Don't Touch the Children.
By Mrs. C. S. Lincoln
Of the many trials that farmers’ wives have to endure, not one is more difficult to avoid, and yet none more cruel, than that of having to let one’s carefully reared little ones associate with strange hired help. My experience in this line has been such that while I extend a friendly welcome to the stranger, I am mentally crying out to him or her: “DON’T TOUCH THE CHILDREN!” Break the dishes, waste the stores, spoil the meals, let the horses take cold, the colts starve, the cows dry up, the rats run riot in uncovered food-bins—any thing, so long as you leave my little ones untarnished. Everything else can be endured if you don’t touch with unclean hands the souls of the children. It seems to me that it is a crime well-nigh unpardonable to sully the innocence of confiding little boys and prattling little girls, yet there is much of it done, and their poor mothers are all unaware of the presence of the serpent in their flower-garden until it has become impossible to ever again erase his slimy trail. Not many years since, needing some one to cut firewood for the approaching winter, my husband engaged a lad of seventeen, to whom he awarded the highest praise as a diligent and efficient worker, especially at chopping and splitting wood. From the first, the boy, whose name was Marion, seemed to feel sure of a friend in me. There is in nearly every large family of children, one who seems less favored and beloved than the others—“The black sheep of the flock”—such was poor Marion in his own cheerless home. For days and nights in succession during the summer, when a little boy, he had lived in the woods near their house, coming home for food only when pressed by hunger. His one idea he confided to me was to get a good education. Nothing could have appealed to my heart more effectually for the friendless lad than this. Had I not known what it was to be compelled to live in ignorance while thirsting for knowledge and culture? To know myself wholly void of grace and beauty, to be bashful and awkward, and wholly unable to please, while I so longed for mother-love and home petting? Ah! but I had. So I gave Marion my sympathy, and pointed out to him the speediest way of reaching his goal. My boys, aged twelve, six, and four years liked to go with him to the wood lot where he chopped, to the field and garden where he hoed, and he seemed to be as fond of their company as they were of his. One day while Mr. L. was away, he was employed near the barn, and the children were with him as usual. As I stepped to the porch to call the boys to dinner, I could hear Marion singing loudly. They being out of sight, and not likely to hear my call, I followed the sound of his voice to the farther side of the barn. But, getting near enough to distinguish the words, I found his song to be a most obscene piece of ribaldry, interspersed with foul-mouthed comments of his own, to the hearing of which the wealth of worlds could not have tempted me for one moment to expose my innocent little ones. My first agonized thought was, as I but too well remember, of the weeks that this had been going on, unknown to me. Of course the boy was instantly discharged; but the contamination that had been brought into my flock was not to be so summarily expelled. I could only mourn with anguish of heart over my children, so cruelly robbed of the priceless gem of soul-purity. I am sure the boy did not intend to cause me such bitter sorrow in return for kindness received. I am afraid his very earliest existence began in moral leprosy, and that he had not the faintest idea of his own degradation. Poor boy! Never to have known the beautiful innocence of infancy, to put on proper behaviour as one does their best suit, to appear in company! How can such persons become reformed? I sometimes wonder what, to one who has never known purity, is the process of repentance and turning from sin unto righteousness? What sense the words, “Ye must be born again,” can convey to their minds, God only knows. God pity them! But, O mothers, be careful not to let them sully your children. You can never press your boy to your heart in the same proud fondness, never gaze into the dear, deep, untroubled, eyes again after the agent of evil has done his work. Be ever on your guard against this source of contamination, or you may mourn in vain when the evil is done.—MRS. C. S. LINCOLN, in Agriculturist for May, 1875.