The Golden Censer Part 16

no more can her quick ear be deafened to the little wail that echoes pitiful within the chambers of her heart! When we remember the great pa.s.sion of motherhood, the intensity of the drama, the prolongation into years of its deep interplots, we cannot marvel longer at the perennial, lasting character of the mother's love. Given, the marvel, there is no further marvel. Given life, the scientists say, there is no other problem on this narrow world. And thus the marvel and the mystery never grow less.

MAN ENTERS THE WORLD,

of all animals the most pitiable and weakly. Left to himself he would immediately perish. Extinguish the mother's love and he would at once perish. His growth is by far the slowest of that of all animals, therefore the wisdom of G.o.d in so lengthening the tenure of the mother's solicitude. The mighty man who wields the iron halberd which no two people can lift was still a helpless infant, unable to put his own chubby fist into his own mouth! The autocrat who sweeps whole communities into Siberia with a stroke of his pen was ill when his mother was alarmed, was in agony when she was indiscreet with her food!

She cannot forget this. It is but yesterday she dried his flesh to keep it sound. It is but yesterday she let him bite his aching gum upon her finger, wis.h.i.+ng the ache might go from him to her--hoping that if he gave her pain he would have less. One can well pardon the vanity that would lead a son to insist that his mother should accompany him to

THE EXECUTIVE MANSION OF THE GREAT REPUBLIC,

that she might behold him enter upon the Chief Magistracy of fifty millions of freemen, gained by the first choice of a majority of those freemen, yea, by the unanimous first and second choice, for none so ready to fight for his right to rule as he who yesterday voted for an honored opponent--the very summit of true political ambition--the apex of the mother's boldest hope! "The mother's love is indeed the golden link that binds youth to old age," says Bovee; "and he is still but a child, however time may have furrowed his cheek, or silvered his brow, who can yet recall, with a softened heart, the fond devotion, or the gentle chidings, of

THE BEST FRIEND

that G.o.d ever gives us!" I knew an aged woman, who interested me very greatly in tales of "her boy"--that good son who had so often proven his grat.i.tude for her long love. One day, chancing to consider her great number of years, I inquired how old "her boy" was, and found that he had been a grandfather for twenty-three years, and had lately had the satisfaction of holding a great grandson in his arms. Still he was her curly haired-boy--she could remember him in no other condition of life with so much satisfaction.

"I WOULD DESIRE FOR A FRIEND,"

says Lacretelle, "the son who never resisted the tears of his mother."

"Love droops, youth fades, the leaves of friends.h.i.+p fall; a mother's secret hope outlives them all," sings Oliver Wendell Holmes. "At first,"

says Beecher, "babies feed on the mother's bosom, but always on her heart." "Stories first heard at a mother's knee," affirms Ruffini, "are never wholly forgotten--a little spring that never quite dries up in our journey through scorching years."

"AN OUNCE OF MOTHER,"

says the Spanish proverb, "is a pound of clergy." "The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom," says another writer. "Men are what their mothers made them," says Emerson, in study of Napoleon's idea; "you may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber." "It is generally admitted," says Theodore Hook, "and frequently proved, that virtue and genius, and all the natural good qualities which men possess, are derived from their mothers." "It is well for us," says Bishop Hare, "that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with

A CONCEIT OF OUR OWN IMPORTANCE

which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it." Perhaps the praises of our mothers tarry in our brains too long anyway. It may be a provision of nature that woman shall inspire her child with sufficient self-esteem to take him through the world with a first-cla.s.s ticket, a cabin pa.s.sage, that he may escape the poor accommodations of excessive humility, the steerage of the s.h.i.+p of life. It seems incredible that our mother was mistaken in thinking her boys the brightest, best, and most creditable in all the region roundabout! Let us by our lives, marvel rather at the correctness of her vision than the blindness of her love.

"SHE WHO HAS LOST AN INFANT,"

says Leigh Hunt, "is never, as it were, without an infant child. Her other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence." The mother teaches us the one grand lesson of

UNALTERABLE FIDELITY.

"Nothing is more n.o.ble," says Cicero, "nothing more venerable." One of the most beautiful tributes to an aged mother was written by Lamartine.

"The loss of a mother," he says "is always severely felt. Even though her health may incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand endeavors to please, concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn! It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends."

