Help Your Mother | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 14, 1865

Help Your Mother.

"GEORGIA, come and make some yeast," said Mrs. Grey to her daughter. It was Saturday morning, and there was a great deal to be done; for Mrs. Grey's family was large, and she kept no servant. Georgia made the yeast, and then left the kitchen and went to her chamber, to read in a new novel which had been lent her.

"Georgia! Georgia!" called her busy mother several times; but there was no Georgia to be found. She then tried Jane. "Here, Jane, come and see to the fire; my hands are in the dough. I wish you wouldn't all get off out of sight and hearing, when there is so much to do. What is Agnes about?"

"Finishing the hook-mark," was the reply.

"Go and tell her to put that right away, and sweep the parlor, and set it to rights. Find Georgia, and tell her to do up the chamber-work, and do you stay here to help me."

"Yes, mother," was the obedient reply.

The girls all obeyed their mother's orders. They never thought of doing otherwise; but they never thought of doing anything without orders. The whole care of everything rested on their mother, quite as much now when she was fifty years of age, feeble and very weary, and the mother of three healthy, full grown daughters, as it did when she was in her prime, with a hand of little ones around her. Perhaps the first fault had been her own; perhaps she had not rightly trained her girls; but they were old enough now to amend their mother's mistake. They knew very well, how miserable her health was; but they did not seem to realize, as everybody else did, that unless she could be quite relieved from care and labor, her life would soon be over. Every day she groaned with weariness, and at night, and in the morning her limbs were so stiff she could hardly bend them.

"Mother, why in the world don't you make the girls do more?" asked her husband almost every day of his life; and as often Mrs. Grey replied, "O, they do a great deal! They are always willing to do all I ask them. They are a great help to me." Just like a mother! She can always be woefully imposed upon, if her children are thoughtless and mean enough to do it, and she will never own that she is imposed on. She will shield her children to the last.

The Grey girls were always willing to do what their mother bade; but they were not always ready.

"Come, Jennie, 'tis your turn to build the fire for supper to-night. Run out and do it, 'tis almost six o'clock," Mrs. Grey would say.

"Yes, in a minute." In ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes, Mrs. Grey would speak again.

"Yes, mother, I'm just going."

But it would be sometimes nearly dark before there would be any actual move, and the father and brothers would be home from their day's work, hungry, and of course, cross, when they saw that supper was behind-hand. It is vain to deny, Parson Chaplain Quint, that as a general thing, a hungry man is a cross one. All woman-kind can testify to this serious and suggestive fact. Poor Mrs. Grey was so tired of perpetually repeating directions, and of the effort of causing them to be seasonably and properly carried out, that she often and often did the work herself, when she felt hardly able to crawl, rather than to try to get the girls to do it. Oh, how thoughtless and unfeeling these daughters were! They quietly allowed the mother to do all that she would; but they were rewarded. They loved their mother, and they were not really very cruel or wicked girls. Could they have had one glance a few months forward, how utterly changed would have been their conduct. But not one of us can see a moment before us.

Suddenly the devoted mother was missing from her post in the kitchen. She was to be waiter and drudge no more. She died; but had she been cared for and cherished as she should have been, she might have been the companion and comforter of her husband and her children for many happy years. When they saw the tired feet at rest, the worn hands folded, the dim eyes closed at last, self-reproach took hold upon them, and they wept. They felt that they might have kept her. They remembered all their lazy, careless ways, and how worn out with care and toil, they had allowed their mother to become. Every groan they had heard her utter came back to them, and they were filled with remorse for all that they had failed to do. The weeks and months only showed them more and more plainly, what they had lost, and how guilty they had been. But it was too late to make atonement. All they could do was to lay the lesson to heart, and try to improve by it. This they all did, and they cherished the memory of their dead mother as they never had cherished her.

If any girls who are walking in the ways of the Grey girls, will but take warning by their punishment, they may perhaps, escape a similar one. There are few agonies more hard to bear, than to look on a dead face, most near and dear, and feel that our treatment has hastened the parting hour. God save us all from that!—Springfield Republican.