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Father Forgets
Condensed by W.Livingstom Larned
Them it began all over again in the late afternoon.As I came up the road I spied you,down on your knees,playing marbles.There were holes in your stockings.I humiliated you before your boy friends by marching you ahead of me to the house.Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would be more careful!lmaging that,son,from a father!
Do you remember,later,when I was reading in the library,how you came in,timidly,with a sort of hurt look in your eyes?When I glanced up over my paper,impatient at the interruption,you hesitated at the door."What is it you want?"I snapped.
You said nothing,but ran across in one tempestuous plunge,and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me,and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither.And then you were gone,pattering up the stairs.
Well,son,it was shorlty afterward that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me.What has habit been doing to me?The habit of finding fault,of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy.It was not that I did not love you;it was that I expected too much of youth.It was measuring you by the yardstiek of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character.The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills.This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night.Nothing else matters tonight,son.I have come to your bedside in the darkness,and I have knelt there,ashamed!
It is a feeble atonement;I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours.But tomorrow I will be a real daddy!I will chum with you,and suffer when you suffer,and laugh when you laugh.I will bite my tongue when impatient words come.I will keep saying as if it were a ritual:"He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!"
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man.Yet as I see you now,son,crumpled and weary in your cot,I see that you are still a baby.Yesterday you were in your mother's arms,your head on her shoulder.I have asked too much,too much.
