Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1850-1854, 1854-01-06
Single Women.

Not being mothers on their own account
they have leisure to be mothers for everybody
else. What blessing in the circle of the
families to which she belongs is an unmar-
ried sister, She watches by the aged father
or mother with vestal's fidelity, while her
sisters and brothers abandon the old home
stead for Cupid, or cupidity. Who so ready
as she to solace the bereavement of friend,
all of whose earthly hopes have been swallowed
up in the grave9 To the widowed brother,
her sympathetic voice and spontaneity of
kindness, seem almost like return from the
tomb of the idol he had laid there; and to
the bereaved sister, whose stay and support
have been stricken down, she becomes, as it
were, the strength of another manhood Next
to the mother herself, she is the last to cease
her expostulations with hayward daughter,
or her efforts TO reclaim an unfilial son. To
children bereft of parents, she becomes both
father and mother and trains unconscious Or
phanage in the way it should go.
How Protean her capabilities of usefulness,
transforming herself by turns into friend,
nurse, physician or spiritual guide Into the
grave companion of the old, or the frolicsome
playmate of the young, as ever-varying occa-
sion may demand! Who does not know
that when any child of all her kindred is deaf
or blind, or halt, or whom stepdame nature
has matreated in any other way, a never fail
ing resource is found in the universal {" Aunty,"
as though she kept a full assortment of eyes,
and ears, and faculties fer all kinds of impo-
tent folk Then, for the children's dresses,
does she not always know the latest style;
for their learning has she not seen the sagest
books; and for their health, has not she the
newest cure alls all by heart? And O! for
the romping and registering groups of the
nursery, does she not carry all the toy shops
of France and China in her pockets? Who,
of all the household, can help paying homage
to such divinity, even though it sometimes
does seem as though she would Kill us with
kindness?
Outside, and beyond the family relation,
this parsonage often becomes kind of pub
lie character, though without the envy or
the odium which attaches to the notore:y Of
public men. As teacher of schools, how
she shames the wisdom of the lawgiver and
the retributions of the Judge, by saving where
they sacrifice and redeeming where they de-
stroy! To hospitals for disease and suffering,
to prisons for penal retribution, to receptaces
for reformation from deepest debasement and
guilt, how divnely does she come, her head
encircled with halo of heavenly light, her
feet sweetening the earth on which she treads,
and the celestial radiance of her benignity
making vice begin its work of repentance
through very envy of the beauty of virtue .
The two Misses Fellows, of Boston, within
the last ten years, have found homes for more
than thousand destitute orphan children,
carrying on this warfare against ignorance
and perdition, as the apostle said, at their
oaon charges. What mothers, unless it be
such as the mother of Washington, deserve
so much as they, the admiration and homage
of mankind ?-Horace Mann.