LOOKING UP SONS OF WELL-REMEMBERED MOTHERS
One of the outstanding features of revisiting the earth was to find, in
the banks and stores, in the professional and political offices, the
sons of women, full of thought, who used to magnetize me by their
presence and character. I have a passion for tracing the indebtedness of
successful sons to their fine mothers. In visiting the Studebakers'
wagon ware-rooms in Chicago it starts a sensation to sit in the chariot
presented by the government to Lafayette, but it was more affecting to
see in their counting room a large portrait of their mother. These
honorable and phenomenally successful men recognize the source of their
power. Now and then a speaking likeness seemed to us in our early years
so scenic that it is indelibly stamped upon us. This was true of the
words under the picture of an old man and a boy playing checkers, which
adorned the impressive, never to be forgotten, first page of The Child's
Own Book.
"To teach his grandson draughts
His time he did employ
Until at last the old man
Was beaten by the boy."
The unlooked-for element in the case came from the infusion of a high
quality and ability which were a mental inheritance that the lad gained
from his mother. Like Rizpah, like the mother of the Gracchi, mothers
seem to feel themselves selected for their high office. Their turn of
mind is to acquit themselves well in it and with all their hearts to try
to rise to a level with their responsibilities.
_Consecrated Their Talents to Elevation of Humanity_
They look right after the future of their boys. That welcome,
resplendent orb, the day-star, fades only at the rising of the sun. The
mother of Zebedee's children thought there was no position too
commanding for her boys. Nothing would be too good. It did not occur to
her that either of them would be inadequate for an exalted position. She
had not a moment's hesitation in seeking to have her boys well-placed in
life. Such confidence in them is inspirational and makes the boys
themselves look up. If there is a dispute between a boy and his teacher
he feels that his side of the case is not considered and he takes the
matter home to his mother. "She understands." She believes in her boy
and this helps him to believe in himself. She does not believe he was
wrong in his intention.
Nothing so stirs the mother-spirit as a closed door. In fact it seems to
develop curiosity in any woman to know what is behind it. When she
reads, No Admittance to the Public, over an entrance it seems to arouse
a determination to get in at any price. No matter what is inside she is
ready to die to get there. There may be an exclusive social set in the
place where she lives. The society is probably not as good as that which
she already enjoys but shut a door in her face or against her children
"And there is not a high thing out of heaven
Her pride o'ermastereth not."
Without realizing why they do it the woman's club trades on this
principle. If the number that would naturally join the organization is
two hundred and seventy-five the limit of the membership is set at two
hundred and fifty and the waiting list is crowded with impatient
applicants. The reflex influence is felt by all who have already joined
and this greatly enhances the privilege of those who are already
members. We sometimes see a fence post standing on nothing. The earth of
a bank has all slidden away from it but the fence was fastened to it and
held it up. This, sometimes the family does for a boy. Such a mother
will go without new gloves and up-to-the-minute costumes while her son
is being educated. Knowing all the traditions of his school days it is
plain that the teaching in school did less for him than the influence of
his mother at home. She would cause him to see factors and movements in
a great world of which her own active mind had caught glimpses.
_A Reproof to Defamers of Human Nature_
I do not care what later delights may be in store for a neglected child,
there will be a void, a sin of omission, a cheat, a missing factor in
his composition, a loneliness, if the mother element was absent in his
development. In this was the safety of Samuel in the poisoned air of
Hophni and Phinehas, Eli's sons. The environment was exactly the same
for the boys of both families but one boy, as compared with the bad lot,
was so enveloped by the mother influence that he was kept pure amid
surroundings which were charged with temptations. I used to be greatly
impressed with the vast amount of what the Chinamen called the By and By
there is in the life of one of these mothers. No day is self-contained.
Her happiness depends upon a succession of futures. Intersect her career
at what point you will and you find her mind taken up with coming
events. The harvest of her struggles is to be reaped later. Life's
deferred gains bulk up largely in her life. She reminded me of
Washington's campaigns which were not usually immediately fruitful.
McKinley's mother or Moody's mother or Garfield's mother, like Bunyan's
Pilgrim, was in heaven before she had come at it by the consummation of
glory in the life of her son. All her wishes and prayers were more than
met. But there was the day by day life that had to be lived while this
fruition was in a very remote future. I visited the home of a mother who
said her happiness would be complete if she could only see her son
fitted for life and well settled in it.
The slogan "Back to the land" carries a meaning a little obscured until
one recalls the conditions of a generation ago when the people lived
closer to nature than they do now. We can only go back to a place where
we were. It implies an earlier connection with land that we can go back
to it. It may have been a family connection. This spirit of association
is seen in that singular expression, "Thou hast been our dwelling place"
(How a residence for us?) "In all generations." We must then have lived
in what has gone before, if we had our dwelling place in former
generations.
