I held in my bosom a beautiful rose,
All gay with the splendor of June;
Its dew-laden petals like sheen of soft snows,
Its blush like the sunshine at noon.
But e'en as I held it, I knew it must fade;
Its bloom was as brief as the hour.
The dews of the evening like soft tears were laid
On the grave of my beauteous flower.
I held in my bosom a beautiful child,
The splendor of love in her eyes;
No snow on high hills was more undefiled
Than her soul in its innocent guise.
But I knew that my angel in heaven was missed;
I knew, like my rose, she must go;
So with heartbreak and anguish her sweet lips I kissed--
She sleeps with my rose in the snow.
* * * * *
It was not so very long ago that I chanced to overhear a lively young
woman make this remark about her mother:
"Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for my sister. She never seems like
anything more than one of my girl friends."
Poor child, thought I, your state is only another phase of orphanhood,
for the young life that has no counsel of motherhood is bereft indeed.
No girlish comradeship, however juvenile and delightful it may be, can
possibly take the place of protecting, counseling, mother-love. Not but
what the sweetest relationship possible exists where the mother keeps
her heart young and in sympathy with her daughter, but there is
something else requisite to mother-love.
The best mothers are those who have roomy laps where the big girls love
to sit while they whisper the confidences they never could reveal to
sister-mothers. They have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of
mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, yes, and the tired boys,
too, and rock them to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch the
floor."
They used to tell me I must never sit on anybody's lap after my feet
reached the carpet, but, thank God, that rule never applied to my
mother.
You are never afraid of disturbing mother's "beauty sleep" when you come
in late at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as far removed
from frisky girl companionship as the moon is from its reflection.
No matter how tardy your home-faring may be she is always up with a
lunch and a warm fire in winter or a glass of something cool and fresh
in summer to soothe your overexcited nerves, a thing she cannot do if
she is forever dancing about with you in your youthful larks. She has a
way of calming your tempers with a joke and a caress, of which the
sister-mother never dreams. She has also a way of smoothing your hair,
which your girl comrade never caught the trick of, for the reason that
she is kept too busy curling her own love-locks. When your head aches,
the right sort of mother knows just how to pet you to sleep and leave
you in a darkened room with a rose on your pillow to greet your waking
eyes; if you have a bad cold she knows the cuddly way to coax you to
take bitter medicine. She bathes your feet and dries them on nice warm
towels. She keeps the younger children from guying you, because your
nose is red; in short, she does a thousand nice things of which the
sister-mother has no knack whatever.
When great trouble falls to your share, when sharp betrayal pierces your
heart, and trusted affection turns to ashes in your hold of what good is
the juvenile mother with her girlish tremors and tears? You want
somebody next in tenderness to God, to hold you fast and tight. You want
somebody who has suffered and grown strong, to soothe your breaking
heart. Somebody who can be silent and brave and steady until your fever
is passed. The shipwrecked sailor wants a rope rather than a feint of
throwing one; the shipwrecked soul wants a heart like rock, rather than
a handclasp and a promise. The sister-mother may be all right to go to
parties with, but you want something stronger and more steadfast to lean
upon in time of perplexity. You want a mother in all the holy
significance of the name. However sweet the tie of sisterhood, it cannot
be so blessed as the bond of patient, long-suffering, sanctified
motherhood.
Seek to keep yourself in sympathy with your girls, then, mothers, but be
content to occupy a generation removed from the path they tread. Don't
make up in emulation of their beauty; don't seek to win away their beaus
and outdress them. Don't go decollete to parties where your girls should
be the reigning belles; don't aim to vie with them in fascination or in
charm. Be guider and ready counselor, but don't try to be rival. If God
has given you a girl child, and that child has grown to womanhood,
accept the condition of things and give over being a society belle
yourself, abdicating your place for the infinitely sweeter one of
mother. You cannot be the right sort of mother and ignore your duty to
your child. That duty lies in giving her her rightful place in the line
of march from which you are crowded out. Let her carry the banner while
you fall back a little. Watch over her, make things easy for her, smooth
the little difficulties out of her way, be on hand when she comes home
tired and excited to soothe her to rest and calm; counsel her how to
pick her way through the snares that are laid for youth and beauty, be a
refuge where she can run when the rainy weather sets in, which is sure
to fall in the summer time of youth, somewhere and somehow. In short, be
just as sympathetic and chummy and sociable as possible, but at the same
time make your daughter feel that you are older and stronger and wiser
than she, by reason of your motherhood, and that next to God you stand
ready to shield her, to guide her, to receive her in time of trouble, to
forgive her if she needs forgiveness, and to shrive her if she needs
confessing. Teach her that your love can never fail, that your heart is
a rock and a fortress and a shield for her to seek in all life's
bewilderment, far surer and more steadfast than any other love beneath
the stars can ever yield.
