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62
MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE
could make finer men and more capable women of our children than any cheerless Home?"
"The city has decided — " the officer insisted. Marie laughed a bit wildly and hugged the children to her body hungrily.
"The city!" she laughed— "the city ! Why, the city is a monster, I tell you, where women and children are concerned. What can the city know of my boy and my girl? What can the city do for them? Clothe them — yes. Feed them, teach them to read and write. But what of their
impressionable years their mother worked and saved and suffered a woman's deepest pain. The breach between them widened day by day. The mockery of her motherhood smote her in the face.
And then they were returned to her. The streets had put their pliant senses in mould; the Home, cold harbinger of destitute, loveless childhood, had hardened the mould. All trace of the timid, graceful girl had vanished. No possible trait of the manly, lovable boy. remained. Marie could little believe these two were the wide
THE MOTHER COULD LITTLE BELIEVE THAT THESE TWO WERE THE WIDEEYED, SOFT-FLESHED BABIES SHE AND PHIL HAD HOVERED OVER
hearts; what of their souls and ideals, and what — what of me. I am one, but I represent a majority. The city is a corporation; it is a machine ; an iron idol of parenthood. I am flesh and blood and a mother!"
They went; of course they did. Where did flesh and blood ever avail against corporate power? Only money can do that. Where there is not money, there is defeat.
Thru the years of their impressionable childhood the Home pruned and trimmed and modeled Audrey and Tom according to the standards set. They took the money allotted them for each child and spent it, uniformly and drably. • Thru their
eyed, soft-fleshed babies she and Phil had hovered over with such ecstasies of love.
Audrey, the very antithesis of her mother, worked and played in complete disregard of any anxious counsel. Her life was a thing apart from her mother's. She resented interest, regarding it as intrusion, and stuck her young fingers in the fire, reckless and unafraid. Tom, a morose, silent, half-grown youth, was equally taciturn and aloof. The mother, bewildered, unknowing, watched them, sick of soul.
It all came at once — the deluge. It seemed the poignantly bitter culmination of the cruel, slow-shod years.