Connecticut western news., 1905-11-16

life" "Oh," you say, "I had a goo6 mother. She certainly did for me wha she could.'
 EuIogy of Mothers.
 Cannot we all say that our mothers have broken for us the aIabaster box of ointment of spikenard very pre- cIous upon our heads, anl that they did what they could? Cannot we be as eulogistic of our mothers as Sir TEom- as More was of his? When Thomas More was q very little boy his mother went off on visit. He wrote to her his first letter and ended it thus:
 Your absence all but Fl endure.
 And none so i'll as Thomas More.
 As he grew older and came to great fame he still seemed to feel that he could not do anything un;eSS he had first gone and tod her and asked her advice He wrote every detail of his lHe to her. He wrote to her almost Sery day of the week. At her death
 lere were found over 1000 letters epned to her by her noble son. And Iene of the last acts which he did be- fore she died was to send one of his books to her with these beautiful words written upon the fly leaf: For her who was the critic of my first in fant productions l have transcribed the few little essays that follow. The critic praises from the head-the moth CT praises from the heart. With one 1t is a tribute of judgment-witht the oth- CT it is. gift from the soul" Was not that tribute of England's great statesman to his mother most beauti- full? Yet cannot we all give our moth CTS the same tribute? Was there in our youth any worthy or meritorious act that was not of her suggesting or inspiring?
 Is not our position in the world to- day Il tribute to her for what she did for us? X great cave. like the Man. moth cave of Kentucky. has lately been discovered in Tasmania. Travellers tell us that after the torches have been put out some of the caverns of that cave are ablaze with light from the millions of glowworms which are kin ding their phosphorescent lanterns up- on the walls and the roof of rock. So every place in the dark corridors of the past Is ablaZe with the lights of ma ternal self sacrifice. We see these lights at the cradle; we see them bril- liant at the sick bed; we see them at college hall and afterward In the strug- gles of our professional and mercan- tile careers. Wherever we went, as long as our mothers were alive, we knew that they were doing for us the best they could. Ah, many and many is the time they broke for us the ala baster box of ointment of spikenard very precious! Today we lay our gar lands of tribute upon the graves of the beloved mothers who cheerfully did for us what they could.
 But next to our mothers l would speak of the mothers of our children. As 1 praise the sweet faced woman who bent over our cradle 1 would now say few words in reference to the wives who have stood by us so faithfully and nobly during our struggles of young manhood and middle age and, l hope, will continue so to do in our old age if God will let them live until their hair Is whitened and their step becomes infirm. When I look into the past l see how awful might have been the results If we had had bad mother in- stead of a good mother. In the same way shudder as think of what our lives would have been if our wives had been selfish or lazy or unworthy in stead of being the self sacrificing, de- voted women whom God has given Us.
 Influence of Wives.
 The older I grow and the more I see of of EnsseH nsseHH the the. - beiieye-eat they are. to a gre, ent. the outgrowths Of wha-T s.-.n -wIves have done for them. Every husband, as rule. ap- pears to me the representative of a wife whom perhaps I have never seen. When Victor Hugo reached his seven t.eth birthday his friends from all over the world sent to him gifts of flowers. His home was simply deluged with them. Showing one of his rooms filled with flowers to a friend, he turned and said: Flowers to me have an individ- ual flavor. They speak the peculiar language of the people who send them. Now, most of the donors of these flow CTS I have never seen, and yet from the flowers themselves I can tell who my friends are That magnificent lily came from a French florists green house. The friend who sent me that must have been a well to do Parisian. This bunch of herbs could only grow on the Garonne, and that blue star flower can be found nowhere but in Normandy" Thus he went on, giving the history of the different baskets and bouquets and collections of wild flow CTS which had been sent to him as birthday gifts. AS Victor Hugo read the characters of his unseen friends by the language of the flowers, I read the characters of wives by the conduct of their husbands.
 Inevitably when you find a conse- crated, earnest man working for Christ in the church you will find a noble, devoted wife back of that man, who Is chiefly responsible for that mans consecration. Of course there
 
 tions do not destroy the rules. So h. variable has been my experience In this respect that when I find a man joining the church whose wife thinks more of card parties and dances and club meetings and dinners than she does of her prayer meetings I have but little hope of that man being an active or spiritual church member. I have known many women to stay in the church as faithful, loyal workers in Epite of goddess husbands, but I have In only two or three instances known husband to be true to his church vows If he has an indifferent or a god less wife. My brother, I believe, that next to our mothers the human beings who have had the most to do with our religious conduct have been our godly, consecrated Christian wives.
 Our wives have broken their alabas-