Burden | Care | Encouragement | Father | Love | Parents | Self | Self-Image | Story

LOVE OF A FATHER
From The Story of a Country Town comes an account of a boy’s emotions for his father: On one of these occasions I became ill while returning home at night — a slight difficulty, it must have been, for I was always stout and robust — and he carried me all the way in his arms. Though I insisted I could walk, and was better, he said I was not heavy, and trudged along like a great giant, holding me so tenderly that I thought for the first time that perhaps he loved me. For weeks after that I tried as hard as I could to please him, and to induce him to commend my work; but he never did, for whether I was good or bad, he was just the same, silent and grave, so that if I became indifferent in my tasks, I fear he was the cause of it. From The Story of a Country Town, E.…