Newspaper Page Text
10
A mother’s love —how sweet the name,
What is a mother’s love?
A noble, pure, and tender flame
Enkindled from above,
To bless a heart of earthly mold;
The warmest love that can grow cold,
This is a mother’s love.
To bring a helpless babe to light,
Then, while it lies forlorn,
To gaze upon that dearest sight
THE SUPREME OFFICE—MOTH ER
MOTHER —one of the noble Saxon
words that go with home and
heaven! It is the dearest of all words
to humanity—even in its ruder condi
tion.
All the world respects motherhood.
Deep in the heart of the most hard
ened criminal is a lingering affection
'for the mother that bore him, even
though she be not a good woman. A
veteran preacher, who was a chaplain
in the Southern army of the Civil War,
told me that nearly every boy in gray
whom he had seen give up his young
life on the field or in the hospital, sent
a last message to mother. “Give my
love to mother. Tell her I died try
ing to do my duty.”
The most affecting representation
of human life I ever saw was in wax
in the New York Eden Musee. It
was one of a series of figures depict
ing the real story of a criminal, who
was executed in that state. One of
the two figures represented the mur
derer on his way to his death —a hard,
defiant face with scarcely anything
human in its lines. The other figure
was his old mother, who had come a
great part of the way on foot from a
distant state. She had her arms about
him, her face was convulsed with grief
and love. No matter what he was or
had done, he was her boy. Looking
at her, you knew she would have died
for him.
Another Kind of Mother.
Motherhood stands for the most un
selfish and devoted love of earth, yet
all mothers are not loving or self sac
rificing. Some women are deficient
in the maternal instinct. You can tell
them by the shape of the head. The
heads of such women come nearly
straight down from the crown, with
scarcely any protuberance. These are
the mothers who find children a bur
den and a nuisance, and rebel bitterly
against bearing them. The children
never know the sweet, intimate affec
tion which the children of true moth
ers enjoy. Their mother may be
proud of them in away, dress them
well and look after their manners, but
tender affection is lacking and the
child misses it.
A young Alabama doctor, who for
merly wrote for the Sunny South, told
of being called in to see the child of
a woman, who was one of the lights
of society. He found the little boy
very sick and the mother in evening
costume. Her first words were:
“Doctor, Henry is not very ill, is he?”
I replied, “I consider him a very sick
child, Mrs. T. His temperature is
104.”
“But you don’t think him danger
ously ill, do you?”
THE HOUSEHOLD
A DEPARTMENT OF EXPRESSION FOR THOSE WHO FEEL AND THINK
EDITED BY MRS. MARY E. BRYAN.
A MOTHER’S LOVE.
And feel herself new-born,
In its existence lose her own,
And live and breathe in it alone;
This is a mother’s love.
To mark its growth from day to day,
Its opening charms admire,
Catch from its eye the earlest ray
Os intellectual fire;
To lend a finger when it walks;
This is a mother’s love.
—James Montgomery.
CHAT
“Not necessarily so, Mrs. T.”
“Don’t you think the nurse can wait
on him and give the medicine as well
as I?”
“I —suppose so, Mrs. T.”
“I have an engagement to play pro
gressive euchre tonight, and if I don’t
go the others will be disappointed.
And the ladies prize for this evening
is perfectly lovely—a silver mounted
shell comb. I have set my heart on
winning it. Goodbye, mama’s little
man. Don’t cry. I shall be back pres
ently.”
She stooped and kissed the child’s
hot brow.
“Mama, don’t go; Mama please stay
with me,” pleaded the boy, but his
weak voice was not heard or heeded
as she swept out of the room. Mama
had gone—gone to indulge in idle
chatter and try to win a shell comb.
Later, the child became delirious,
and called for her again and again.
I stayed with him and watched his
symptoms anxiously, rendering all the
relief in my power. It was past mid
night when his mother returned. The
remedies that had been given him
had produced relaxation and he was
asleep. She looked at him and said
lightly: “Oh, he is all right. I felt
sure he wasn’t very sick. Well, I won
the prize,” and she held out the silver
mounted comb.
Wholly Devoid of Mother Instinct.
There are some women —usually
among the erring class, who seem to
feel a positive hatred for their ba
bies. In a maternity (charity hospital)
on Blackwell’s Island in New York I
saw an instance of this. The large,
long room was filled with the cots of
mothers —mostly unfortunates, young
girls with their infants beside them.
The nurses were sweet-faced young
women whose solicitude for the ba
bies and the tender way they handled
them made me feel they had mother
hearts. One of them was talking to
me, telling me of a peculiar case, when
I noticed that she often glanced around
the room. She said: “We have to
be watchful; some of these women
are capable of doing their babies a
hurt.”
The next minute I saw a very young
pretty girlj leave hear bed and go
towards the water at the other end
of the room. The nurse went quickly
to the vacated bed and I followed her.
On reaching the bedside, we saw that
the girl had put the pillow over the
baby’s face. Its little face was purple
and it was half smothered. The nurse
said sternly to the mother: “This is
the second time you have tried to kill
your baby. Another attempt, and I
will report you to the police.”
Another instance was one I saw in
The Golden Age for May Bth, 1913
an emergency hospital in New York.