THERE ARE MEN WHO FORGET THE CLAIMS

their mothers have upon them. Of such ungrateful wretches, though clothed in outward excellences, the pen can write nothing too harsh in justice. As old Dr. South says, "the greatest favors are to such a one but the motion of a s.h.i.+p upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them. All kindness descend as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not all changed or sweetened by them. If you look backward and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you look forward enough, it is a thousand to one that you will find that

HE ALSO DIES SO.

The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death.

I do not by this limit the operation of G.o.d's grace, for that may do wonders." Be glad, if you are ungrateful, that a wise man has given you so good counsel to pray--and pray as you do when you think yourself in extreme peril!

IF YOUR MOTHER IS YET YOUNG,

you have many years of her great friends.h.i.+p before you. Try and pattern after her boundless affection. Let it melt into your heart and make it warmer. If "age has snowed white hairs" upon her head, treasure her the more fondly during the few swift years she will be left to you. Soon she will go to her reward, and you will be without the only friend of man whose love seems to be inalienable--whose esteem he cannot barter away, either in greed or in vice.

THE MOTHER OF MOTHERS.

In almost every community there is "a mother in Israel," a mother of mothers, whose great heart is like the ocean, and claims the outpourings of every stream of life. To these grand souls of virtue and goodness let every man bow in reverence, for they are mothers to the motherless. When the Reaper came forth to reap he aimed to take the richest sheaf, but lo! the mother in Israel gathered the orphans together, and poured out her tenderness upon them.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

LOVE.

Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted!--Burns.

Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those for others; deep as love.

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life! the days that are no more.--Tennyson.

Love, says Cowley, "is a great pa.s.sion, and therefore I hope I have done with it." I think most people will agree with this sentiment. Love is such a tyrant, it leaves common sense so little to say, that the majority of people are heartily glad when reason returns to her throne and the thrilling lunacy is a remembrance instead of a fact. The remembrance is sweet, and has no angry thorn, no peremptory mandate. The young man is going along in the full enjoyment of his life, when suddenly a huge coiled spring, the existence of which has not attracted his notice, is loosed in his breast, his whole intellectual forces centre on the attainment of one object, and a mental strain begins which is of the exact nature of madness, and has ever been termed so by people who have looked at things merely by what they have seen. In the highly-feverish state of the brain the nerves of the whole system soon become involved, the stomach refuses to perform its functions, and physical emaciation and deep melancholia rapidly ensue. The obvious reason is the insane state of the brain. Nature has suddenly impressed that organ with the one idea that a certain fair maid is actually without the faults of her a.s.sociates. She is the prize of the whole world! Had the world the information of her perfections which is lodged in this young man's secret brain, there would be a war of extermination for her possession--a second sack of Troy at the very least. Deep pity for other men with wives, who cannot marry this maiden, and pity for young men who have seemingly preferred other maidens, intermit with joy that all the world has been so blind.

CAUTIOUSLY THE YOUTH ADVANCES

toward his prey. The expedition is one of tremendous importance, therefore his exceeding amount of thought. When he is in the ineffable presence, he is there as an actor in a tragedy, or as a tenor in an opera. He has almost counted his hairs; he certainly counts the winkings of his eyelids! Can any detail be unimportant in an undertaking of such measureless risk? It is no wonder, then, that a young man who is giving as much thought as this to a young, thoughtless girl is not worth much in his business for the time being! In fact, it is a miracle to him, after

SOME DOOMFUL FROWN

from his queen, that he has survived the night and goes to his work at all! He is confident that it is base habit. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt!" he cries, as his dissatisfied employer, or father, requires some reasonable action and fails to get it. In after-life this same young man is glad the "grand pa.s.sion" will never come to him again.

He feels that it has not heightened him in his own regard. His love may have been smooth or it may have been swallowed in the quicksands of adversity--the difference is small. It is not creditable to the human brain to be so hoodwinked and purblind as Cupid makes his victims. But

LOVE RULES THE UNIVERSE,

having its climax in G.o.d himself, and its earthly ideality in the mother's affection. We should not complain that when the potent essence is first administered to us it shakes us seriously. Without this pa.s.sion, selfishness would triumph, and man would not take on the cares of wedded life. Society and religion would wither. The world would be a howling den of chaos and deep crime.