You should regard the confidential relation between yourself and your son as one of the most precious things in your life, and should never take chances of forfeiting it. It costs something to keep it, but it is worth everything to you and to the boy. I never knew a boy to go very far wrong who regarded his father and mother as his best friends, and kept no secrets from them.
Chapter XIX.
Mother
All that I am or hope to be,” said Lincoln, after he had become President, “I owe to my angel mother.”
“My mother was the making of me,” said Thomas Edison, recently. “She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt that I had some one to live for; some one I must not disappoint.”
“All that I have ever accomplished in life,” declared Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist, “I owe to my mother.”
“To the man who has had a good mother, all women are sacred for her sake,” said Jean Paul Richter.
The testimony of great men in acknowledgment of the boundless debt they owe to their mothers would make a record stretching from the dawn of history to to-day. Few men, indeed, become great who do not owe their greatness to a mother’s love and inspiration.
How often we hear people in every walk of life say, “I never could have done this thing but for my mother. She believed in me, encouraged me, when others saw nothing in me.”
“A kiss from my mother made me a painter,” said Benjamin West.
A distinguished man of to-day says: “I never could have reached my present position had I not known that my mother expected me to reach it. From a child she made me feel that this was the position she expected me to fill; and her faith spurred me on and gave me the power to attain it.”
Many a man is enjoying a fame which is really due to a self-effacing, sacrificing mother. People hurrah for the governor, or mayor, or congressman, but the real secret of his success is often tucked away in that little unknown, unappreciated, unheralded mother. His education and his chance to rise may have been due to her sacrifices.
It is a strange fact that our mothers, the molders of the world, should get so little credit and should be so seldom mentioned among the world’s achievers. The world sees only the successful son; the mother is but a round in the ladder upon which he has climbed. Her name or face is never seen in the papers; only her son is lauded and held up to our admiration. Yet it was that sweet, pathetic figure in the background that made his success possible.
The very atmosphere that radiates from and surrounds the mother is the inspiration and constitutes the holy of holies of family life.
“In my mother’s presence,” said a prominent man, “I become for the time transformed into another person.”
How many of us have felt the truth of this statement! How ashamed we feel when we meet her eyes, that we have ever harbored an unholy thought, or dishonorable suggestion! It seems impossible to do wrong while under that magic influence. What revengeful plans, what thoughts of hatred and jealousy, have been scattered to the four winds while in the mother’s presence! Her children go out from communion with her resolved to be better men, nobler women, truer citizens.
The greatest heroine in the world is the mother. No one else makes such sacrifices, or endures anything like the suffering that she uncomplainingly endures for her children.
I know a mother who has brought up a large family of children under conditions which, I believe, no man living could possibly have survived. She had a lazy, worthless husband with no ambition, no force of character; a man extremely selfish and exacting, who not only did practically nothing to help his wife carry her terrible burden, but also insisted upon her waiting upon him by inches.
They were too poor to afford a servant, and the good-for-nothing husband would not lift a finger to help his wife if he could avoid it; yet he was cross, crabbed, and abusive if meals were not on time, and if they were lacking in any respect, or if the children annoyed him or interfered with his comfort. Although the mother worked like a slave to keep her little family together and to make a living for them, her husband would never even look after the children while she was working, if he could sneak out of it. When the children were sick, he would retire without the slightest concern, and leave the jaded mother, who had worked all day like a galley slave, to nurse them. This man never seemed to think that his wife needed much sleep or rest, a vacation, holiday, or any change; he. seldom took her anywhere, and was never known to bring her home a flower or a nickel’s worth of anything. He thought that anything was good enough for his wife. She made her clothes over and over again, until they were worn out, but he always had to have a natty suit, which his wife must keep pressed. He insisted upon having his tobacco and toddy, and would always take the best of everything for himself, no matter who else went without.
Yet, in spite of the never-ending drudgery, the lack of comforts and conveniences in her home, and the fact that her health was never good; no matter how much her rest was broken by attendance upon the sick children, or how ill she might be, this woman never complained. She was always cheerful, always ready to give a helping hand and an encouraging word, even to her ungrateful husband. Calm, patient, and reassuring, she never failed to furnish the balm for the hurts of all her family. This woman saw her beauty fade, and the ugly lines of care, anxiety, and suffering come into her face. She saw no prospects of relief from care for herself in the future; nothing but increasing poverty, homelessness, and not a cent in the savings-bank. Yet she never complained. No one heard her denounce her shiftless husband, the real cause of all her sufferings. She literally gave up her life to her family, until there was nothing left but the ashes of a burned-out existence, nothing but the shell of a once enchantingly beautiful and noble woman.
Ah, this is heroism—to see all the dreams of girlhood fade away, nearly everything of value go out of the life, and yet to bear up under it all with sublime courage, heavenly patience, superb dignity, a wonderful mental poise and optimism. If this is not heroism, there is none on this earth.
What is the giving of one’s life in battle or in a wreck at sea to save another, in comparison with the perpetual sacrifice of a living death lasting for half a century or more? How the world’s, heroes dwindle in comparison with the mother heroine!
Who but a mother would make such sacrifices, drain her very life-blood, all her energy, everything, for her children, and yet never ask for or expect compensation?
There is no one in the average family, the value of whose services begins to compare with those of the mother, and yet there is no one who is more generally neglected or taken advantage of. She must always remain at home evenings, and look after the children, when the others are out having a good time. Her cares never cease. She is responsible for the housework, for the preparation of meals; she has the children’s clothes to make or mend, there is company to be entertained, darning to be done, and a score of little duties which must often be attended to at odd moments, snatched from her busy days, and she is often up working long after every one else in the house is asleep.
No matter how loving or thoughtful the father may be, the heavier burdens, the greater anxieties, the weightier responsibilities of the home, of the children, always fall on the mother. Indeed, the very virtues of the good mother are a constant temptation to the other members of the family, especially the selfish ones, to take advantage of her. If she were not so kind, so affectionate and tender, so considerate, so generous and ever ready to make all sorts of sacrifices for others; if she were not so willing to efface herself; if she were more self-assertive; if she stood up for and demanded her rights, she would have a much easier time.
But the members of the average family seem to take it for granted that they can put all their burdens on the patient, uncomplaining mother; that she will always do anything to help out, and to enable the children to have a good time; and in many homes, sad to say, the mother, just because of her goodness, is shamefully