_One an Illustration of Many_
In the generation just gone a mother wanted her son to have a better
educational equipment and suggested, no matter what the sacrifice, that
they leave the land and move to town to put the boy into a higher grade
of schools. Her husband opened a general country store of the old type
for the sale of anything the people needed and if he did not have it he
would get it. He sold everything from needles to nails, from harvesters
to quinine capsules, from ready-made boots to dried codfish. It was a
convenience to have the post office boxes in a front corner of the store
which was a place of general resort. I recall the frequent sight, a
farmer's wife, paying for postage stamps by handing out eggs from a
basket up to any number the postmaster might indicate. I once saw an
article lying upon the counter that I desired to buy and said to the
storekeeper that I would take it. The woman put out her hand
deprecatingly and said, "I am trading for it." Now this is what she
meant,--the country merchant had fixed the price on his wares. Then when
farm produce is offered in exchange he presumes to fix the price on that
also. One of the parties to the transaction is left out of the account.
"If you fix the price on yours ought I not to fix the price on mine?" He
cannot live without the store and the store cannot live without the
customer. A basis of agreement must be reached. Cannot you give me a
little better trade? We speak of a storekeeper as in trade in a large
city. The expression has come with the people from their earlier homes.
One of the causes of the high price of living is the use of the
telephone in ordering supplies hastily from the store which are paid
for, in the lump, without visiting the stores and stalls and considering
the relative value of the commodities in view of all the facts. Any one
knows that on visiting the market and seeing the great variety of
supplies offered for sale he used his money in a different way from what
he expected. In Washington, where Daniel Webster used to go to market
with a basket on his arm, the people are finding themselves benefited by
the free open air in going to the tempting remarkable markets.
_The Lure of the Store_
The general store in our town was a landmark. It was central to the
community. In it gathered each evening the men of the place and
questions of the day were discussed around the old drum stove. Store
haunting developed into a habit in winter when there was little to do.
Here men played checkers through long evenings and tried to reach the
king row. This place of merchandise was a political hotbed. It filled a
place that even the church could not supply, also in exposing evil doers
to scorn. Skulduddery would here get some body blows. Public opinion is
police, ever on the alert, without pay in a small town. "Opinion is the
queen of the world." It is feared and is the chief deterrent. Both men
and women are saved by it, which is very much more active and a better
recognized agency in small places than in great. It pretty nearly rules
the town. People bow to it. Town talk has an unequalled power to
regulate, restrain and actually govern conduct. In small communities the
real ruler can be rightfully named the Public.
The store was the place for the born story-teller. A man with thrilling
adventures in the seven seas found in this "senate" a responsive
auditory. A woman knew where her husband could be found if any one
called and wanted to see him.
_He Lived With His Mother's Spirit_
Ibsen represents the Master Builders as oppressed by a strange fear. He
hears the young knocking at the door and he fears that the young will
enter in and dispossess him. A mother, with nobleness of nature and
sweetness of disposition, is too magnanimous for such an apprehension.
In my visit no one needed to inquire who was the mother of one man whom
I met, his success and the honors paid him bore testimony to her worth.
Providence was kind to him. I remember the mother so revered by the son,
as fragile yet dignified, and the fineness of the feminine element
imparted gentility to her boy. Watch the expression on such a face, keep
your gaze fixed on it and you will learn a lesson for life. A man's
nature when submitted to tests turns on its quality. He was sought in
society and was the life of many a company. "Did you ever meet his
mother?" was asked. "No." "Well, if you had you would understand him. He
is what she made him." To these sons the mothers reveal themselves. To
them, the mothers are no more alike than fair women are alike in the
eyes of their worshippers. A mother's love has a peculiar carrying
quality. The real significance of her patience is not seen at once. It
is like orders given to a sea commander, not to be opened until he gets
into a certain latitude. "What I do thou knowest not now."
After-meanings are disclosed with touching beauty.
[Illustration: THE MEETING PLACE OF "THE SENATE"]
_Astonished as if He Had Seen a Vision_
In determining what kind of women these mothers were we are to compare
their standards, not with ours now, but with the standards of the times
in which they lived.
