One Mother’s Way by Charlotte Reese Connor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Feb 2, 1911

One Mother’s Way

By Charlotte Reese Connor

AFTER teaching another mother how to take care of her child’s health, I went home, and found one of my own boys ruining his eyesight reading fine print in the waning afternoon light. I was going to begin sharply, but remembered the boy’s impatient temper, so I said: “Son, did you ever hear the story of the carpenter of Carlsbad?”

No, he hadn’t.

“Well, come and sit with me, and I’ll tell it.”

“There was once a carpenter who lived in Carlsbad, and he was always bragging about the fine things he could build if he had good tools. One night he had a dream. A friend brought him the finest chest of tools that had ever been seen,—shining saws, sharp chisels, planes, a brace and bit, and all the things necessary to build a house.”

“Take care of these,” he said, “for you will need them all your life, and you will get no more.”

“When the carpenter woke up, he found it was not all a dream; for on the chair by the bedside was the very tool-chest he had dreamed of,—complete, new, and in perfect order.”

“You may imagine how pleased he was. But as time went on, he forgot what his friend had told him about taking care of his tools. When he used his saw, he let its teeth get dulled; when he used his chisels, he left them out where they got rained on or rusty. Gradually everything got out of place, broken, and dull-edged. Suddenly there came a call to build a new palace for the emperor. It was to be the finest palace in the world, and the best workmen were called in to help. Our builder came also. Here was the great job he had wanted all his life; now he would make a reputation and a fortune. Alas! when he began to work, he had nothing fit to use. Some of his tools were lost, all were dull, rusty, and worthless, and he could accomplish nothing. Any moral there, Donald?”

“You mean my eyes?”

“Of course, and other things too. Your faculties are your working tools. Listen, all of you,” I said to the family, who had just come in from school; “you children all began with a good box of tools,—sharp eyes, sound teeth, perfect hearing, a good stomach, a normal nervous

system. I’ve helped keep your physical machinery in good running order by teaching you the truth about it. But I can not follow you around all the time, and keep you from blunting your tools. If you will read fine print in the dusk, crack hickory-nuts with your teeth, or eat chocolate caramels at bedtime, you will have no eyes, no teeth, no stomach left when you are forty. The doctors are pretty smart nowadays, but I have never heard yet that they could supply you with any of these things to take the place of the old ones that are worn out. Take care of your tools of living.”

“Mother,” said Ruth, “Tom takes awful big mouthfuls at the table.”

“Does he?” said I. “That’s all wrong, and he knows it, but the best way to do is for each one to look after her own mouthfuls, and then she won’t have time to attend to mother’s business of looking after the family.” Ruth subsided.

Then I explained to the children the whole digestive tract,—what becomes of the food when we have swallowed it, how too large mouthfuls of unmasticated food overwork the stomach, what part the saliva has in aiding digestion, and what a painful thing it is to get dyspepsia fastened on one. Reproof at the time does not answer. It is forgotten the next minute. The child’s attention must be aroused until his imagination takes hold of the matter, and urges him to establish good habits.

Besides the general health talks which we have when an occasion like the present arises, I find it is necessary to have quiet sessions with the children separately. I try to teach them reverence for their own bodies. Why not? Does not Paul say they are temples of the Holy Spirit? And if flowers and stars and birds are worth studying as parts of the wonderful scheme of creation, is not also the human body? The course of the constellations in the sky is no more wonderful than the circulation of the blood; the assimilation of the elements of earth, water, and air by a buried seed, bringing it into new and different life, is not less marvelous than the chemical processes which transform food and drink into flesh and blood.

As I look back upon my own life, I realize that every sickness which wasted my time, sapped my strength, and cost me money was unnecessary. I slept at a mountain hotel in damp sheets, and had an attack of bronchitis; I ate too heartily and too fast when I was fatigued, and brought on appendicitis; I went riding in a light wrap, and came down with pneumonia. In every case, if I had known or thought, or somebody had warned me, I would have been saved not only the result in actual illness, but also the long after-effects which one never escapes.

Therefore I try to teach my children how to take care of themselves. The time is not long before they will be going away from me, out into the world where I can not reach them with warnings. —Charlotte Reese Connor, in Ladies’ Home Journal.