Her voice was our consolation and delight.
One of the most charming recollections of my boyhood is that of my mother standing at our gate with a lamp in her hands, sending one boy out in the early morning darkness, to his work, and at the same time welcoming another boy home.

My brother was on the day shift and I on the night, which meant that he left home as I was leaving the mills, about half past two in the morning.

On dark nights--and they were all dark at that hour--my mother, thinking my little brother afraid, would go with him to the gate and, holding an old-fashioned lamp high in her hands, would sing some Welsh song while he trudged out toward the mills and until he got within the radius of the glare from the stacks as they.
belched forth the furnace flames.

And as he passed from the light of the old oil burner into the greater light from the mills, I walked wearily out from that reflection and was guided home by my mother's lamp and song on her lips.
Happy is the race that sings, and the Welsh are singers.

After the tiring labor in the mills we still had joy that found its voice in song.
When I was six years old I joined a singing society.