Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1889-07-15
She Has Outlived Her
Usefulness.

On being questioned as to his bust
ness, he replied: 81 have lost my
mother, and as this place used to be
her home and as my father lies here,
we have come to lay her beside him. -
Our hearts rose in sympathy, and
we said, 'sYou have met with great
loss"
s'Well-yes, replied the strong
man, with hesitancy, 'sa mother is q
great loss in general, but our mother
had outlived her usefulness. She was
in her second childhood, land her mind
had grown as weak as her body, so
that she was no comfort to herself
and was a burden to everybody.
There are seven of us sons and daugh-
tiers; and as we could not find any
body who would board her,we agreed
to keep her year about. But /
have had more than my share of her,
for she was too feeble to be moved
away when my time was out; and
that was more than three months be-
fore her death. But then she was
good mother in her day, and toiled
hard to bring US up"
Without looking at the face of the
heartless man, we directed him to the
house of neighboring pastor and re-
turned to our nursery. We gazed at
the merry little faces which smiled or
grew sad in imitation of ours, those
little ones to whose ear no word in
our language is half so sweet as
smother - and we wondered if that
day could ever come when they would
say of us, "She has outlived her use
fulness-she is no comfort to herself
and a burden to everybody else !"
and we hoped that before such day
would dawn we might be taken to our
rest. God forbid that we should out
live the love of our children! Rather
let us die while our hearts are part
of their own, and our graves may be
watered with their tears and our love
linked with their hopes of heaven.
When the bell tolled for the moth
er's burial we went to the sanctuary
to pay our only token of respect TO
the aged stranger; for we felt that
we could give her memory tear, even
though her own children had none to
shed.
''She was good mother in her day,
and toiled hard to bring us all up
she was no comfort to herself and
burden to everybody else! ~ These
cruel, heartless words rung in our
ears as we saw the coffin borne up
the aisle. The bell tolled long and
loud, until its iron tongue had chron-
icled the years of the toil-worn moth
err. -three-four-ive
How clearly and almost merrily each
stroke told of her once peaceful slum-
Der in her mothers bosom, and of
her seat at nightfall on her weary
fathers knees. SiX-seven-eight-
nineteen rang out the tale of her
sports upon the greensward, in the
meadow and beside the brook. Eleven
more gravely of school-days and lit
tie household joys and cares. Six
teen-seventeen- eighteen sounded
out the enraptured visions of maiden
hood and the dream of early love.
Nineteen brought before us the hap
py bride. Twenty spoke of the
young mother, whose heart was full
to bursting with the new, strong love
which God had awakened in her bo-
som. And then stroke after stroke
told her of her early womanhood-of
the loves, and cares, and hopes, and
fears, and tolls through which she
had passed during these long years,
till fifty rang out harsh and loud.
From that to sixty each stroke told
her of the warm-hearted mother and
grandmother, living over again her
own joys and SORROWS in those of her
children and children's children.
Every family of all the group want
ed grandmother then, and the only
strife was who should secure the
prize; but, bark, the bell tolls on
Seventy-seventy-o e-two-thPee-
four. She begins to grow feeble, re-
quires some care, is not always pa
tent or satisfied; she goes from one
child's house to another, so that no
one place seems like home. She muir
murs in plaintive tones, and, after all
her toll and WEAKNESS, it is hard she
cannot be allowed home to die in
that she must be sent rather than in
vited from house to house. Eighty
eighty-one- wo-three-four. All,
she is now a second child-now s'she
has outlived her usefulness, she has
now ceased to be a comfort to her.
self or anybody that is, she has
ceased to be profitable to her earth
craving and money-grasping children.
Now sounds out, reverberating
through our lovely forest, and echo
ing back from our "hill of the dead"
eighty-nine There she lies in the
coffin, cold and still-she makes no
trouble now, demands no love, no
soft words, no tender little offices.
A look of patient endurance, we fan
cied also an expression of grief for
unrequited love, sat on her marble
features. Her children were there
clad in weeds of woe, and in irony we
remembered the strong mans words,
"She was a good mother in her day."
When the bell ceased tolling the