A Mother’s Influence

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 9, 1876

A Mother’s Influence.

A MOTHER’S MANNERS MOULD THE CHILD.

There is no disputing this fact—it shines in the face of every little child. The coarse, brawling, scolding woman will have coarse, vicious, brawling, fighting children.

She who cries on every occasion, “I’ll box your ears—I’ll slap your jaws—I’ll break your neck,” is known through her children as if her unwomanly manners were openly displayed in the public streets.

These remarks were suggested by a conversation in a street car—that great institution for the students of men and manners—between a friend and a schoolmaster. Our teacher was caustic, mirthful, and sharp. His wit flashed like the polished edge of a diamond and kept the car in a roar.

The entire community of insiders—and whoever is intimate with one of those conveyances, can form a pretty good idea of our number, inclusive of the one more so well known to the fraternity—turned their heads, eyes, and ears one way, and finally our teacher said, “I can always tell the mother by the boy. The urchin who draws back with doubled fist at his playmate, has a very questionable mother. She may feed him and clothe him, cram him with sweetmeats, coax him with promises, but if she gets mad she fights. “She will pull him by the jacket; she will give him a knock in the back; she will drag him by the hair; she will call him all sorts of wicked names, while passion plays over her red face in lambent flames that curl and writhe out at the corners of her eyes.

“And we never see the courteous little fellow with smooth looks and gentle manners—in whom delicacy does not detract from courage or manliness—but we say that boy’s mother is a true lady, her words and ways are soft, loving, and quiet. If she reproves, her language is ‘my son’—not ‘you little wretch—you plague of my life—you torment—you scamp.’”

“She hovers before him as a pillar of light before the wandering Israelites, and her beams are reflected in his face. To him the word mother is synonymous with everything pure, sweet, and beautiful. Is he an artist? In after life that which with holy radiance shines on his canvass, will be the mother’s face. Whoever flits across his path with sunny smiles, and soft, low voice, will bring ‘mother’s image’ freshly to his heart. ‘She is like my mother,’ will be the highest meed of his praise. Not even when the hair turns silver, and the eye grows dim, will the majesty of that life and presence desert him.”

“But the ruffian mother—alas, that there are such—will form the ruffian character of the man. He in turn will become a merciless tyrant, with a tongue sharper than a two-edged sword, and, remembering the brawling and cuffing, seek some meek, gentle victim for the sacrifice, and make her his wife with the condition that he shall be master. And master he is for a few sad years, when he wears a widower’s weeds till he finds victim number two.

“We wonder not that there are so many awkward, ungainly men in society; they have all been trained by women who knew not nor cared for the holy nature of their trust. They had been made bitter to the heart’s core, and that bitterness will find vent and lodgment somewhere. Strike the infant in anger, and he will, if he cannot reach you, vent his passion by beating the door, the chair, or any inanimate thing within reach. Strike him repeatedly, and by the time he wears shoes he will have become a boy whose hands double for fight as naturally as if especial pains had been taken to teach him the art of boxing.

“Mothers, remember that your manners mould the child. Who will not say that mothers ought to be thoroughly educated whether their sons are or not.—Ladies’ Repository.