The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1883-04-28
A PLEA FOR THB sIRsPaaeq Ser
Writer Contends shat tbs Stsphiothsr Is
Much-Abused Character.

How many books do we still take up
in which the plot turns on the cruel ma
chinations of stepmother, and surely
writer's ought TO be wiser now. They
make the very name hateful; itseems to
ring with unkindness and injustice, and
far be it from US to say that the proto-
type is nowhere. to be found Cold
-hearfedness and oppression toward the
children of one who has preceded her
in heart and home are no doubt at times
to be met with, but cannot many house
holds tell another tale-a tale of love
and gentleness, and mutual affection
and peace? And cannot, too, some homes
tell a third story where the sufferer is
the one who is looked on as an inter
loperp Are there not cases where man
Whose hearth has been early desolated,
and who is left with little ones whom he
cannot look after, with heart still
yearning for affection, brings home some
warm-hearted girl, ready to pour out no
stinted measure of love on the mother
less ones; tand what do he and she find
on settling down to their daily life? That
foolish relatives or ignorant servants
have already. poisoned the baby mind
against their second mother, and that
all her efforts TO win their affection and
trust are blighted by the unholy infiu-
ence that has been welded. And when
other little children come, too often, in
stead of being welcomed with brothefly
or sisterly love, they are greeted with
feelings of bitterness and jealousy. Nor
is this only so when the children, ma
turally perhaps, have a feeling that they
may be deprived by stranger of part
of their birthright Cases there are.
where hundreds have been added to the
income bysuch marriage hundreds not
even settled on the woman who brought
them to a comparatively poor house
hold; and yet she was set aside as a
nobody" treated with cold insult by.
stepchildren, and undefended by her
husband. We might tell of sick-beds
watched with all mothers devotion;
of dying hours soothed- with all "a moth
er's faithful self-forgetfulness; of the
young spirit sinking to the grave, cling
ing with fond affection to the represent,
alive of that real parent whom it was
soon to greet in the spirit land; and we
turn with just anger from pictures laid
before us as false as they are ill-judged.
Into how many households must the
second mother be brought, or they could
never hold togethere How many fam
lilies must consist of the children of the
one father, but of two mothers; and is
it well that young minds should be pre-
JUDGED against a state of things in so
many eases a necessity. But in the nov
ell orthe tale a youthful Hero or heroine
is the more interesting the more he or
she suffers under the domestic roof, and
that suffering is supposed to be mosts
easily wrought by the 'tstepmother2 -
Let us hope that truer view will be
taken of this relationship; that the yul-
gar feeling with regard 90 it Ca feeling
showing itself SO plainly in some local
tiles that the name of stepmother is
given to the most painful thing on the
finger, sometimes called hang-naiD
may ere long pass away from amongst
us; and that, as at lastthe loHg-despised
''old maid is meeting with justice and
kindly judgment. the same may be melted
with no stintin9 hand to the often long
suffering and much-slandered ''step-
mother