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A Mother's Love

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 15, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 3.

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A Mother's Love

By George R. Scott

GEORGE R. SCOTT
A naughty boy stood in William Street, New York, defying his mother's commands.
The mother of the boy was poorly clad, and gave abundant evidence in her speech that she had never been graduated from a college.
The boy was of the common order of street Arabs. The mother was a woman who had no doubt seen hard times from the day she was born.
But that fond mother said to that wild boy, "If you will do what I want you to do, I will love you more than ever."
The words that caught my ears brought me to the realization that I was standing in the presence of a loving mother pleading with her disobedient boy.
She was only a poor, hard-working woman. The clothes on her back were hardly worth the trouble to put on. Her speech was not the language of refinement. But there were tears in her eyes that were worth more than costly diamonds. She possessed a mother's heart that was filled with love for her wayward offspring.
Perhaps she did not know enough to bring up her boy properly, but there are thousands of rich women who have boys even worse than her boy.
She said her boy was bad, but within the space of ten minutes that boy felt the effect of his mother's tears; for he walked up to her and said a few words, and then they both wended their way home.
As they walked toward the East River, I had a good opportunity to look that mother in the face. The marks of the tears were still on her cheeks, but a strange smile could be seen on her face; it was the smile that only a victorious mother can exhibit.
The boy looked sheepish; but his mother had evidently conquered him, for in a meek tone of voice he addressed her more than once by the endearing name of mother.
As they passed out of my sight, perhaps never again to be seen by me, a wish stole over me to follow them and take a look at the home where they reside. But in this world we all have about as much as we can do at times to attend to our own business, and that was my condition as the mother and her boy disappeared on their way home.
Several times in my life have I seen strange exhibitions of mother love.
Years ago I stood by the side of a swiftly running stream in the western portion of this State. It ran alongside of a railroad track. There had been a heavy spring freshet the day before, and on account of a washout a freight engine and two of the cars had jumped the track and fallen into the stream. The water was so clear that the engine could be seen at the bottom. Under that engine was supposed to be the body of the fireman.
On the bank of that river stood the mother of that young fireman. She stood there and declared her intention to remain standing there until the body of her boy was rescued from the bottom of the stream.
The look of that mother haunts me still. Her eyes were unlike the eyes of those around her, for they had a stare that made me shudder. Her voice was so low that what she said could hardly be comprehended. The only words that I could make out were, "My darling boy is dead; I want him!"
For some hours it was my painful experience to see that mother's emotions. Her chest heaved as if under it were troubles that created waves of distress. She did not utter a groan nor shed a tear. The people all around her were excited, but that mother gave no such evidence of the effects of the sad accident. She looked so awful that it occurred to me that her heart must have been broken by the stroke of death that had robbed her of her boy.
There I stood, also, looking at the cold waters that were rapidly running over the unseen body of her boy and at the face of a mother who loved her boy better than she did herself.
It was a picture I do not want again to behold. The combination of warm mother love and cold death do not make a desirable picture.
I got into a car and left the scene, but the scene would not leave me. In the chamber of memory the picture hangs still, and that mother's face is now as "familiar as household words."
Here is another picture, more pleasant to behold. It is a mother seated among a crowd of notable personages, watching for the moment when her boy would take the oath of office as President of the United States. It was not my good fortune to see that sight; but those who did will never forget it. On that old lady's face was a smile that meant more than she could say. Her boy was to her the greatest man that this country had ever produced. Thousands of voters had said that he was not their choice for the presidency; but the lips of that good old mother would have been only too willing to declare that he was the best boy and the best man that had yet been born.
She, too, looked upon her boy with a steady gaze that no one in that crowd could keep up. Mother love peered out of her eyes and feasted on the scene.
How many grand, loving mothers who read this article, will say in their hearts, "I love my children with a love that cannot be quenched."
One day I was riding in a car on my way to speak in a penitentiary. In the same car was a woman who was going there to see her boy. She talked to me about him as if he were an angel rather than a housebreaker. Mother love poured from her heart in streams. Her boy had his good points in the estimation of his mother. When I was inside of that penitentiary, her boy told me he was bad, but his mother did not say so. In her great love she had wiped out the sins of her boy from her thoughts. She seemed to know her boy only as he was before sin had painted him the color of the devil.
The young housebreaker and the mother kissed each other as best they could under the circumstances. The boy showed the effects of the life he had been leading; but the mother looked as if she had "been with Jesus" and learned of him how to win back her boy to her home and heart.
That mother could not feel proud of her boy, but she could not help showing to others how she loved him. Did I blame her?—No; for she was a loving mother, and could not have acted differently.
The heart of a loving mother is like some portions of the ocean—unfathomable. You may think you have reached the bottom of a mother's love; but when you get there, you have only begun to penetrate the grandest part of true womanhood.
Did you ever see a mother bending over the body of a sick child? The soft words of cheer are slightly moistened by her tears. There is love in every sentence. Where did that mother, perhaps uneducated, get such soothing sentences? Shall I tell you? Yes; out of the well of love.
If, peradventure, the child looks up and faintly smiles, you can see that joy immediately takes possession of the heart of that watching mother angel. Again she dips her lips in the waters fresh from the same old well, and new words of cheer drop into the ears of her sick child.
The doctor's medicine may have done its part toward the restoration of the child; but mother's love will give the finishing touch that will enable that loved one to get up and walk about once more.
What clinging properties there are in mother love. To her bad boy or girl a mother says, "I will not let thee go!" The more her children strive to break away from her, the harder she clings to them.
If I never saw the wrestling match between Jacob and the angel, I have seenwrestling matches between good mothers and bad children that ended in a victory for mother love that ought to have made a deep impression on the children.
A mother's love is the strongest cord that binds a boy or girl to the old home. And it is a cord that is hard to break. It may sometimes be badly stretched; but it holds.
When your children leave you, be sure to tell them that the latchstring is hanging on the outside of the door night and day; that they need not even knock, but only pull the latch and walk in.
If your children left the house under a cloud when darkness encompassed them, the best thing for you to do is to put lights in the windows that will keep bright every pathway that leads into the house.—New York Weekly Witness.