When revisiting the earth the ordinary life of the people had in it a
great fascination. I wonder that the pleasures of memory and association
are not more vividly realized in connection with the people we have
known. The lessons are very salutary. With the hope of having my ideas
more nearly approach my ideals I resolved increasingly to cultivate
admiration. If called upon off-hand to cite one of the most striking
impressions it would be that a pure, beautiful, intelligent, and
well-bred woman "is the most attractive object of vision and
contemplation in the world." I thought that nature had lavished her
gifts about equally without and again within the human family. It is not
a question of six of one and half a dozen of the other, but of half a
dozen and a dozen. There is no answer to the question, What will God
give us when he takes the sea? It is its only parallel. Without
detracting from it there is also a world of beauty in an amazing river,
always arriving, always departing; its banks wondrously deeply colored
with green and gold. The mountains and the canyon and the waterfall have
commanding attractions. These are without the human race, but for
objects of study and enthusiasm and deference I turn to those made but
little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor.
Let me add another recollection of the moment, that my eyes, my ears, my
whole soul seemed sometimes to be just opening upon what appeared to me
a new fact that such a mother of charming character, such as I used to
see, was the day-star of that apotheosis of mother which reached its
climax in the last year of the German war. A nation does not know what
it has until it comes to exhibit it.
_Retrospect is Cheering_
The son of such a mother who became philanthropic looked benevolent. The
commercialized look their part. Business men are in the saddle. Sons
succeed sires as we pass into trade. The teachers and accountants and
the scholars looked somewhat bookish. The boys had been making faces.
Each man had made his. I never knew a man equally transfigured with one
I saw. It is not guessing, it is not flattery, it is exact truth. It is
not to be discussed under general rules. It is a real case with a
particular history. It is a confirmed expression. It has atmosphere,
almost a dim remote shade of halo. This is labeled on him for the
townspeople to read. It fell to me thus to take a few short lessons in
heredity. On returning to the homes of these people I remembered the
pictures they had upon their walls that were all new and different to
boyhood's eyes and seemed a real part of the make-up of the town. I now
turn to the belief that they had their influence on the families. The
religious portrayal of the child Samuel and so of others were silent
evangelists and remained right there till they fixed an impression. I
remember that mothers held their boys up to these pictures and
encouraged them to talk to them, which they did, and now they report
the conversation. Queenly mothers! Blessed among women shall they be!
"All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!"
You may think that children cannot understand or don't care. They can
understand and they do care. It is not a matter of the mind only but of
the instinct. Mother's chair and father's Bible make a place for
themselves in the family history. In one year, 1782, there were born in
four families residing in three different states Daniel Webster, John C.
Calhoun, Lewis Cass, and Martin Van Buren. The families were
undistinguished as such from the multitude of others about them. Not so,
however, with the sons, for just the reason that has now come under our
observation.
The woman who stands in her humble doorway and waves her tearless adieu
to her brave enlisted son is no less a hero than he. She remains to keep
the home fires burning and suffers a thousand deaths through her
affections and fears. She makes the larger sacrifice for she would give
many lives for the boy who has but one to lose.
_No Love Like Mother Love_
A mother with a baby lying across her knees was asked, "Do you love it?"
She looking up, her face radiant, with the light indescribable, said,
taking a very deep breath, "I love it so that if Christ had not gone to
Calvary to give my boy life eternal, if by so doing I could secure life
eternal for him, I would go to hell that he might go to heaven."
A soldier, returning home, was telling a mother about her son found
dying on the field after a battle. Said she, "I wish I had been there."
"You were there all right," was the rejoinder, "you came first to the
boy's mind. He had your name on his lips when he died." The mother has
first place when the boy is in the stress of life. Ambulance men and
nurses find her in sweet companionship when they reach the wounded boy.
These were his passions, love of mother, home, and country. We had the
evidences on the surface of the life that was lived within.
If Archimedes had a station on which to rest his lever he could move the
world. The world had been moved by a power unknown to him. Our country
is the station where the lever rested.
"_Turning the Bend in the Road_"
Never before in all the history of our world have so many deaths
occurred from war in so short a time. The very gates of death would seem
to have been literally crowded by such multitudes passing through them.
The soldiers have given to the world "a new death." Fresh inspiration
was imparted to the French heart by the soldier at Verdun, a mere lad,
who, wounded, called upon the dead to rise and fight the Germans. There
is a spiritual partnership between dead heroes and living patriots. The
Kaiser, in addressing his troops, made this utterance, "No mercy will be
shown, no prisoners will be taken. The Huns, under King Attila, made a
name for themselves which is still mighty in traditions and legends
today." He omitted from his thought that part of the "traditions and
legends" on which our minds are dwelling. The old chroniclers relate
that Peter and Paul appeared to Attila in camp and terrified him with
threats, a visit immortalized by Raphael. This factor that a governor of
Judea had not reckoned with, was suggested to Pilate's wife. A woman's
intuitions do not ask to have a cautionary signal repeated. She does not
mean to invite tragedy and go spell-bound to destruction. An
acknowledged leader in modern art, Kaulbach, so depicts character and so
sees it in action and situation as to take a spectator by storm. With
great power he reveals the spirits of the Huns and Romans who perished
under the walls of the eternal city as renewing the combat in the air. A
characteristic trait of the Germans appears by displaying the ruler of
the Huns as an equal with the figure of the Teutonic "Gott." The Huns
who destroyed seventy cities in Greece and barbarously murdered eleven
thousand virgins, whose bones are preserved in the church of St. Ursula
in Cologne, found that angel forces were against them. Those whom they
had slain reappeared so that they had to encounter an immortal
assemblage which had been mustered to resist them.
