The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-13
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

l The other day sitting on the step of tn entrance to The Age-Herald building wal pair of kiddies, making themselves yer. much at home. The little mother wal about five years of age. How she wa mothering her little baby brother. The! gave me a smile that put joy into m! work during the entire day. Tutwiler, saw four or five little tots or plot of cold, damp ground not hal as big as billiard table, having a joy ous time making mud pies. They skate beneath my window. Some of them are poorly clothed and very dirty but they seem healthy and happy. mothers pampered darlings.
 
 If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us, Worse than the dark before.
 So says our own Longfellow. Plutarch in his Life of Pericles says:
 Happening to see some strangers ir Rome carrying young dogs and monkeys in their arms, and caressing them, he asked indignantly, Do the women in their country never bear children" give this bit of ancient history to keer twentieth century women from thinking I'm critical or trying to start something.
 
 Las Cases saved for future generations an encounter of wits between Mme. de Stael and Napoleon. Desiring a com pliment, the brilliant Frenchwoman asked the great first consul whom he considered the geratest woman in the world. Her who has borne the most children" was the ungallant reply Please remember I'm not underwriting the remark I'm just recalling it. 7 or burdened with care, I meet a merry little lad or smiling miss and a song starts in my heart.
 It was a wise man who centuries ago said:
 "A merry heart doeth good like q med icine." Yes, it's true We older people tI,o boy osteopathy, and allopathy. I like the new thought hid in the word "merryo- pathy.
 The next time you get the blues, go out and look for bunch of joyous kiddies. They are the best homeopathic doctors to chase away the blue devils q
 
 Some one has said the cry of the child is the same around the world. Woe be unto him who needlessly causes child to cry.
 Mrs. Browning sings
 Do ye hear the children weeping. o my
 brothers,
 Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads
 against their mothers, | And that cannot stop their tears
 Babies cry. It's their only way of tell ing that they are hungry or in pain. It's their right until they learn to talk. Then it isn't necessity.
 The next time you come upon a group of children at play, watch the expression Of their faces, note their gestures. How simple and natural they are until some them conscious
 Did you ever see a little girl fondle a doll? Did you ever overhear her talking to 1t, when she thought she was alone It's worth while to try and eavesdrop. It will do much to dispel your fears that the mother instinct is on the wane. And yet mother instinct does not teach nature The great functions of mother hood should not be ignored in tho train ing of girls for life There is a crying need for educated motherhood.
 Frances Hodgson Burnett well says: "One generation, one entire generation of all the world of children understood as they should be, loved as they ask to be, and so developed as they might be, would more than begin the millennium This is prominently "the age of the child" Child welfare is at the founda- ton of world welfare. Child nurture is one of the greatest tasks of the age.
 
 I'm glad we are making much of chil- dren here in Birmingham. It was great grief to me when the city had to curtail its appropriations on playgrounds.
 I like to stroll over to Avondale park and see the happy children as they en- ioy looking at the animals. It gives me personal pleasure to know that The Age Herald got Miss Fancy" the big ele- phant, for the boys and girls of the dis trict.
 said children were tonic. They are more than that. They, in way, are lit the restorers. It's everlastingly true that "a little child shall lead them.'' Have you not had this come true in your life or seen it verified in the lives of others have both experienced it and seen it. A man may wander far in sin during the day, but when night comes and he finds himself at home and steals into the