In the emergency hospital the women
patients are dismissed after three
weeks and they must take their ba
bies with them. As I entered, I saw
a young nurse kneeling beside a bas
ket that was placed near the radia
tor. The basket contained the very
smallest mite of humanity I ever
saw. It was not as long as one’s
hand and looked like a small doll. Os
course it could not be dressed. It
was wrapped first in soft carded cot
ton, then in wool. The nurse was
feeding it by means of a small syr
inge which contained, she told me,
warm, sweetened water with a drop
of whiskey in it.
As I looked on she raised her head
and exclaimed delightedly: “It is
swallowing, don't you see? Oh, I wish
it would live!”
‘‘Will it —can it live?” I asked.
“I am afraid not,’ she answered
sadly.
She pointed out the mother to me
and I walked across to the cot she
indicated. A young, hard face looked
at me from the pillow. Thinking to
please her, I said, “I have been seeing
the nurse feed your little baby and it
is swallowing the food.” She frown
ed and made a gesture of impatience.
“Is that thing still alive!” she ex
claimed. “Why dont’ they let it
die?”
A Baby Shelter “Mother.”
But the most perfect mother I ever
saw was unmarried and had never had
a child. She was a young Southern
woman superintendent of one of the
high class Baby Shelters under the
auspices of wealthy church people.
The children, ranging from early ba
byhood to six years old, were all born
in wedlock, the offspring of poor par
ents, and were either orphans or half
orphans, fatherless with mothers who
were obliged to do out-of-home work.
What that Virginia girl did not
know about the care, management and
disposition of children was not worth
knowing. The children did not cry.
Often as I visited the pleasant place,
I never heard one of the thirty little
ones cry. To be sure, they had noth
ing to tret them. They were carefully
attended to as to clothing, bathing,
sleeping (each in a snow white enam
eled crib), exercise and play. They
had a large play room with all kinds
of toys and a piano. This Shelter
was also a training for mothers out
side, as nearly every child had a “lit
tle mother” among the young daught
ers of the rich patrons, who brought
it fine toys she had tired of and good
out-grown clothing—and took it to
drive twice a week. The little moth
ers were very solicitious about their
children, and brought fruit and flow
ers to those who fell sick (a rare oc
currence) and were transferred at
once to the pleasant hospital room.
Mothers in the Foundling Homes.
Not all unfortunate mothers are
wanting in maternal instinct. In the
New York Foundling Home, where
there are several thousand babies, I
saw a young woman of splendid phy
sique, nursing at her breast two thriv
ing babies —one of them her own, the
other one of the many unmothered lit
tle ones. She was looking down at
them and smiling affectionately. “I
hardly know which one I love hest,”
she said.
The mothers of these unfathered
children who can be induced to stay
and care for their babies for a year
at least, are encouraged to do so. In
the smaller foundling homes estab
lished and kept up by charitable or
church societies, the mothers (who
are always first offenders, none others
are admitted) are required to stay a
year in the home where they may re
ceive training in their duties as moth
ers and also instruction in all kinds
of domestic work. Every facility is
given them. In the summer, children
and mothers are taken to summer
homes with beautiful and wholesome
environments. One of these summer
homes which I visited, near New Ro
chelle, had green pastures in which
cows were browsing, vegetable gar
dens and large shady yard surround
ing the cool and comfortable build
ings. The mothers of the babies help
ed do all the domestic work, milking,
butter making, cultivating vegetables,
laundering, cooking, etc., and they
were trained in domestic work as well
as in the care of their children.
Training to be Mothers.
Speaking of training for mother
hood, this should be an important part
of every girl’s education. So many
marry without any due sense of the
responsibilities and duties of a moth
er. As a consequence the children
are unwisely managed in babyhood and
badly trained from the beginning.
There is just now an epidemic of
boy and girl marriages, which should
be stopped by the law. No girl should
be allowed to marry until she is
eighteen and has received instruction
in the duties of wife, mother and
home keeping. The newspapers are
giving unwise prominence to the crude
utterances of child wives who declare
how happy they are and what ideal
homes they intend to make. The next
thing heard of them is in the divorce
court.
In our little town there is a child
wife who married at fourteen and is
now a mother before she has seen her
fifteenth birthday. A friend of mine,
hearing the baby was ailing, went to
see her. They are poor, and the hus
band works hard at a trade for a
small income. The writer found the
tiny baby badly neglected as to suit
able clothing, bathing and other nec
essary attentions. The windows were
fast closed; they were kept so all the
time the child wife told her. “He” had
said they must not be opened for fear
of taking cold. So the sweet, fresh
air was excluded from the close, stuf
fy room. The child mother talked of
her big, beautiful doll and had the
visitor take it from the trunk and
admire it. “I teased him into getting
it; it cost two dollars and I have had
lots of fun dressing it and playing
THE SPREAD OF TYPHOID FEVER
and other infectious diseases to other mem
bers of the family and to neighbors can
be safely prevented by dissolving a tea
spoonful of Tyree’s Antiseptic Powder in
two teacupsful of boiling water, adding
this to each stool and keeping stools pro
tected from flies. A similar solution in
tepid water makes a grateful sanitary
sponge bath for the patient. Get a 25c
box from any drug store (or by mail). If
not pleased return the empty box and get
your money back. J. S. Tyree, Chemist,
Washington, D. C. Mr. Tyree will mail a
liberal sample of his powder and full di
rections, free, to any who write mention
ing this paper.