Mothers | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 20, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 32.

Mothers.

THERE are two extraordinary things about mothers. One is their patience and the other is their impatience. He who sees a mother care for a child through a long and dangerous sickness, tending it by day and by night, not once merely, but many times, hoping on when all others despair, and keeping up when all others give out, and at last coaxing and loving the little creature back to convalescence, sees one of the sublimest things in nature. The same mother, when the child is well again, will sometimes exhibit an impatience with it that borders on the ridiculous. It is noisy, boisterous, inquisitive, careless as all healthy children are apt to be, and the mother wears out her soul in scolding it. This is often a case of cause and effect. The child has recovered its nervous force, but the mother has not. During the ten weeks' illness of a child its mother may expend the entire reserve of vital energy, and contract a large debt in that line besides, which she may be years in liquidating. She may never liquidate it, but live on fretful and irritable to the end—for a mother seldom passes a whole year without incurring some new drain upon her resources. It is for this reason that, in all arrangements of a home, the ease and comfort of the mother should be considered before all things. This is her right. Nor is it less the interest of the family, for their happiness depends chiefly upon her health and cheerfulness.—Religious Telescope.