Maternal Responsibility. - Mothers, though willing to sacrifice life itself for their families, often neglect the things that count most in the general summing up.
I knew a mother who was an exquisite housekeeper. Everything was spotless. The rooms fairly groaned under their burdens of fancy work. The housewife never spared herself. To her a meal seemed incomplete if she had not exhausted her vitality and good nature in its preparation. Still, it is safe to say that many a three-roomed tenement has in it more of the true home spi~it than this immaculate dwelling place. The mother and home-maker had simply failed to grasp a true idea of what constitutes the real necessities of a home.
Her little daughter - as the teacher expressed it - was "the most elaborately dressed and the worst scholar in the class". The hours the mother spent fashioning these frocks and in laundering their numerous frills, were worse than wasted; they were an actual menace to the child and furnished an unfortunate example for the other pupils.
This same mother came to me some time ago, heart-broken over the waywardness of her only son. He was a wanderer on the face of the earth, a ne'er do well. She could not understand why. Still, I knew that in all the boy's life the mother had never taken time for one heart to heart talk with him. The father also had been too busy to get acquainted with his own son. Strangely forgetful of his past youth, he regarded every boyish escapade as proof of general good-for-nothingness.
But nothing comes by chance. What we sow we reap. In this case, the boy's career was the logical result of home influences which led naturally and inevitably to disaster.
Had the mother spent some of the time squandered on the little girl's clothing and other unnecessary work in wholesome companionship with the children she might have saved her boy and at the same time avoided the mistake of so completely filling her little daughter's mind with superficial ideas of dress and display that her school work was neglected. The true gospel of dress is to be suitably clothed for the occasion or work in hand.
Artistry and elegance are not of necessity a matter of large expenditure of money or of elaborate display. Good taste - even if no higher motive is invoked - requires care of clothing as it does of house furnishings. Cleanliness, promptness, order, minimize the friction of life immeasurably.
A Real Home. - I know another home where the house keeping is never permitted to interfere with home making. There are a few rules lived up to so naturally that no one is aware that they restrict. In that home, mother's room is a little sanctum where all joys and sorrows receive a wise and sympathetic hearing, with father also ready to give advice on weighty matters.
Last Christmas a dear daughter of the house came home bringing that wonder of wonders, the first grandchild; and it was a pretty sight to see her carry the tiny, wise-eyed mite to "the sanctum" and there tell her all about the dear old room and the secrets its walls had heard. No one could doubt who heard them that the baby understood.
In this home, father, mother and children have ever been loving comrades standing loyally together.
Said the eldest son to me on this occasion as he watched the proud grandparents bending in loving welcome over the little stranger, "I have never heard either of my parents criticize or question the motives of the other. They just naturally seem to pull together."
Here is the secret of harmony in the home. They have pulled together. Verily, a "house divided against itself shall not stand". In such homes are young lives nurtured into strength and beauty. Parents of this type have not thought so much about governing their children as of teaching them to govern themselves. If more children were trained in this way, the men and women of the future would be positive entities in whose hands the laws of God and man would be safe from violation.