When I think of all it means to be a mother I tremble to think how far
short of the standard the best of us fall. I would rather have it said
of me when I die, "She was a good mother," than that men should get
together and exploit my deeds as poet, reformer, artist or story-teller.
I would rather feel the dewfall of a child's loving tear upon my face
than wear a laureate's crown.
Don't be critical, or censorious, or reserved with your daughters; don't
hold them far off and cultivate respect and fear rather than love; don't
be self-assertive and cause them to feel their dependence upon you in an
unpleasant way; don't be too eager to keep them in the background in
little things relating to the home, such as giving them no voice in the
arrangement of the room and the domestic regulations. Indeed, I have
known more attrition caused in the home circle from this last mentioned
point of difference between mother and daughters than almost any other.
I know a family, presided over by a good, unselfish woman, who, as a
mother, is the most complete failure I ever ran across. Her daughter is
of mature age and pronounced opinions, but she is kept in the background
and her life rendered most unhappy by the dominant will of the mother
whose old-fashioned views as to running the house are directly opposed
to more modern customs. The two wrangle continually over the
establishment of a dinner hour, the disposal of a light, the drapery of
a window, the adjustment of furniture, until there is less harmony under
the roof than there is music in a hurdy-gurdy. How much better it would
be if that mother would yield a little to the wishes of her daughter;
give the latter a chance to display her own taste and carry out her
inclination. I don't believe in the mothers and fathers of grown-up
daughters always insisting upon the occupancy of the front seats and the
leadership of the orchestra.
The mother who can preserve the respect of her children without chilling
their love; who can be one with them, and yet apart, in the sense of
guiding, aiding and consoling, who can hold their confidence while she
maintains the superiority of her wisdom, is the happy and successful
mother. The title is a sacred one, made by the chrism of pain and
suffering, sanctified by the humanity of Christ and set apart as one of
the three of earth's tenderest utterances: "Mother, home and heaven."
* * * * *
Now that the days draw nigh for the return of the birds to our northern
woods and dales it is borne in upon me to hold a little "love feast"
with the boys. You know what a love feast is, if there was ever a
Methodist in your family. It is a good, cozy talk among the brethren and
sisters in regard to the best way of putting down the devil, and giving
the good angels a chance. And if there was ever need of downing the
devil it is in the particular instance of a boy's inhumanity to birds
and beasts. I have expressed myself as to horses, and to-day I shall
talk about birds. On these spring mornings, when the world is enveloped
in a golden halo, from out of which, like angel voices from the quiet
depths of heaven, the birds are singing their impromptu of praise,
imagine a lot of half-grown men and brutal boys going forth with guns
and sling-shots to break up the concert and murder the choristers. I
would as soon turn a lot of sharp-shooters into a cathedral at early
mass to bring down the surpliced boys and the chanting novices. I tell
you, O race of good-for-nothing fathers and mothers, whom God holds
directly responsible for the bad boys who desecrate this beautiful
world, you are no more fit for the training of immortal souls than a
hawk is fitted to teach music to a thrush. You ought to have had a
bear-skin and been the trainer of cubs. That your boys develop into
brutes and go to state's prison, and perhaps die at the end of a rope
eventually, is nobody's fault but your own. If you chance to own a horse
or a dog you show some care in its training, but God gives you a boy and
you let him run wild. There is no more reason why a boy should be cruel
than that a properly-broken colt should kick. The tendency may have been
born with him, but good training eliminates it to a great extent, if not
entirely. When I was a woman and lived at home, in the happy days before
I entered the arena to fight for bread and butter, to say nothing of
shoe leather and fuel, I used to gather the village boys about me every
spring and try to sow the good seeds of tenderness with one hand, while
carefully eliminating the tares with the other. I offered prizes for
the best record at the end of the summer. I formed classes, the
membership of which pledged themselves, to a boy, to abstain from
sling-shots, to cultivate the birds' nests and to withhold their hands
from the commission of a single deed of cruelty. Many is the gallon of
ice-cream I have paid for to keep those youngsters in the narrow path of
rectitude, and many is the time that I have patrolled the woods with my
boy comrades, keeping watch over the family of a blue-bird or a robin,
when the alarm went forth that some unregenerate boy was on the rampage.
