a sin, And fearing lest careless eyes should see The dreams she was knitting in. 40 THE DROPPED STITCHES. Dear little baby Alice! Never was babe so sweet. Alice's own are all very well; But all! those dimpled feet That she fondled and kissed so often, That she taught t...