Neglected Children by Margaret E. Sangster

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 1, 1875

Neglected Children.

By Margaret E. Sangster

I spend several hours every week with a company of children who may fairly be ranked under the title “neglected.” They are not over clean. Their clothing is thin, and rather promiscuous. Half the time they are probably very cold, and the other half hungry. Their fathers and mothers are poor, are unfortunate, are sometimes drunken; and some of those little ones are familiar with sights and sounds which would frighten the delicate, high-bred, beautiful girls who find it a labor of love every week to teach them to sew.

But my experience with these little specimens of the tenement and the street has been that, considering their opportunities, they are very docile. They blossom out under loving influences as your hyacinth does when you take the bulb from the cellar and set it in the sunny south window. They repeat Bible verses and hymns, and sing—why, they sing as if they had never known a trouble or a care.

Several times the thought has come to me, “Are these the only neglected children?” Not a very original thought, perhaps, but one we mothers would do well to ponder oftener than we do. It is a dreary day for the maternal heart when it takes up that desolate refrain: “They made me the keeper of the vineyard, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

A child, coming into the world by no volition of its own, surely has a right to claim the care and protection of its father and mother. They are not released from this claim by any exterior circumstance. Whether they live in Rag Fair or Fifth Avenue, they are equally bound to take the best care they can of their own offspring. To do Rag Fair justice, it is not half so anxious to shirk the responsibility in the matter as Fifth Avenue often is.

No matter how many subordinates your purse can employ, you are yourself, being parent, your child's first and best guardian. But society, business, and the church, make many demands upon your time. Even so. Meet them if you can; but if you must choose which to give your best to, and which to give your second-best, and which to let go by the board, let home and children have the freshness, the first of the day, and the closest brooding of the heart.

I have known a family of dear little children, clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring, like the man in the parable, sumptuously every day, who were almost as badly off as Lazarus in the same. They were wholly under the care and influence of illiterate, vulgar, and unprincipled servants, their mother being too much engaged with company, friends, and benevolent enterprises, to do more than give them a kiss once or twice a day, and, sometimes, when they vexed her, a scolding or a slap. The mother, a brilliant, educated, and most fascinating lady, is by-and-by ashamed of her children, who are boors, unpolished, unmannerly and ungrammatical. What wonder? They were neglected, and nothing else could have been expected. Seven times one are seven. You cannot make it nine, to save your life.

Some mothers neglect their children through the care they take of their outward appearance. Come what will, they must have so many little frocks, and so many little aprons, so many pies and cakes too, on the table, and so much luxury in the furnishing and adorning of their homes. Somebody and something must be put off and turned aside, and it is very likely to be the little Kitty or Johnny, who is, after all, the occasion of the parents’ greatest pride and anxiety! It is a terrible thing, though, when you really sit down and think about it, that a child, living, breathing, sentient, and which may be immortal, should ever be considered as merely a clothes-pole, or a center-piece for vain display.

The class who upon the whole get the least notice taken of them, and are oftenest snubbed and hurt, are the boys. The ordinary, commonplace ones I mean, who are especially brilliant in nothing, and who are at the awkward, obtrusive age when their feet and hands are big, and they seem to have a talent for forever being in the way. Their very faces have lost the sweetness of babyhood, and have not gained the meaning of manhood. Nobody has much patience with them, and the house is so much stiller when they are out of it that even mother does not ask where they are when they slink out of sight, perhaps, after supper, God help them! Many a boy might be saved from a period of wild and reckless dissipation if only there was somebody who could see the better part of him, and care enough for it to endure the rougher outside and help him along. There are plenty of neglected boys who wear good warm clothes and have shoes on their feet. Is there one that we know? If so, let us take compassion on him.—MARGARET E. SANGSTER, in Christian Union.