The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1908-10-10
A MANS MOTHER.


hold in yours the wrinkled ol6 hands
Scatter a few of the flowers o.
tenderness and appreciation in her
pathway while she is still alive and
can be made happy by them.
Don't wait to put all your affections
and gratitude and reverence for her
into a costly ton of marble inscribed
with the word, "Mother."
Don't wait to throw all of your
bouquets on her grave. It's mighty
doubtful whether an angel in heaven
takes any interest in cemeteries or gets
any satisfaction from re-visiting earth
and contemplating hattering tomb
stone but is utterly, certainly certain
that you can make your old mothers
heart sing for JOY by showing her,
while she is alive, just one tithe of the
love aud appreciation that you will
heap upon her when she is dead.
These words are written for some
one particular man who reads this
page. I do not know his name, but
l know his story. He is a middle aged
man, married, prosperous. He is a
good man, highly respected, and he
hasn't an idea but what he is doing
his full duty by his poor old moth
er, who lives in his home and whom
he supports. He supplies her wants.
She eats at his table, is sheltered by
his roof, is warmed by his fire, is de-
Gently clothed by him-but that is
all.
He neglects her.
He never has word of affection
for her.
He never pays her any little atten-
tions.
When she ventures.an opinion. he
quietly ignores it.
When she tells her garrulous old
stories, as old people will, he does
not even try to conceal how much he
Is bored.
In thousand unintentional ways the
old mother is made to feel that she
is cumberer of the ground, an i'm
pediment in the household, an old
fashioned and useless piece of furni-
ture of which every one will be glad
to be rid.
Under this coldness and neglect the
poor old mothers heart is breaking,
and in letter, written in trembling,
and feeble handwriting, she asks me
If 1 cannot say something that her
son will read and that may make him
think.
All, if I only could
If I only could say to him: "Man,
man, give love as well as duty to
your mother. Give her the wine of
life as we'll as the bread. Don't for
get the woman who never forgets
you %
Of course the man will say, and
truly, that he Is busy, overworked,
care -burdened that he has the claims
of wife and children upon him that he
A. s'IsCn ala1is-Aia. tlxo,srh sheer nhvsi-
cal WEAKNESS and overstrair.
Granted. But your mothers life
has not been an easy one. Your
father was poor man, and from the
day she married him she stood by his
side fighting the wolf from the door
with her naked hands, as woman
must fight.
She worked, not the eight or ten
hour day of the union, but the TWEEN Z.
ty-four hour day of the poor wife and
mother.
She cooked and cleaned and scrub
bed and patched and nursed from
dawn until bedtime, and in the night
was up and down getting drinks for
lips, covering restless little sleepers,
listening for croupy coughs.
She had time to listen to your sto-
ries of boyish fun and frolic and tri-
utnph.
She had time to say the thing that
spurred your ambition on.
She never forgot to cook the little
dishes you liked.
She did without the dress she need
ed that you might not be shamed by
your clothes before your fellows.
Stop, man, and think what life
would have been to you If she had
treated you in your childhood as you
are treating her in her old age
Suppose there had been no warm,
caressing mother loveP
Suppose there had been no soft
breast on which you could weep out
your childish sorrows, no clinglng
arms to enfold you and comfort you
when the things of your little world
went wrong?
Would it not take away from you
the memory Of all thar is best and
sweetest in lifel Is there anything
else so pitiful on earth as the little
child that is motherless-that is an
alien in a strange home-that has no
one to love it?
Yes, there is just one other figure
more forlorn than the little unloved
child and that is the old mother who is
unloved by children she has raised and
who Is doomed to spend the last years
of her life in a glacial atmosphere OF
neglect, her devotion, her labors, her
sacrifices forgotten. Remember then
now while there Is yet time, while
she is living, to pay back to her IN
love and tenderness something on ac'
count this very night.
Go home and put your arm around
the shrunken old figure. Kiss the
dropping old mouth with real, live
warm kiss instead of giving her a per
functory peck on the cheek. Tel
her that she is the greatest mother
man ever had and that all you are
she made you.
1t will cause her very soul to Leaf
with Joy, and make the world place
of circling Joy, and life itself swim il
a rosy mist of bliss for her-if she
doesn't drop dead with surprise
PHILADELPHIA Bulletin.
"THEsE are the bridal rooms, an
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