All the boys whom I could get to join the club I was sure of, for I know
the way to a boy's heart, if I can only get the chance at him. For what
other purpose did nature turn me out a born cook? And why did she make
me a master hand at doughnuts and turnover pies? I have a large and
undying faith in the boys, if you will only start them right. The first
thing a boy needs is a good mother. He can get along without a
father--and I was going to say without a God--for the first few years of
his life, but he needs a mother. Not a mere nurse maid to look after
his clothes and see that he has plenty to eat at the right intervals,
but a good, sweet, companionable mother, with a good, soft breast for
him to cry on and two arms to hug him with. He needs a mother who can
talk with him and answer his questions, who is not stern and severe, but
responsive and get-at-able. With such a mother our boys will be gentle
and our birds will be safe.
Try to think, boys, what a world this would be without any robins, or
larks, or thrushes; without any songs in the apple trees getting all
tangled up with the sunshine and the blossoms; without any canaries to
sing in the window, or any meadow larks to whip out their flutes among
the clover heads. If you should wake up some morning and experience the
ghastly silence of a songless world you would want to hire somebody to
thrash you that you ever used a sling-shot. Do you remember the minister
down New York way whom they fined for shooting robins? I never wanted to
get up on a mountain top so much in all my life and shout glory as I did
over that verdict. I have heard of immorality among ministers, and I
have heard of hypocrisy and lying and all sorts of offenses against
good taste and morals, but I never heard of anything so contemptibly and
causelessly mean as for one of God's especial teachers to get up in the
morning, put on top boots, cross the river in the sunshine and dew of
early morning, lift his gun, take deliberate aim and bring down a robin.
If I was the Lord I would never forgive it. Men are not to blame
sometimes when their blood gets too warm and they do impetuous things,
but to deliberately descend to the ignominy of shooting a robin and
calling it sport is to sink too low for justification.
Whatever else you be, boys, be brave. If you must sail in and fight, if
your superfluous zeal is too much for you, go out in the field and
square off at a bull. There is some glory in whipping anything bigger
and stronger than yourself, but to show fight to a bird is a little too
much like sneaking out and tripping up a cripple in the dark. I am going
to write down a verse for you to write in your copy books this very day,
and then good-night to you:
"The bravest are the tenderest;
The loving are the daring."
* * * * *
Isn't it heavenly to see the primrose around again? And the daffodils?
And the hyacinths? Last night I went home with a rose in my button which
cost me just five cents. At that rate, by careful abstaining from
anything more expensive than a ten-cent lunch, one can go on wearing
roses until next November. The robins have come back, too, and this
morning a couple of them awoke me with their "Cheer-up" song. The
indications are that they are prospecting for spring housekeeping. If
the cat kills them I shall kill the cat. I shall close my eyes and do
the deed in the name of mercy, for I detest cats, both two-legged and
four-legged, and I love robins both feathered and human.
* * * * *
I wonder why it is that the average woman can walk and talk, breathe and
laugh, suffer and cry, and finally die and be buried, and all the way
through make such a botch of her life! Why is it that we fall in love,
so many of us, just on the verge of a life that opens like a summer's
day, and change that life thereby, as a June morning is changed when
great clouds rush into the sky and obscure the sun? Why are girls so
proud to parade an engagement ring upon their finger, when the diamond
is too often the danger-light thrown out above the breakers? Now and
then, about as rarely as one picks up a ruby on the highway, or finds an
enchanted swan circling over the duck pond, there is a happy
marriage--at least such is the popular inference--as to the absolute
certainty of the statement, ask the skeleton closet. I have lived a
varied sort of life. I have wandered to and fro over the earth to some
extent; I have known a great many people, and have found happiness in
many ways, but looking back over all the path to-night and turning my
little bull's-eye lantern of experience up to the present moment, I can
neither remember nor record a dozen truly happy marriages. What
constitutes happiness? Peace. What brings peace? Content. Who is
contented? Not you and not I. What man or woman of all whom we know can
we bring out into the full light of day and say of them, "Behold the
contented one! The restful one! The happy pair!" You, my dear, have
attained the ambition of your youthful dreams. You have married a man
who dresses you splendidly, who gives you diamonds and never murmurs
when the bills come in. But are you happy? Do you never walk to and fro
with the restless countess in the sad old ballad, dreaming of "Alan
Percy?" Do you never, when all is still, go down into that cemetery
where life's "might have beens" lie buried in graves kept green forever
with your tears, and walk and dream alone? And you, my friend, have
married the man of your choice. Is there nothing in the handsome
exterior that palls a bit now and then when you find how sordid and
meager the soul is behind the smile you used to think so charming? Do
you never find scorn creeping into your heart in place of adoration when
you mark the unpaid bills and the shiftless endeavor that strew his idle
way? And you, sir, have a merry and a pretty wife and the world calls
you a lucky fellow. How many know of the sharp tongue that underlies her
laughter and the feather-filled head that never yet has donated an
earnest thought to the domestic economy? And you, my good sir, have
married a blue stocking in the old acceptance of the term. She can
swing off a leader or make a speech on a rostrum at short notice, but
how would you like to rise right up here, poor dear, and tell just what
comfort lies in being mated to a superior being who busies herself with
work which shall be remembered perhaps when the dust on the center
table, the holes in your stockings, the discomfort of the larder, and
the untidiness of the household are forgotten? And you, my good fellow,
have married a woman of "good form." She never does an indiscreet thing.
