Morgan County democrat. (Versailles, Mo.) 1900-1906, 1905-04-21
BY MARGARET E. sANGsTER.

HVCly jill uuo " -
though there is a prevalent impression
to the contrary. A woman nay have
children of her own and not possess an
iota Of that personal Joy and immense
conservation which we fancy is an i'm
portant element of motherhood. Sim
ply because she Is a wife, a mi does
not care for her child. There are wom-
en- who have never married, and who
will be spinsters to their latest day, who
yet passionately love and adore chill
dren; who have, though they may never
crafty it, the fullness of the mother
heart.
Not long ago a couple were arrested
and brought before a justice of the peace
in a New Jersey town for abandoning
their child. The mother had taken the
baby, with its little bundle of clothes.
and a small sum of money, to a sort of
founding asylum, begging the good
women who carried on that institution
to take charge of it, as she did not want
to be disturbed. In court, she said, and
her husband agreed with her, that the
invasion of her home by an infant was
wholly undesirable. I'VE did not want
and will not be bothered with the baby,
il we can help ourselves" said both
those unnatural parents. An extreme
instance, of course, but not isolated.
A mother who has brought up a family
very creditably, said to me in a burst of
irritation: What anyone sees to love
in a baby, a little, u~nresponsive piece of
flesh and blood, that has to be washed
and fed and picked up and put down like
furniture, I cannot understand. |
never loved my babies, endured them.
When they were older, they were more
interesting, but then they We're objects
of discipline, and l had endless annoy
ance with their manners, and an ever
lasting fuss with their mumps and
measles. Only when my children have
grown up have | had good times with
them. If | could have had them grown
up from the first l would have been sat
isfied."
This lack in some women of the moth
er-heart explains why women so often
fail when they undertake the offices of
a s~tep-mother. A man, seeking a sec
ond wife, usually, with the hero of a re-
tChL SIcl OetldItS. WOuIu ask no
woman to marry me who would not be
good to and fond of my little ones"
This is the conviction, firmly fixed, in
the breast of the widower. also a father,
when he goes out to look for a wife. The
woman he courts, probably honestly
means to do her best by his children,
whom she idealizes in her fancy, sup
posing them to be little angels in great
need of petting, caressing and manag-
ing. She does not dream much about
the plain prose of bringing up children
OF assorted sizes, from the nursery up:
children who miss their own mother
dumbly and unspeakably, and who have
probably been taught by servants and
kindred to be suspicious of and resent
full to the one who steps into that moth
er's vacant place. The husband, alb
sorbed in the new love, takes for grant
ed, after the name of men, that all is
we'll with the children. OF the number
less infelicities and the occasional in
justices, he takes no note. but unless
the stepmother have a double portion
in her of the mother-heart, woe be to the
children.
It is not that the true mother-heart
leans always to indulgence. One cannot
cas- its depth by such a wand as
that. Mother-love is infinitely patient
and compassionate, but it takes note of
faults and cOrrects them. When step
mothers correct faults, they must blend
their reproofs with tact, or they will be
misunderstood. Children are very
quick to know where there is real sym
patty and, in short, the mother-heart.
Rose Terry Cooke told OF a hard-fisted
sour-faced New England farmer, whose
first wife faded out of existence like a
frost-bitten flower, leaving a sickly babe
to an unkind world. The step-mother
arrived in due time; a big, buxom, fear
less, Quick-tempered, w%arm-hearted
,reature, who met her chuilish husband
on equal terms and exacted fair treat.
ment. She mothered the pallid boy into
%sturdiness and beauty, and when her
own babies came, treated all alike;
spanked and kissed the whole brood i'm.
partially, and had the success that a
woman with the mother-heart always
has with children.
Mrs. Oliphant, in whom the mother,
nature was predominant, has put on rec.
ord in her autobiography, her extrava
n OF Joy at the birth Of every child
and her profound and inconsolable erie,
when death snatched away one of he
babies. Thirty-six years after her little