THE MOTHER LOVE by Mrs. Charlotte H. Wilder

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 17, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 16.

THE MOTHER LOVE.

By Mrs. Charlotte H. Wilder

"I REMEMBER one morning when I was bathing my baby," says a young mother, "my husband read aloud from his Law Review for my benefit. It was a character sketch of some prominent New England gentleman, and among the excellent traits of the man's character was his love for his children. In proof of this was cited the fact that he arose at six o'clock in the morning to write a letter to his son in college."

"During the reading of the article my 'John' lost his patience because our little daughter played with the baby's feet until their laughter bubbled and doubled and trebled like the water of Lodore, almost drowning, with their glee, the voice of their father. He then suggested that the mother was more interested in her children than in the article read for her improvement."

"I took up the next duties of the day, and did not think of the article or anything else except what I was doing or what I had planned to do, until late in the afternoon. The nursery was in order; the library cool and comfortable. The wind that had swayed the limbs of the trees all day long seemed to be going down with the sun. I leaned back in the great 'sleepy hollow' chair with a sigh of perfect rest and contentment. Was ever a woman so happy as I? Good home, many friends, beautiful children, neither poverty nor riches, honorable man for a husband, also kind and thoughtful—and here I smiled as I thought of the article he read and his eagerness to interest me in what interested him."

"But of the article I could remember but one thing—a father once upon a time rose at six o'clock, thereby losing his morning nap, to write a letter to his son in college! Such parental love and sacrifice, such an act of self-abnegation was considered of enough importance to be mentioned in a sketch of his life! I wondered who would think of mentioning the fact that a mother rose every morning at six o'clock, thereby losing her morning nap, for the sake of her children, year after year—indeed, all the years—before they entered college! Who would think of mentioning that the mother lost her sleep in the early part of the night, several times in the dead of the night, before the morning nap?"

After a night of such watching, exhausted and weary, she uncomplainingly goes about her home cares and duties. At breakfast, all are served with food and drink before she tastes of her own. Indeed, the husband's cup is refilled oftentimes, while her own cup, growing cold, stands untasted. The children are made ready for school, and she gives them their good-by kiss with a smile in her eyes and a tender love-note in her voice. At dinner, at lunch, it is the same.

Does the house mother ever tire of her little round of duties? "Shut in by four walls!" The walls stretch as far as the love, knowledge, and interest go—from ocean to ocean, continent to continent, as the plants are transplanted. Aye! even to heaven itself.

The mother does not need to be mentioned in a character sketch. Her name is in large letters on the heart of every boy and girl, every man and woman. Nothing can narrow her outlook or influence, even tho she is never mentioned in a Law Review. She dies, and her friends, after a time, forget her, but her influence, thru her children's children, till time is no more, goes on.

The house mother who has no children to arouse her in the early morning, no baby to disturb her slumber in the middle of the night tries to think her life is the life of blessedness, because it is the life of ease. A soul can be dwarfed, just as a plant is dwarfed, by depriving it of its full environment. It may have no knowledge of its own atrophy. It can not even dream of the bliss it has never known. Ruskin says: "I do not wonder at what men suffer, but I wonder often at what they lose." The four walls without the children to "disturb and annoy," may seem to hold the life of comfort, but it is in the seeming only. There is, to each such an one, denied the Holy Grail, for it is only by the life of loving self-sacrifice and self-abnegation that the Vision Splendid can be discerned.