Newspaper Page Text
6
THE GUIDING HAND
Worth Woman’s While.
By FLORENCE TUCKER
Consuelo Vanderbilt as a Mother.
While so much is being said about American girls
trading the good dollars of their fathers for nothing
but titles and almost certain disappointment, the two
most notable among them, Consuelo Vanderbilt,
Duchess of Marlborough, and the unfortunate Coun
tess Castellane (Anna Gould), it must be conceded
are remarkable in their conspicuous position for one
beautiful and ennobling quality which places them
higher than any rank or money. It is the love they
bear their children. And the Duchess of Marlbor
ough—perhaps the Countes Castellane as well, we
do not know—evidences in her training the true
mother-love which is wise and sees beyond its own
gratification and the indulgence which is but to the
hurt of the child.
These are her own words expressive of her views
of the relation between parents and children:
1 ‘Mother-love is very strong, but common sense
ought to be stronger.
“Parents cannot afford to commit petty or grave
faults in the presence of children and not expect the
child to think out some reason for it and perhaps
imitate. It would seem to me that if parents expect
much from their children, they must always strive
to give the best of themselves to the child and do all
they can to choke down and remove their own im
perfections. I recognize this is difficult work, but
regard it as fair to the child.
“Children must respect their parents, and they
must learn that petty lying, petty acts of meanness,
bring their own punishment. A brave father and a
kindly mother have the right to ask of their children
that the things which make a child mean shall not
be done, and they have the right to punish for those
wrongs.
“It seems to me the great hope of motherhood is
that a daughter or a son, no matter what the family
station in life may be, shall grow up and face life’s
full conditions pure, independent, womanly, or man
ly, ashamed of cowardly things, always willing to
support the truth.”
The Stranger at the Door.
Lord, when one comes and knocks at my house-door
Whoe’er he be, whate’er his quest,
Oh, let no thoughtlessness within send him
Away, a not-invited guest!
From wintry blast or noontide’s sultry heat
Turn weary ones for grateful rest,
My threshold be the ever-open door
Where all may enter and be blest.
And when comes one to serve me sheltered here
Safe from the world’s great strife of need,
My heart be tender as Thine own would be,
That when I say to him, God speed!
He go not out upon his way again
Uncheered by kindly wrnrd and smile—
That Thou hast given to me, share I with him,
Remembering Thy love the while!
And lest I should forget or careless grow,
Dear Lord, come Thou, and be my Guest—
Dwell Thou with me, and mind me evermore
Os Duty’s and Love’s behest!
The Man and the Pie.
We are all familiar with the saying, “The way to
a man’s heart is—by another route!” And how
sensitive that masculine member is to the truth of it
is attested in some lines we find in a recent maga
zine, the expression of a sufferer who, like many
another, seeks surcease in print. It’s funny how, if
The Golden Age for March 8, 1006.
we can only tell it, the pain is half alleviated. But
this is his plaint:
“0, lovely woman thou dost make
The heart of man to ache and ache;
And he, he he wise or otherwise,
He falls—a victim of thine eyes,
When, lovely woman, as his bride,
He leads you to his fireside,
Unless he be most wondrous wise,
He falls—a victim of thy pies!”
On first reading -what sticks out is those pies!
And yet they are the very last thing mentioned.
And this little fable points a moral—to those who
can see it. Man is a doting creature; he likes to
dote. And so, he sings her praises before he men
tions the instrument with ■which she has so cruelly
felled him—wherein is the lesson the story points:
if Griselda had only known how to make those pies
the chances are she would never, never have been
■weeping.
For, the way to a man’s heart is—. And as he
is peace-loving, preferring his ease and comfort, and
thoroughly disliking anything else, the one thing
Griseldas all should do is to learn before anything
else, the art of constructing pies. Given a fair
show Man is well enough. He may not be just con
scious of it, but there is hardly more than one stip
ulation he would in the beginning exact of the other
party to the contract, and that is, “Feed me with
food convenient for me. ’ ’ Certainly from her stand
point no other need be necessary; for feed him as
he likes and he is amiable to the point of—anything
she wants!
iSo, if Griselda would spare herself those tears
which with bad pies will surely come, if she would
rule the unquestioned, if unsuspected, sovereign in
the heart of her lord, and would save herself, and
her sex, from the cruelty of mocking verse and the
publicity of a heartless press, let her—and she will
be happy—let her be able to make a perfect pie!
