The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1890-11-07
An Appeal 10 Mothers.

Home. In you | have beheld my own
every other true mothers face to me. Nor
would | here or elsewhere think that had
a right to come to you with loving exhor-
tation did I not know that !, too, have a
| NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. that has always loved,
| cherished and ached for that most winsome
and most hayward OF all children gone
astray-Humanity.
Let me then come to you with trust and
tenderness about the Juvenile temperance
work, and may Gods Spirit help me to
Law that wonderful work upon your hearts.
| For | nave learned in these thirteen years
| of constant journeyings, ih which the OBJ
| stacles to its success have become known
to me in a thousand different towns and
cities, that chief among them all is the in
difference of mothers, and next, the diff
Guilty Of getting grown people to conduct
| the juvenile society. Not in a single in
stance has it been reported that 1.-The
children didn't want a society, aud
wouldn't come." The little enthusiasts
were always ready mean. as a class
and when the society suspended, as it often
did, for the two reasons just given, they
would stop the temperance ladies on the
street and say, when will the Loyal
Legion Cor the Band of Hope) begin
AGAIN."
But let me show you how the mothers
Indifference has blocked our progress, and
| will quote just what mothers have said
until their words have passed into un-
cauny proverbs among our workers:
81 cannot take nay boy from play,
be mas SO little recreation;" 81 can
tell Johnny that he shall go, and then
he will, but he likes to be outdoors, and
undertake to tell him. My child belongs
TO SO many societies already that hardly
ever see hifG, and | want him all to myself
once in awhile;" Il am SO busy thSt |
CONES"
Now, mother dear, it seems to me that
for all these excuses there is one exp.ana-
ton, and you don't know how pitiful that
temperance training of the little one,
founded upon a failure to appreciate the
relation OF that training to the child's
character and usefulness IN future life.
never allow myself to believe that any
mother is really careless about the best ill.,
terests of those who are her nearest and
her dearest. But she lacks ''the arrest of
thought she has not appreciated at its
true value the systematic drill that would
have fortified her children against tempta-
ton and made them practical workers in
philanthropy from the outset OF their
lives.
If She can but perceive and feel the
truth about this training, She will hence
forth count the gospel temperance educa-
tion of her ones second to nothing except
her own religious teaching in the home.
She will see that whoever takes the pains
to teach them that the body is the Temple
OF Gods Spirit, and that pure habits are
b1S a. VI - oAN 10 eaN VI
friend they have next to their parents; that
a ''Thus saith Nature, thus saith Reason
and '"Thus said the Lord,' for total alb
s%tinenee from alcoholic liquors, tobacco,
and profanity. drilled into the forming
brain OF childhood and hidden in its plastic
heart, means Christian manhood and
~womanhood, and Christian citizenship, too,
when childhood is outgrown.
1t is the fact of statistics that of every
one hundred men " no reform from drink
ing habits, ninety return to those habits
again, while of every one hundred boys
and girls who sign the pledge, ninety re-
main true toit through life. 1t Is also a fact
that two.thirds of the Band of Hope child.
rem stand in front rank at school for de-
pertinent and for scholarship.
Now if your children were taking music
them off in time; but what is the ability tc
drum on a piano compared with the fixed
determination, based upon the reason why,
that they will never let brain poisons have
dominion over them?
When it is time to go to school how
careful you are to get them started, but
how much less important is arithmetic
than the solving of the problem of a life
kept pure IN the midst of temptation;
and how much less useful is the geography
that bounds a state than hat which locates
on the chart Of life the maelstrom oil
moderation and Niagara of drunkenness,
while it marks out the sure, safe water
way" Of total abstinence? You may say,
Il can teach them all this at home
Happy is it for them if you do, but in you
busy life it is doubtful if you have become
such an expert in this teaching as oul
modern methods aud facilities have ena.
blod the modern Juvenile temperance
teacher to be. Besides, there is a mutual
strength and helpfulness, a CHEEKY esprit
de corps in the association of children
banded together with a common aim to
fight a common enemy, such as no isolat
ed training can impart. Line upon line,
precept upon precept, craven on the brain
aud worked into the warp and wool o