The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1881-06-01
What Mother Says.
BY MRS. d. H. R. GooDALE.

What mother says presupposes--the home,
and by home / mean not merely the center
of physical life, but the home in its subtle
entirety, as the nursery of the germs of
moral and intellectual power, and even as
the final test and arbiter of all institutions,
laws and organizations. For all these de-
pend upon the home, which is itself the
highest yet the simplest, the purest, the
most exaoting, the most steadfast, the most
progressive of all mans institutions.
For what is a homer
1t is our measure oil life. For the home
we dip our cup in the Universe. Here we
bring whatever we are able to assimilate.
Here we hedge about with all the reserves
of exclusive choice whatever we hold most
dear.
And for this home. real or but at dream,
man takes up all the burdens of active life.
For this home the mother must speak.
She is the central unit of the life there. The
home In which she presides is the meeting
place of the ideal and the real. We touch
bottom in our constant care for the print
tive needs of humanity. With what jeal-
Gus sol tude do we watch for the preparation
of the food hat is to become the 6rm, sweet
flesh of the growing girl, the milk and roses
Of the baby boys cheek. But we aspire,
also, to the highest Heaven in laying found
atoms of character for the children, Tor
whom we expect the highest things. For
them, what dreams can be too high, too
great? Shall they not begin where we end
To these, to all the mother dispenses homely
comfort, but not as forgetting higher cheer.
For these young immortals need for their
nourishmeDt the very bread of Heaven; and
their demand So great, so righteous is also
awfully immediate, for babies will not wait
a single hour, but will grow straight on TO
men and women. The body can not stop
for the soul. Give it bat its own food, and,
whether mind and heart nave theirs or not,
in a few brief years the girl or the lad looks
into your eyes with level glances, and God
pity you if those eyes be full of reproach for
possibilities ever lost.
From cares such as these the mother
comes in everyday dress, with a faithful re-
gard, indeed, for all beauty and fitness, but
without my studied adornment which
would conflict with the greatest common
usefulness. She asks freedom to speak, and
even provided it be always with a ''sseet
reasonableness') to speak with some author
iLy, as one who has studied social problems
with the keenness of vital, practical in
terest.
LII tucso thlhS HOtuluB 5naii 10 saoOOOu'
Whatever forms a part of life enters in
some way as a factor into the home and is
subject to its verdict. Doubtless, then, we
shall find here the questions of the hour, rs
they arise, as we'll as those which specially
affect the foundation of BODYBUILDING and
the arts of housekeeping.
Truth is many-sided. In the atmosphere
Of the home which best suits things simple,
sincere, essentially honest, and unpreten-
tious, we sometimes get a new aspect of
grave affairs. Many an object of greedy
pursuit, in the chase for which human lives,
human hearts are recklessly sacrificed, looks
in this cool light but a vulgar, worthless
thing. Sometimes, contrsriwise, the hope
to which one would gladly devote life seems
to the eager throng in the busy ways of tie
world too faint, too unreal to provoke any
earnest struggle
The spirit of the age, in these tumultuous
DAYS. strives with the same painful unrest
for the intangible as for the tangible good.
The passionate yearning to give help, the
passionate study of all systems, all creeds,
for vital strength and comfort for the sor-
sows and needs of humanity, is not less
strong in woman's heart than in mans.
Life is no longer less serious to woman than
TO man. She can not live apart from its true
realities. Why should she not bring to
them her best attention, her quickest intel
ligence, her mother-wit2 Why should she
hesitate to speak frankly of things of real
import, or to seek to outline that view of
truth which is gained from the impersonal
vet characteristic outlook of the mother in
the homer