The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1893-05-24
Keeping Up with the Children.

She was a woman of middle age, thin
and plain, with no claim to beauty ex-
eept the eager dark eyes shining star
like from a wistful, care-lined face.
Twenty years ago she had slipped her
trustful hand into that of another, and
counting the world well lost for the
sake of her love and faith, had entered
upon life of such toll, privation, and
heroic endurance as only women in
frontier settlements, amid primitive
conditions, know. 81 have tried my
best" she said, simply, "to keep up
with the children. Father and l re-
solved, when our first boy was baby,
that, stint and scrape and connive as
we might, we'd educate all that heaven
sent us. And we have done what we
could. | wasn't willing that my chill
dren should get ahead of me; I've tried
TO study their lessons with them, and
to enter into their feelings. 1 don't
want them to outstrip me in the race"
This mother had been one of those to
whom early rising and late retiring had
been always essential, in order that the
routine of the house work should not
suffer. In that part of the country
where she lived, hired help for domes-
tic purposes was almost unheard of;
women did their own work, a neighbours
daughter sometimes lending a kind
hand in an eXigency, and the men of
the family doing their share at need. In
her determined effort to keep step with
her children in their intellectual devel-
opment, she had in another direction
builded better than she knew; for the
children, boys and girls alike, had early
been pressed into her service, and had,
as she explained, taken hold" of
whatever was to be done. The bows
could make beds and set tables as well
as draw water and split wood. The
girls were facile housekeepers, with a
practical knowledge of cooking and
laundry work-in American society as
essential in the outfit for life to the
richest as to the poorest. Though the
living in the household was plain, it
was abundant, and the ideal set before
the family was something nobler than
a mere strife for wealth. Everything
was open and above-board. Books were
read and priced in common, and so
much was going on to interest every
body that there was no temptation to
devour poisonous tidbits in secret. So
it came to pass that the keeping up with
the children brought great good in its
wake. At last day dawned when the
mother felt as if the first stone had
been set in wall of separation. Two
of her brood had found their wings. A
daughter was going TO college. A son
was entering upon a business career.
The little wistful woman yearned to
keep pace with them both, yearned
perhaps to ordain the pathway of both,
as she always had done. But it was
inevitable that there should be some
parting of the roads. Brave as she
was, she kept down heartache under
her CHEEKY show of courage. Have
comfort, DEAR" said an older friend,
who had been through similar expe-
rience. "The children will never out
grow you; you had twenty years.
start of them. And you have so dis
ciplined your mind and trained your
heart, and elevated your own thoughts
above the daily rut, the fret, and the
stir, that you dwell in serene atmos-
phere, favorable to expansion of every
faculty. They may acquire facts, but
they will fly like honey-laden bees back
to the hive. The mother who has kept
pace with her children from babyhood
TO adolescence will never lose them"
-Harper's Bazar.