She is "icily faultless" and splendidly stupid. She has the neck of a
swan, the arms of a goddess, the foot of a patrician, and the soul of a
mouse! The scent of a wayside lilac, perhaps, is sadder than tears to
you, old comrade, when you look back across the years and see again the
sweet dead face of one you trifled with, or whom you deserted for this
woman with heart and body of snow, a purse filled with gold and a brain
filled with feathers.
* * * * *
There is entire hopelessness to many women in the blank monotony of life
after youth is past. An emotional nature, mercurial and restless, full
of aspirations and longings, as the trees this perfect month are full of
blossoms, and, like the trees, bearing a thousand blooms to one
fruition, finds the destiny prepared for it almost unendurable, and
often longs for death that shall end all. Because poverty grinds and
hosts of menial duties accumulate, because the walls of an unquiet home,
made unlovely perhaps by skeletons that no skill can quite conceal,
close like a dungeon upon hope and all the sweet promises of youth,
bright natures grow morose and bitter, warm hearts chill into apathy and
gloom, and sunny brows darken under the cloud of almost perpetual
irritability and discontent. It is useless to preach sermons to such
cases--as useless as to read a book of etiquette in a prison ward or
comfort the victims of a railroad disaster with a treatise upon reform
in the management of roads. The worn, the wasted, the erring, and the
cruelly maimed lie thick about us. Our business is to encourage, to
love, to bind up, and cheer. God, in His own time, shall lift the
discontented head above the power of conspiring cares to vex. It is for
us to lend a helping hand down here where the "slough of despond" is
deepest. When tides forget to obey the moon, or leaves to answer the
will of the wind, then, and not sooner, shall these restless hearts of
ours learn to be still, whatsoever destinies confront, or limitations
thwart. In looking upon the lives of some women, the mother of six
children, for instance, who takes boarders and keeps no help; the widow
supporting her little brood by endless drudgeries; the big-hearted woman
in whom the frolicsomeness and wit of girlhood die hard amid the sordid
miseries of a poverty-stricken life; the sensitive, poetic soul, doomed
to uncongenial companionships and the criticisms and ridicule of the
unfriendly--I am reminded of the score of eagles I saw lately, chained
in a dusty inclosure of Central Park. With clipped wings, and grand,
homesick eyes, they sat disconsolate upon their perches, and moped the
hours away. Would any sane being have reviled those sorry beings for a
lack of spirit? Would not the gentle-hearted spectator have proffered a
handful of fresh leaves rather, and turned away in pity that sympathy
could do no more?
