Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1894-01-19

SO many maternal foreheads. You see
it is question that keeps on for all
the years of childhood. Itcomes from
the nursery and from the evening
stand where the boys and girls sre
learning their school lesson, and from
the starting out in the morning, when
the tippet or hat or slate or book or
overshoe is lost, until at night all out
of breath the youngsters come in and
shout until you can hear them from
cellar to garnet, and from front door
to the back fence of the back yard.
where's mother?' Indeed n child s
life is so full of that question that if
he be taken away one of the things
that the mother most misses and the
silence that most Expresses her, is the
absence of that question, except she
hears it in a dream which sometimes
restores the nursery just as it was, and
then the voice comes back so natural
and so sweet, and so innocent, and so
inquiring, that the dream breaks at the
words, where's mother?"
If that question were put to most of
us this morning, we would have to say,
If we spoke truthfully, like Slsera'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 in
the Book of Judges" so much abCdt
embroideries and needle work 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 window our glorifed mother
sits, but there is so much in the clos
ing 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 candle-sticks,
that we know the heavenly residence
of our mother is superb. is unique, is
colonnaded, is domed, is uncovered, is
fountained, is glorified, beyond the
power of pencil or pen or tongue to
present, and in the window of that pal
ace the mother sits, watching for
news from the battle. What contrast
between that celestial surrounding
and her once earthly surroundings.
What work to bring up a family in
the old-time way, with but little or no
hired help, except perhaps for the
washing-day or for the swine-slaugh-
tering, commonly called the "lSilling-
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 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 patching, the millinery,
the darning, the mantua-ma1ing, 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 caterers, tailors,
doctors, chaplains and nurses for a
whole household all together down
with measles or scarlet fever, or round
the house with whooping coughs and
groups and run-round fingers and ear
aches, and all the infantile distempers
which at some time swoop upon every
large household. Some of those moth
ers never got rested in this world. In
stead of the self-rocking cradles of our
day, which, wound up, will go hour
after hour for the solace of the young
slurnberer, it was weary foot on the
rocker sometimes half the day or half
the night - rock - rock-rock-rocl1
Instead Of our drug stores filed 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 garnet, with its
punches of peppermint and penny
royal and catnip and mustard and
camomile flowers, which were eX-
pected 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-chair. Tagged
out, headachey, and with ankles swol-
len. Those oldfashioned mothers-if
any persons ever fitted appropriately
into good, easy, comfortable 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 emerald
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?" | answer,
she is in your present character. The
probability is that your physical feat
ures suggest her. If there be seven
children 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 Dur
ing the first ten years of your life you
were almost all the time with her, and
your father you saw only mornings