The Bossier banner., 1894-02-15
broideries and needlework and ladies

So we have no minute and particular
description of the palace at whose win
dow our glorifed mother sits, out there
is so much in the closing chapters of
the good old book about crowns, and
pearls big enough to make gate of
one of them, new songs and marriage
suppers and harps, and white horses
with kings in the stirrups, and gold
en- candleSticks, that we know the
heavenly residence of our mother
is superb, is unique, is cOlonnaded,
is domed, is embowered, is fountained,
is glorified beyond 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 a contrast between that celes-
tial surrounding and her once earthly
surroundings. What a work to bring
up family in the old-time way, with
little or no hired help, except, perhaps,
for the washing day, or for the swine
slaughtering, commonly called kill
ing day" There was then no reading
of elaborate treatises on the best
modes of rearing children, and then
leaving it all to hired help, with one or
two visits 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 darning, the patch
ing, the millinery, the mantua
making, and housekeeping and
in hurried harvest time helped spread
the hay or tread down the load in the
NOW. They were at the same time
caterers, tailors, doctors, chaplains
and nurses for a whole household all
together down with measles or scarlet
fever, or round the house with whoop-
ing-coughs and groups and run-round
fingers and ear aches, and all the in
fantile 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 cradles of our day, which,
the solace of the young slumberer, it
was weary foot on the rocker, some
times half the day or half the night
ck-rock-rock-rocz Instead of
our drug stores filled with all the
wonders of materia medica, and
called up through a telephone
with them the only apothecary
short of four miles ride was the
garret, with it's punches of peppermint
and pennyroyal and catnip and mus
tard and camomile flowers, which were
expected to do everything. Just think
of it! Fifty years of preparing break
fast, dinner and supper. The chief
music they heard was that of spinning
wheel and rocking-chalr. Tagged out,
headachey, and with ankles swollen
Those old-fashioned mothers-if any
persons ever fitted appropriately into
a good easy, comfortable heaven, they
were the folks, and they got there and
they are rested. They wear no spec
tacles, tor 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 emerald stairs of the eternal
| palace, at whose window they now
sit waiting for news from the battle
But if anyone keeps on asking the
question: where's mother?" l an
swer, she is in your present character.
The probability is that your physical
features suggest her, if there be seven
children in a 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. Dur
ing the first ten years of your life you
were almost 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 ten. Then and there is the i'm
preston made for virtue or vice, for
truth or falsehood, for bravery or
cowardice, for religion or skepticism.
Suddenly start out from behind a
door and frighten the child and
you may shatter his nervous sys-
tenn for a lifetime During the
first ten years you can tell him
enough spook stories to make him a
coward till he dies. Act before him
as though Friday were an unlucky day,
and it were baleful to have thirteen at
the table, or see the moon over the
left shoulder, and he will never re-
cover from the idiotic superstitions.
You may give that girl before she is
ten years old a fondness for dress that
will make her mere dummy brame, ~
or fashion-plate for forty years. Eze-
kiel, xvi, Al. "As is the mother SO is
her daughter" Before one decade has
passed you can decide whether that
boy shall be a Shylocl or a George
Peabody. Boys and girls are general
ly echoes of fathers and mothers.
What an incoherent thing for moth
er out of temper to punish child for
getting mad, or for a father who
smokes to shut his boy up in
dark closet because he has
found him with an old stump of a
cigar in his mouth; or for that mother
to rebulle 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 de-
cided before he left the nursery, and
his schoolmaster in the school room