The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-01-12
EVENING CHAT
By RUTH CAMERON.

| AN I'll have tomatoes and cucum-
| bers and lettuce in the bed behind the
barn and some beans in the other one,
and Bonnie Martin is going to help me
weed on shares, an just know I can
sell everything down to the provision
Loomis' fathers vegetables last sum
mer and said he wished he had
more-an'-an-Pm going to save the
dollar grandma gave me Christmas for
seeds and all the money I get doing
errands, and mama, please, please can't
I have this spring rag money!"
With this final breathleSs query Philip.
who had been lettering frantically back
and forth from one foot to another in
front of his mother, flung himself into
with an eagerness that it seemed to
me must draw consent from a heart of
stone.
Evidently there is some substance
harder than stone for this was what
Phillip got for an answer:
mo. you can't, Phillip, not for any
such nonsense. I know just what 1t
would mean. You'd have a whole lot
of dirty boys around here tracking in
dirt and losing all our garden tools,
forget all about wedding and it wouldn't
come to anything at all. You help your
father with the flower beds and guess
that's all the gardening you'll want.
And now you go right out and wipe
your feet. You've tracked in a lot Of
snow
Were you ever all at once conscious
of a cloud passing over the sun on
beautiful bright day by the sudden
wiping out of the sunlight in the room
or the landscape?
Well that's lust the way the beauti-
full light of enthusiasm that had been
shining in Phillips eager little face
went out-iust as if it had been sud-
denly blotted out
I should think Phillips mother would
have wanted to cry when she saw it.
But she didn't showsthe slightest sign
of any such desire. Instead she turned
to me and remarked impatiently:
81 never saw such boy for crazy
have hay to pip. some sgsh robustness zoo ism S.. N
Think of it.4nHalf a dozen times in
a day that wonderful, eager enthusiasm
that made Phillips snub nosed freckled
little face almost beautiful, was rouSn-
ly blotted out.
And yet there's nothing on earth
Phillips mother cares, so much for as
her children.
Queer way to show it, isn't it?
And yet a pretty common way?
On the whole 1 guess there's more
wet blanket mothers than the other
kind.
It's so painfully easy when you've left
the land of wonderful poSSlDllltleS anu
crossed the bourne into the common
place city of grown-up- ness, to forget
how you felt when you lived in that
other land.
It is SO very much easier to discour-
age impracticable plans that may mean
much bother to you than to encourage
and direct them.
But is the easier way usually sure to
be the best?
Does the road to success in mother
hood or in life usually follow the line
of least resistance?
Oh, yes, / know just what you poor
overworked mothers are saying, that
it's easy enough to talk but that any
one who has as much to do as you
have and knows as much about chill
dren's crazy schemes and how much
work they make and how they poster,
would feel just as you do.
7 don't doubt it, l don't blame you
for feeling that way. But isn't it
feeling worth overcoming?
The most blessed birthright of youth
is this same. sweet, fmpractlcal en-
thusiasn1, this same blissful 1ncapa-
bility of seeing obstacles, this same
golden belief in it's own capabilities.
You know how soon the boy will tire
of his new delight. 1t is one or the SAD
grew lessons that you learned in the
city of grown upness-
But wouldn't you. If you could. un-
learn that lesson, have again the I'M
practical and sweet enthusiasts, sweet
impractical enthusiasms of youth?
know again the goal IS glorious
Be again but frank and twenty?'
And will you by being a wet blanket
moment before they have to learn II!