Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1872-02-09
Is the Mother of Young Family to
be Pitied ?
BY A MOTHER.

/
many of my friends pity me. Not all
OF them are candid enough to tell me
this in so many words--some show it in
their looks, Others act it out, but few
take me by the hand and say ''liy dear,
! am downright sorry for you"
1t has been curious, and / confess a
somewhat amusing study for me to- OBJ
serve that these good people pity me-
not because they see the trials that |
feel, but because, imagining themselves,
with their ideas and elegant surroundings,
placed in the predicament of having so
many children, the difficulties seem ap-
palling. They don't stop to think that
the evil Gas they look at it, has come ON
very gradually at intervals of year or
two, and that by now have had time to
get used to it and that all my former am
bition to have elegant dresses and to be
a stylish housekeeper is laid away for
season.
Mrs. Keepenstraight says: :" If you
would only manage your children better
you would not have half the trouble
with them that you do now. When
child knows enough to cry, it knows
enough to learn somethin'. Everybody
knows a child that amt fool cries
when it is born, and then's the time to
commence to eddicate them, | say. If
you had brought your children up as |
did, they never would cried after the
first week or two, and after they had
been washed and polished and dressed
the first thing in the morning, there'd be
no more trouble with them than the
chairs and tables"
| am conscious that l look at her in
dreamy sort of way, as I hug my baby
tighten in my arms, for am thinking of
three little graves side by side in the cold
churchyard, and of the small square
marble sacred to their memory, and that
this is all that is left of the theory of
Mrs. Keepemstraight.
Mrs. Allchapel don't see how it is that
| can consent to be absent from the
sanctuary so much. "Just think of it,"
she says, sometimes you don't hear a
gospel sermon for six or eight consecutive
Sabbaths, and that pretty lavender hat
you had last summer you didn't wear to
meeting three times, aud all because you
had so many children. should think
you would feel as though you could not
have it SO.
Mrs. Evershine often comes in to see
me, because she says it does her good,
and makes her more contented to see
how cheerful | am under adversity (by
this last word she means my children, |
suppose), but she always acts as though
| allowed my darlings to make dining
table Of the parlor sofa. She glances at
the chair, and turns up her velvet cloak
and sits on the veriest corner, bolt up
right. She told neighbor of mine that
my house looked neat always, but then
how could it be clean with SO many chill
dren?
Mrs. o-it-Brown, one of your thor
oughly neat, childrenless, white.aproned
who devotes all the energies of
her capacious mind to keeping her house,
herself, her husband and mother-in-law
neat and clean-never by any chance
ieviating from this object in life thinks
when she remembers me: If | had to
have those children, if / had to have the
doors left open on me every few minutes,
and the dust and dirt blown in from the
street on my brocatel furniture, and to
have mud on my kitchen floor and wet
feet on my sitting-room lounge-had to
have my sewing machine scratched and
The chair slaves marked, and my door
knobs creased, and my window-panes
fingered, and the tablecloths knife-cut,
md the china broken, and my glasses
cracked, and the nap worn off my car
pets, | should go out of my mind or die.
know she feels in this way, for not
ong since when she was fretting about
ler troubles, having such inefficient help,
and the vexation of changing servants
70 often, and that it took unfinching
vigilance to keep everything just as clean
Is it could be, and 1 ventured to say,
And if you had as many children as I
navel" she turned and looked at me
With peculiar expression of pity and
corn, and said, / should go out of nv
mind or diep
Well, but am to be pitied? Let us
zee. These people are lonesome, weary
# themselves, filled with ennui. Now /
lave no chance to be lonely, very little
ime to think about myself, and as to
Rnai, why the thing is absurd-I only
inow 1t by word and heresay. These
'eople feel that they can depend abso-
utely on no ones friendship, while 1
now that | and my children love one
mother. What sort of an old age do
hey anticipate? Their own friends