The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1898-10-22
steady themselves by the b.nist.rs a.

steady themselves by the bAnisters ~
they go up and down. When they get
q cold it hangs on them longer than II
used to. They can not bear to have
the grandchildren punished even when
they deserve 1t, and have so relaxed
their ideas of family discipline that
they would spoil all the youngsters OF
the household by too great leniancy.
These old folks are the resort when
great troubles come, and there is q
calming and soothing power in the
touch of an aged hand that is almost
supernatural. They feel they are al
most through with the journey of
life, and read the old book more than
they used to, hardly knowing which
most they enjoy, the Old Testament
or the New, and often stop and dwell
tearfully over the family record half
way between. We hail them to-day,
whether in the house of God or at the
homestead. Blessed is that household
that has in IL grandmother Lois.
Where she is, angels are lowering
round and God is in the rooom. May
! her last days be like those lovely au-
tumnal days that we call Indian sum-
mer!
Is it not time that you and do two
things-swing open a picture gallery
OF the wrinklcd faces and stopped
shoulders of the past, and call down
from their Heavenly thrones the god
ly grandmothers, to give them our
thanks, and then to persuade the
mothers of to-day that they are living
for all time, and that against the sides
of every cradle in which child is
rocked beat the two eternities?
Here we have an untried, undis-
cussed, and uneXplored subject. You
often hear about your influence upon
your own children; l am not talking
about that. What about your inhu-
ence upon the twentieth century, upon
the thirtieth century, upon the for
tieth century, upon the year 1000, upon
the year 1000, if the-world lasts SO
lohg?J The world stood 1000 years be-
fore Christ came; it is not unreason-
able to suppose that 1t may stand 1000
years after His arrival. Four thou
sand years the world swung off in sin,
1000 years il may be swinging back
into righteousness. BY the ordinary
rate OF multiplication of the worlds
populati ton in a century, your descend
| ants will be over 500, and by two CEN
turtles over $4,000, and upon every one
OF them, you, the mother of to-day,
will have an influence for good or
evil. And if in four centuries your de-
| scendants shall have with their names
| filled scroll of hundreds of thou
| sands, with some angel from Heaven.
| to whom is given the capacity to cal
| culate the number of stars of Heaven
| and the sands of the seashore, step
| down and tell us how many descend
ants you will have in the four thou
| sandth year of the worlds possible
| continuance? Do not let the grand
mothers 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 mothers
of the last century are to-day in the
| person of their descendants, in the
| scnates, the parliaments, the palaces,
the pulpits, the banking houses, the
| professional chairs, the prisons, the
almshouses, the company of midnight
| brigands, the cellars, the bitches of
this country. You have been think
! ing about the Importance of having
! the right influence upon one nursery.
You have been thinking of the inn
portance of getting those two little
| feet on the right path. You have been
thinking of your child's destiny for
the next eighty years, if it should pass
on to be an octogenarian. That is
well, but my subject sweeps thou
sand years, million years, quadril-
lion of years. l can not stop at one
cradle, | am looking at the cradles
that reach all around the world and
across all time. i am not talking of
mother Eunice. / am talking of
grandmother Lois. The only way you
can tell the force of current is by
sailing up stream; or the force of an
ocean wave, by running the ship
against it. Running along with it we
can not 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 il from the eternity side, after il
has been working on for centuries,
and see all the good it has done and all
the evil it has accomplished multiplied
in magnificent or appalling compound
interest. The difference between that
mothers influence on her children
now and the influence when it has
been multiplied in hundreds of thou
sands of lives, is the difference be
tween the Mississippi river away up al
the top of the continent starting from
the little Lake Itaska, seven miles long
and one mile wide, andits mouth at the
gulf of Mexico, where navies might
ride. Between the birth of that river
and its budial in the sea the Missouri
pours in, and the Ohio pours in
and the Arkansas pours in, and the
Red and White and the Yazoo rivers
pour in, and all the states and terri
tories between the Allegheny ant
Rocky mountains make contribution
Now, in order to test n mothers infu
ence, we need to come in off the ocear
of eternity and sail up toward the one
cradle, and we will find 10000 tribu