The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-10-10
WHEN SHE is OLD.
How Often Does Age Disillusion the Fond
and Ambitious Mother.


and Ambitious Mother.
Grown old, the mother is times
3orrowfully clear-sighted and freed
from the blessed illusions of youth.
When her children were little things
playing about the door, and tucked
into bed at night, all safe and sweet
and rosy, she had her dreams of their
future. There was nothing too bright,
too brave, too beautiful, for her imagi-
nation and her hope as she looked at
her darlings. sleeping or waking. AS
they grew older, went to school, and to
college. or into the shop and the count
3ng-room, the mother still dreamed
and planned, still wove her enchanted
stories, in the center of which she saw
her children, heroes, professors, schol-
ars, benefactors, champions of the
weak, defenders of the helpless, orna-
ments of the age, and renowned-to-be.
Her Frank, her Charles, her Sydney,
whatever others might do, they were
bound to excel, to stand in the van. to
reap the rewards, to scale the heights,
TO discover the long hidden secrets.
But there dawns day upon the
mother when, grown old, as wrinkles
and grey hairs testify, she renews the
wonderful keenness and acuteness of
childhood; she sees the dropping of
many masks; she comprehends things
as they are. Past the hour of dream
ing and of building, past the
clouds and the mirage, her vision is
like that of one of Gods angels.
She sees her children not remarka BILE
In any way above others, not specially
endowed with gift or grace, not grand
or noble beyond the common lot Of
men. They are respectable citizens,
honest. handwriting and patient.
With a wonder half-touched with awe,
the mother beholds the dark hair of
her first-born streaked with gray, thin
in patches, and notes his early stoop-
ing shoulders and the lines of care on
his forehead. His children are grow
up around him, and his wife is thought
less; she makes many demands on the
silent toiling fellow.
The mother, wiser and tenderer than
once, does not sympathize with her
imiddle-aged son in spoken words, and
ishe never hints that he is in any way a
disappointment to her. Perhaps she
was to blame. At some turn in the
road, at some critical point, the thing
she did or did not do might have
changed everything. Who can tell?
The mother grown old has a harder
fate than this sometimes. Her chill
.dren are not merely comforta BILE, COM
monplace, kindly-eyed people, doing
ltheir duty quietly in the state where
God has been pleased to place them.
They are not a credit to her, nor to
their name or their upbringing. Hard,
marrow, selfish. possibly mean, cring-
ing. dishonorable, sordid, the mother
shamestricken at the sight of the men
and women whom her young arms
Graded
Even then she is pitiful. and when
Others turn away in anger or disgust,
she patiently watches, hoping that the
winnowing winds of fate will drive
away their chaff and show some grains
of wheat. The mother in her never
tires, never ceases to love, never for
gets to pray. and it is to her that they
turn when all the world turns against
them; and the children, wandering and
wellnigh worthless, are kept from ut
ter failure and receive their latest op-
portunity for repentance and reha bill
tation through mothers unfaiiing
goodness and undying fidelity.-Har-
per's BaZar