_Presence of Our Celestial Helpers_
"Alas, my master, how shall we do?" said the servant of Elisha in
terror, when, his eyes being opened, he saw the mountains full of horses
and chariots of fire. Our soldiers with rapturous joy testified that
guardian spirits watched over them. The Scriptures abound with allusions
to invisible benefactors. Shakespeare, to whom no side of human nature
was unknown, with splendid genius, having to deal with the irresolute
temper of Hamlet, calls to his aid a factor from the militant hosts of
heaven. "Look! my lord! It comes." It was his father's spirit in arms.
"Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold, list, list, oh list."
It is often stated that the great Charlemagne is not dead but on
occasions places himself at the head of the nation, to lead it forward
again to victory and glory. The world does not fight its battles for
nothing. It would be just as erroneous to speak lightly of Marathon or
Waterloo or Bunker Hill, or Vicksburg, or the third Battle of Piave
which ended the German war by removing Austria-Hungary from the field
and creating an indefensible Bavarian front, as it would be to
underrate the significance of our recent national awakening. On
revisiting the earth I felt in every place a great ground swell of
national feeling. War is the last thing in the world to go according to
program. This keeps people guessing and wakeful and interesting to
others because they are themselves so interested. The whole country had
become a great university for the study of folks in their elemental
character. We can get a helpful vision when we take a straight look at
people, elevated in feeling so preoccupied as to be unconscious of the
self-revelation they are making. Shakespeare is right when he makes love
control the destinies of his heroines. They may aspire reasonably but
they were never meant to trample upon their own hearts and the hearts of
others. We believe there are few men whose ambition has not been at some
time during their lives the very slave of their affections. The great
yearning of old and young in affections as well as intellect is to be
appreciated. We are sure that there is a friend or lover for us
somewhere, a companion for every thought and wish.
_Out of Evil Cometh Good_
The mother has come to her own as a by-product of the war. Such is her
elevation that you will explore the pages of history and read the annals
of mankind in vain to find anything that is a parallel to it. And now
comes Governor Coolidge of Massachusetts stating by proclamation that
when Lincoln's mother, "a wonderful woman, faded away in his tender
years from her death bed in humble poverty, she dowered her son with
greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets
the mother." It has been a profoundly moving thought, when crossing the
ocean, that two miles underneath there lay the live Atlantic telegraph
cord stretching from one shore to the other. Vitalized with living
messages of love and welfare, with the speed of lightning, on Mother's
Day, the mysterious current communicated to the country the number of
letters and the weight of the mail in tons that were on their way to
gladden the mother who was keeping the home fires burning. Some women
who are mothers started a wave of moral power which will never cease to
roll until it has enveloped the earth. "Thy son liveth" is an assurance
that, with a new accent, is now given when a boy makes the supreme
sacrifice. His life hitherto has been but preparative. The separation of
the living and the dead is less complete than formerly. The voters in
Baldwin, Maine, paid tribute to the only boy that, from that town, died
in the service, by standing, one hundred and fifty of them, in silence
with their heads bowed. It is reported that the lips of three or four of
the veterans moved as though uttering a prayer for the lad. Thus a new
attitude is taken by many people toward death and towards the departed.
Some say they feel as close as ever to those who, though they have
turned a leaf in their biography, are characters in a story that still
goes on. The feature of the war has been "the thinning of the veil
between life and death." Forever living, incapable of death, seems the
new verdict touching those promising young men who while they paid the
price, bequeathed to those who survived, the glory and the honor.
_Pushed by Unseen Hands_
It is believed that we have lived to see the meting out of some divine
awards. "Germany's collapse is the most dramatic judgment in the history
of the world." In all the growth of Christianity, no such certitude has
been so universally and emphatically expressed, touching the continuance
of human personality. It is the diapason of a new literature produced by
the war. It colors correspondence. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle feels that
death has not robbed him of his son's companionship. The family feeling
seems to continue unimpaired. "We are seven" is the sentiment, when "we
are not all here," but "some are in the church-yard laid."
"All houses wherein men had lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go;
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro."