Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-10-10

| used to. They cannot bear to have the
grandchildren punished even when they
deserve it and have so relaxed their
! ideas Of family discipline that they
! would spoil all the youngsters of the
household by too great leniency. These
old folks are the resort when great trou
bles come, and there is calming and
j soothing POWER in the touch of an aged
hand that Is almost supernatural. They
! feel they are almost through with the
journey of life and read the old Book
more than they used to- hardly know
/ ing which most they enjoy, the Old
1 Testament or the New, and often stop
| and dwell tearfuIly over the family rec
/ ord half way between. We hail them
! today, whether in the house of God or
4 at the homestead. Blessed is that house
! hold that has in it Grandmother Lois
! Where she is angels are lowering round,
and God is in the room. May her last
days be Ike those lovely autumnal days
that we call Indian summer!
Is it not time that you and do two
things-sw swing open picture gallery Of
the wrinkled faces and stopped shout
ders of the past and call down from
their heavenly thrones the godly grand
mothers, to give them our thanks. and
then to persuade the mothers of today
that they are living for all time and
that against the sides of every cradle in
which a child is rocked beat the two
eternities?
Cradles Across All Time.
Here we have an untried, undiscussed
and unexplored subject. Y on often hear
about your influence upon your own
children. I am not talking about that.
What about your influence upon the
twentieth century, upon the thirtieth
century, upon the fortieth century, up
On the year 1000, upon the year 1000,
if the world lasts SO long: The world
stood 1000 years before Christ came.
1t is not unreasonable to suppose that
it may stand 1000 years after his ar
rival Four thousand years the world
swung off in sin, 4, 900 years it may be
swinging back into righteousness By
the ordinary rate Of multiplication of
the worlds population in q century
your descendants will be over 800, and
by two centuries over so, 600, and upon
every one of them you, the mother of
today, will have an influence for good
or evil. And if in four centuries your
descendants shall have with their names
filled a scroll of hundreds of thousands
will some angel from heaven. to whom
is given the capacity to calculate the
number Of the stars Of heaven and the
sands of the seashOre, step down and
tell US how many descendants you will
have in the four thousandth year of the
worlds possible continuance? Do not
let the grandmothers any longer think
that they are retired and sit clear back
out Of sight from the world feeling that
they have no relation to it. The moth
ers Of the last century are today, in the
person Of their descendants, in the SEN
ates, the parliaments, the palaces, the
pulpits, the banking houses, the profess
siOnal chairs, the prisons the aims
houses, the company of midnight brig
ands, the cellars, the bitches of this
century. You have been thinking about
the Importance of having the right in
huence upon one nursery. You have
been thinking of the Importance of get
ting those two little feet on the right
path. You have been thinking of your
child's destiny for the next so years if
it should lass Oh to be an octOgenarian.
That Is we'll, but my subject sweeps
a thousand years, million years, a
quadrilliOn Of years. [ cannot stop at
one cradle; am looking at the cradles
that reach all around the world and
across all time. l am not talking of
Mother Eunice. am talking of Grand
mother Lois. The only way you can tell
the force Of a current is by sailing up
stream, or the force of an ocean wave
by running the ship against it, Running
along with it we cannot appreciate the
force.
In estimating maternal influence we
generally run along with it down the
stream Of time, and so we don t under
stand the full force. Let US come up to
it from the eternity side, after it has
been working on for centuries, and see
all the good it has done and all the evil
it has accomplished multiplied in mag
nificent CT appalling compound interest.
The difference between that mothers
influence on her children now and the
influence when it has been multiplied
in hundreds of thousands of lives is the
difference between the Mississippi river
away up at the top of the continent
starting from the little Lake Itasca,
seven miles long and one wide, and its
mouth at the gulf of Mexico, where ma
vies might ride. Between the birth of
that river and it's burial in the sea the
Missouri pours in, and the Ohio po1rs
in, and the Arkansas pours in, and the I
Red and White and the Yazoo rivers
pour in, and all the states and terrific
ries between the Allegheny and Rocky
mountains make contribution. Now, in I
order to test the power of a mothers
influence, we need to come in off the |
ocean of eternity and sail up toward I
the one cradle, and we will find TO- 600
tributaries of influence pouring in and