The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-01-19

IL we spoke truthfully. like Sisera's
mother, she is at the palace window.
She has become a 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 Sisera's
mother, but there is in that scene of
the Book of Judges so much about en-
broideries 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 glorifed mother sits. but 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 golden
candlesticks, that we know the heaven
ly residence of our mother is superb, is
unique, is colonnaded, is domed, is en-
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 a con-
trast between that celestial surround
ing and her once earthly surroundings.
What work to bring up family in
the old-time way, with but little or no
hired help, except, perhaps, for wash
ing day, or for swine slaughtering, COM
monty called the killing 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 darn
ing, the patching, the millinery, the
matchmaking, the housekeeping, and
in hurried harvest time helped spread
the hay or tread down the load in the
NOW. Some of those mothers never
got rested in this world. Instead of
the self-rocking cradles in 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 ht-rock-rock-
rock-rock Instead of our drug stores
filled with all the wonders of materia
medica. and called up through tele-
phone, with them the only apothecary
short of four miles ride was the gar
ret, with its punches of peppermint
and pennyroyal and catnip and mustard
and camomile flowers, which were ex-
pected to do everything. 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
But if any one keeps on asking the
question: Where's mother?" Ianswer.
she is in your present character. The
probability is that your physical feat
ures suggest her. If there be seven chill
dren in a household at least six of
them look like their mother and the
like her. But l 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 impression made for virtue or
vice, for truth or falsehood, for bravery
or cowardice, for religion or skepticism.
start out from behind a door
and Brighten the child and you may
shatter his nervous system for a life
time. 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
day, and it were baleful to
have thirteen at the table, or see the
moon over the left shoulder, and he
will never recover from the idiotic SUI
perstitions You may give that girl
before she is 10 years old a fondness
for dress that will make her a mere
dummy Frame" or fashion-plate for
forty years. Ezekiel xvi. A: ''As is
the mother so is her daugh-
ter" Before one decade has passed
you can decide whether that
boy shall be Shylock or a George Pea
body. Boys and girls are generally
echoes of fathers and mothers. What
an incoherent thing for mother out
of temper to punish child for getting
mad. or for a father who smokes to
shut his son up in dark closet be-
cause he has found him with the stump
of an old cigar in his mouth; or for that
mother to rebuke her daughter for
staring at herself too much in the look
ing glass, when the mother has her
own mirror so arranged as to repeat
her form from all sides The great En-
glish poets loose moral character was
decided before he left the nursery, and
his schoolmaster in the school room
overheard this conversation: Byron,
your mother is fool" and he an
swered, II know it" You can hear
through all the heroic life of
Senator Sam Houston the words of his
when she in the war of 1912
put a musket in his hand and said:
There, my SON. take this and never
disgrace it, for remember l had rather
all my sons should fill one honorabl
grave than that one of them should
turn his back on an enemy. Go, and
too, that while the door of
my cottage is open to all brave men, it
is always shut against towards"
Agrippina, the mother of Nero, muir
deress, you are not surprised that her
son was murderer. Give that child an
overdose of catechism and make him
recite verses of the Bible as punish
ishment and make Sunday bore, and
he will become a stout antagonist of