For these unhappy sisters of mine, the discontented, yearning
"Marthas," troubled with many cares, wherever my letter may find them
between the great seas, I have a word of comfort in my heart to-day. In
the first place, do not think, because you so often fall into
irritability and impatient speech, that God despises you as a sinner. He
understands, if friend, husband, or neighbor do not. Strive not to yield
to fretfulness then, but, when overcome by it, remember always God
understands it all. You may be able to see no light in all the shrouded
way, no lifting of the shadow, no promise of the dawn; but rest assured,
however long the probation, the infinite content of Heaven awaits us
very soon, if we strive as much as lies within us to overcome the
infirmities of our temper, and keep our faces set towards the shining of
His love. I know, dear heart, indeed I do, that to-morrow and to-morrow
are just alike to hopeless fancy--full of dish-washing, and drudging,
and back-bending toil--that the sparkle and song of life were long ago
merged in the humdrum beat of treadmill years; but through just this
test is your character building--through just its hard process is
shaping the conqueror's crown flashing with splendid light. As the root
tarries in the dark mold to burst by-and-by into radiant bloom above it,
so your poor life is hidden now to bloom to-morrow. You are not wicked
because you sometimes murmur, but try and think so much of what is going
to be that you shall forget what is. The Tender Heart above absolves
your beaten spirit from willful sin, though you are sometimes swept away
on currents of doubt and unfaith; but try and keep your eye fixed upon
the headlight of His love, whatever currents drift you away. Remember
how human parents deal with their children, and learn a lesson of God's
dealings. If my little girl has the ear-ache, or any other tormenting
ailment of childhood, do I stand over her and exact songs and smiles?
And do you think that when God, for some good reason of his own, lays
heavy burdens upon a life, He is going to demand unswerving sweetness of
speech or ethereal mildness of temper? When I see one scrubbing who was
fitted to adorn the drawing-room, washing dishes who was created an
artist or a genius, darning small boys' linsey pants and homespun
stockings who was intended by nature to reign the crowned priestess of
some high vocation; when I mark the furrows and zigzag footprints that
an army of besieging cares have left on the cheek that in girlhood
outblushed the wayside rose, or note how the hands that once drew
divinest music from obedient keys have twisted and warped in the
performance of homely duties, I feel impelled to kiss the faded cheek
with a love surpassing a lover's, to fold the poor hands in a reverent
grasp, for I tell you, however often she may faint and falter by the
way, however "fretty," and worn, and peevish she may become, the woman
who perseveres in the performance of uncongenial duties, who struggles
through the flatness of monotonous drudgeries, conquering adverse
circumstances, poverty, and destiny, by patience, love, and Christian
faith, is a heroine fit to rank with martyrs and saints. Remember, I am
not talking to women who find the burdens hard to bear and do not bear
them; to mere whimperers, who, because the road is full of stones, sit
down and refuse to travel; but to the brave, true hearts who "press
onward" although no rose blossoms and no bird sings, content to
faithfully perform the task of life, hoping that the fullness of time
shall read the riddle of incongruous destiny. I have seen the time when
household work seemed newly cursed--the very dew of the primal
malediction upon it; when to charge upon the dinner dishes, attack the
lamps, or descend into the vortex of family patching, seemed to call for
greater courage than average human nature possessed. And when I imagine
that shrinking carried on through dry years of monotonous experience,
the same formulas to be observed, the same distaste to be overcome
throughout a lifetime of toil, yet no duty shirked, no obligation set
aside, I wonder if Heaven holds a crown too bright for such faithful
lives.
* * * * *
The time of the year for violets and also for tramps is drawing near.
Did you ever stop and think just what it means to be a tramp? It means
no work, no money, no home, no shelter, no friends. Nobody in all the
world to care whether you live or die like a dog by the roadside. It
means no heaven for such rags to crawl into, no grave to hide them out
of sight and no hand stretched out in all the world to give the greeting
and the good-by of love. It means nobody in all the world to feel any
interest in you and no spot in all the world to call your own, not even
the mud wherein your vagrant footprint falls, no prospect ahead, and no
link unbroken to bind you to the past. I tell you, when we sit down and
figure out just what the term means, it will not be quite so easy next
time the wretched tramp calls at our door to set the dog upon him or
turn him empty-handed away. Let them work, you say. Look here, my good
friend, do you know how absolutely impossible a thing it is getting to
be in this overcrowded country for even a willing man to find work? It
used to be that "every dog had his day," but the dogs far outnumber the
days in free America. I know well educated, competent men who have been
out of employment for months and years. I know brave and earnest women,
with little children to support, who have worn beaten paths from place
to place seeking, not charity, but honest employment, and failed to find
it. What chance is there for a ragged tramp when such as these fail?
Remember, once in a while, if you can, that the most grizzled and
wretched tramp that ever plodded his way to a pauper's grave was once a
child and cradled in arms perhaps as fond as those that enfolded you and
me. Remember that your mother and his were made sisters by the pangs of
maternal pain, and perhaps in the heaven from which the saintly eyes of
your mother are watching for you his mother is looking out for him.
Perhaps--who knows?--the footfall of the ragged and despised tramp shall
gain upon yours and find the gate of deliverance first, in spite of your
money and your pride.
* * * * *