John Trotwood More has these forceful words to
say concerning what we are apt to regard the little
ness of our neighbors, forgetting that somewhere,
maybe, we ourselves fall short.
“Let not the littleness of people disturb you. Re
member that if you have been made big enough to
do big things in life, you have been made large
enough to overlook little things. So do not imag
ine you are great, so long as by sifting yourself you
find jealousy, hatred, malice or even the spirit which
frets, in your heart. These and Greatness sleep
not in the same soul.”
Appreciation is the sweetest and brightest reward
that faithful service can know. How happy was
the case of that noble woman and teacher, Miss
Brooks, who died in Columbus, Ga., last week! And
how beautiful the grateful devotion of the men and
women whose early years had felt the impress of
her lofty character! When toward the end of a
long life of love and labor she could no longer pur
sue her accustomed vocation these loyal friends
banded themselves together in a society called by her
name and raised a fund sufficient for her independ
ent maintenance; and when her body was laid to
rest as many of them as could followed it to the
grave, paying tribute of their tears and their grate
ful affection.
Sitting in the Sunshine.
A little child had one day been cross and trouble
some. His mother, thinking she should correct him
in some way, told him to sit for a while in the bay
window where the sunshine was, and she said, “Per
haps some of the sunshine will get inside of you and
drive out the bad feelings.” One day not long after
wards, the little fellow had been naughty again, and
that night his mother noticed him sitting quietly
and all alone for some time in the bay window. She
asked him what he was doing there, and he replied:
“I need some more sunshine in me.”
What a good thing it would be if the world were
full of bay windows! for surely many people need
the sunshine in them quite as much as that little
child. But I believe this old world is full of bay
windows—at least it is full of happiness, and sun
shine, and beauty. The trouble is, there are many
people like the little boy sitting in the window at
night—their outlook on the world is nearly always
dark. They won’t sit in a “sunshiny” window
themselves, and they are often the means of keeping
other people from sitting there. They are doubtless
those of whom Henry Ward Beecher was thinking
when he said: “Some people think black is the col
or of heaven, and that the more they can make their
faces look like night the more evidence they have
of grace.”—Mother’s Magazine.
Mr. Andrew Carnegie’s love for his mother binds
him to the heart of American womanhood more than
all his libraries. In his letter acknowledging the
honor done her by the Carnegie School of Tech
nology at Pittsburg, which recently named the wom
en’s department of this institution “Margaret Car
negie,” he says: “I am deeply touched by this re
membrance of one to whom I owe everything that a
wise mother ever gave to a son who adored her.”
A Blackboard Revival.
One of the most unique revival efforts we have
heard of is that being conducted in Macon this week
by Rev. Alex W. Bealer, of Thomasville, who is as
sisting Dr. J. L. White, of the First Baptist church.
The Lord endows some men in a manifold way.
Alex Bealer is one of the raciest, rarest press re
porters in all the land. He is one of the best
preachers and most beloved pastors in Georgia. And
then he can flash on the blackboard a startling pre
sentation of some vital scripture truth which will
never leave the minds and hearts of children. This
■week he is giving these blackboard sermons as no
one but Bealer can give them. If he only had time
he ought to go to every church and win and bless
the hearts of the young.
A day’s breathing of fresh air upon the hills,
or a few hours’ ramble in the beech woods’ um
brageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the
brain of scores of toiling men who are now but
half alive.—C. H. Spurgeon.
Worry is itself a species of monomania. No
mental attitude is more disastrous to personal
achievement, personal happiness and personal use
fulness in the world, than worry and its twin
brother, despondency. The remedy for the evil lies
in training the will to cast off cares and seek a
change of occupation when the first warning is
sounded by Nature in intellectual lassitude. Re
laxation is the certain foe of worry, and “don’t
fret one of the healthiest of maxims.—Dr. George
W. Jacoby.
That I may not be grasping, but content with a
fair share of this world’s goods, willing to let
others have theirs; that I may be diligent in the
performance of duties and cheerful in manner; that
I may be earnest in the pursuit of the right; that
I may stand with open mind ready to receive the
Truth in small affairs and in large, whether in
learning new and better methods, or in receiving
that philosophy necessary to a brave, tranquil, well
praised, well-harmonized life.—-John Brisben Wal
ker.
Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a
time. Some people bear three—all they have had,
all they have now, and all they expect to have.—
Edward Everett Hale.