The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1897-05-20
Written for The Prison Mirror.
THOUGHTS OF MOTHER.

"Language' said Rousseau, "never
framed grander, more tender, more
the first our infant lips has uttered, re-
mains with us through all the vicissi-
tudes of life, an ever firm yet tender
bond to home and childhood. Mother!
its mention stirs the wayward mind to
its very depths. AS the zephyr-stirred,
2Olian strings sound forth their softly
blown and changing strains, needless
of the gamut; so comes to us softer,
purer, sweeter breath, to vibrate the
chords of memory, to linger lovingly,
o'er.that unbounded scale as its echo
ing cadences sound living melody
mothers love for her child through
the changeful years of life.
The bloom of innocence may fade
from the cheek of the child; the flush
of shame may mantle the brow of the
youth; the garb of the felon may clothe
the form of the man; sin and shame
and crime may dwell in the heart
where faith andinnocence once reigned;
yet, through all, childhood, youth and
age, prosperity and adversely, in health
and affluence, in misery and want, in
sickness, despair or disgrace, greeting
death mid mourning friends, or meath
the ignominy of the scaffold. Ay! cen
to the grave and beyond, that love
shines forth, fervently and softly, ever
cleaning, never fading, Venus un-
dimmed by the MONDAY sun; like the
Pharos of old casting it's frightening
CLEANS DER the storm. swept seas; guild
ing the drifting navigators to haven
of rest; so beyond the rugged coast
line of life, there CLEANS like emana-
tions from one infinite love, the count
less beacon-lights of mothers love
athwart our course to guide us on to
the harbor of better, purer, truer
life.
Go to the magnificent palaces of roy
atty, your elegant dwellings of the rich,
filled with all the luxurious furnish
ings of culture and refinement, master
pieces of art and literature, rare rugs,
laces and bric-a-brac, everything the
heart may crave or gold can buy. Are
they homes? Only when filled with
the radiant lovelight from a mothers
eyes. What a picture Burns has given
us in "The Cotter's Saturday Night"
That home so mean and humble, the
parents uncouth and poor, existence a
constant struggle with capricious fate.
Yet its thatched roof and plastered
frame contains the shrine of a mothers
love, the altar of filial devotion. With
these such home was happier one
than Nero's Golden House" or the
million dollar mansions and their
shrines to wealth and fashion. A
mothers love, truly, will satisfy the
craving that the wealth of Cresus, all
the sands of Pactolios could not as
suage.
Enter our cities gloomy tenements,
teeming with their living misery; see
the half-clOCned, lll-fed, WreCched ap-
pearance of their human drift, each
moment of life battle with starva-
tion and sin, sickness, disease and
death; visit the haunts of the evil, the
brutal, the vile, where the gaunt hide
Gus harpy of crime, and infamy hovers,
an ever-present spectre, plutonian
shade, under whose protecting shadow
the disciples of Cacus and Circe hold
their nauseous revelry, even under the
shadow of "The Dials," give Points,"
'"The Bowery" and their smaller coun-
terparts in every city in the land, even
there we find the heaving bosom, the
glistening eye, the softened look and
| lowered voice, sometimes the betrayed