Connecticut western news., 1894-01-18

back so natural, and so sweet, and so 1n- nocent, and so inquiring that the dream breaks at the words, Where's nlother;"
 If that question were put to most of us this morning, we would have to say, if we spoke truthfully, like Sisera's she is at the palace window. She has become queen unto God for ever, and she is pulling back the rich folds of the kings upholstery to look down at us. We are not told the par ticulars about the residence of Sis era's mother, but there is in that scene in the book of Judges SD much about and needlework and ladies in waiting that we know her residence must have been princely and palatial. So we have no minute and particular description of the palace at whose win dow our glorified mother sits, but there is so much in the closing chapters of the good old book about crowns, and pearls big enough to make a gate out of one of them, new songs and marriage suppers, and harps, and white horses with kings in the stirrups, and golden that we know the heaven ly residence of our mother is superb, is unique, is colonnaded, is domed, is em- powered, is fountained, is glorified be- yond the power of pencil or pen or tongue to present, and in the window of that palace the mother sits watching for news from the battle. What con- trast between that celestial surrounding and her once earthly surroundings!
 yIok ko I~sx, foy,o sI11 1T, the old time way, with but little or no hired help, except perhaps for the wash ing day or for the swine slaughtering, commonly called ''the killing day!'
 OLD FASHIONED MOTHERS.
 There was then no reading of elabo- rate treatises on the best modes of rear ing children, and then leaving it all to hired help, with one or two visits a day to the nursery to see if the principles
 announced are being carried out. The most of those old folks did the sewing, the washing, the mending, the darn ing, the patching, the millinery, the mantua making, the housekeeping, and in hurried harvest time helped spread the hay or tread down the load in the now. They were at the same time ca terers, tailors, doctors, chaplains and nurses for whole household all togeth- CT down with measles or scarlet feveA- or round the house with whooping coughs and croups and runround fin- gers and earaches and all the infantile distempers which at some time swoop upon every large household. Some of those mothers never got rested in this world. Instead of the self rocking cra- dles of our day, which, wound up, will go hour after hour for the solace of the young slumberer, it was weary foot on the rocker sometimes half the day or half the night = rock-rock rock = rock. Instead of our drug stores filled with all the wonders of materia med ica and called up through telephone, with them the only apothecary short of four miles ride was the garret, with its punches of peppermint and penny royal and catnip and mustard and cam omile flowers, which were expected to do everything. Just think of it! Fifty years of preparing breakfast, dinner and supper. The chief music they heard was that of spinning wheel and rocking chair. Tagged out, headachy and with ankles swollen. Those old fashioned mothers-if any persons ever fitted. appropriately into good, easy, heaven, they were the folks, and they got there, and they are rested. They wear no spectacles, for they have their third sight-as they lived long enough on earth to get their second sight-and they do not have to pant for breath after going up the em- erald stairs of the Eternal palace, at whose window they now sit waiting for news from the battle.
 But if any one keeps on asking the question Where's mother?" I answer, She is in your present character. The is that your physical fea- lures suggest her. If there be seven in household at least six of them look like their mother, and the older you get the more you will look like her. But speak now especially of your character and not of your looks. This is easily explained. During the first 10 years of your life you were al- most all the time with her, and your father you saw only mornings and nights. There are no years in any life so important for impression as the first 10. Then and there is the impression made for virtue or vice, for truth or falsehood, for bravery or cowardice, for religion or skepticism. Suddenly start out from behind door and frighten the child, and you may shatter his nerv- ous system for lifetime. During the first 10 years you can tell him enough spook stories to make him coward till he dies. Act before him as though Fri day were an unlucky day, and 1t were the moon over the left shoulder, and he
 will never recover from the idiotic su- perstitions. You may give that girl be- fore she is 10 years old fondness for dress that will make her mere ''dum- my frame, or fashion plate, for 40 years. Ezekiel xvi, A, ''As is the mother so is her daughter. Before one decade has passed you can decide whether that boy shall be a Shylock or a George Peabody. Boys and girls are generally echoes of fathers and mothers. What an incoherent thing for mother out of temper to punish a child for getting mad, or for father who smokes to shut his boy up in dark closet because he has found him with an old stump of cigar in his mouth, or for that mother to rebuke her daughter for staring at herself too much in the looking glass when the mother has her own mirrors so arranged as to repeat her form from all sides The great English poets loose moral character was decided be- fore he left the nursery, and his school master in the schoolroom overheard this conversation: Byron, your mother is a fool" and he answered, 1T know it.
 You can hear through all the heroic life of Senator Sam Houston the words of his mother when she in the war of 1812 put musket in his hand and said: There, my son, take this and never disgrace it, for remember had rather all my sons should fill one honorable grave than that one of them should turn his back on an enemy. Go and remem- 1aw %<~ %Er< ,l.. 1-x AI