p. 429 | Partners

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 17, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 27.

Partners.

I WAS sitting one day last week by Mrs. Graves' little work-table, engaged in the delightful task of teaching her the shell-stitch, in crochet, when the door was burst open as if a cyclone were coming, and her ten-year-old boy bounced in. He made a polite bow, it is true, but I felt that he was a very unpleasant occurrence, for he stumbled over my feet and upset our basket of worsteds, and seized his mother around the neck for a whispering in a thoroughly tumultuous and uncomfortable way. He received a gentle rebuke for his undue haste and carelessness, and permission, evidently, to go to the bureau drawer, where I watched him upsetting a pile of clean handkerchiefs, and bringing forth in triumph—a fishing-hook!

"Does your mother always let you treat her places that way, Frank?" I asked.

The bright, eager face turned upon me with a surprised look, and then with a sunny glance across the table, said, "Oh! mother and I are partners."

Partners! I felt a sudden pang in thinking of my own well-regulated nursery, whose clock-like rules permitted no such invasion of my places by my young folks.

"I won't go above the dam, mother," were the boy's parting words, as the door closed with a bang that alarmed the plaster.

"Frank is not always so noisy," apologized his mother. "He is very much excited now, and I must save my little lecture about his want of consideration until it will be more likely to avail something."

"But do you give your children such right of way through all your places?" I asked, my interest in the shell-stitch gone.

"Not quite all," she answered, laughing. "I have a few little nooks that are sacredly my own; but only a few. Frank uses the right word when he says we are 'partners,' and I don't know when he has enjoyed anything as much as being allowed to keep that new fishing-hook in my pile of handkerchiefs;" and the mother laughed afresh at the odd hiding-place the boy had invented.

But I was burdened with a consciousness that I should have snubbed my young man upon any such unreasonable proposal, and I pressed the discussion.

"How can you keep any order, or teach any order," I asked, rather petulantly, "if you do not insist upon things being kept in their right places?"

"I do try to check the troublesome propensity to leave things lying around," answered my companion; "but, Elsie, don't you remember from your own childhood how much nicer and more secure our mothers' places seemed for our treasures? That new fishing-hook is of the same value to Frank that your diamond ring is to you; more, indeed, for it gives him more lively pleasure, I am sure, and no place of his own seemed good enough for it. It was a very small sacrifice on my part to allow him to tumble my clean handkerchiefs; but the gratitude it awakened in that precious little heart has bubbled up and over in many a kiss and caress that was infinitely sweet to me.

"He got the word 'partners' from a story they are fond of hearing me tell, of a bit of my own childhood's experience. I had some bad tricks, as a child, that were hard to correct, and one was playing in the fire. Living in the country, big wood-fires blazed on our hearths all winter, and seemed an irresistible temptation to me. Of course I was punished, time and again, but nothing ever seemed to cure me, until one day my mother found me with long pieces of twisted paper, trying to see how near the flame I could hold them without their lighting. Instead of the punishment I expected, my mother sat down by me on the floor, and played in the fire with me for half an hour. By that time my craving was satisfied, and the morbid fascination that the forbidden pleasure had exercised over me was gone. 'Now, Nellie,' said my mother, as she brushed up the litter, 'we are partners in this game, and it will be very unfair if you ever try to play it without me.' I never did, and the idea of being 'partners' with my mother held me with a strong grasp all my life; it brought me to her side with many a question of this or that, which I am persuaded most young people settle for themselves, and often settle the wrong way."

I began to feel sorry for my poor little well-managed children, who had never known the sweetness of playing "partners" with mamma; but they were young enough, thank God, to begin yet, and I trusted I was not too old to learn.

"Aren't you afraid to trust Frank to go to the mill-stream?" I asked, kissing my friend good-by; "it's horridly deep above the dam."

"He never goes above the dam," she replied, with proud content; "that's a part of the partnership."—Ill. Christian Advocate.