To my mind, the most royal quality in human life is that of motherliness, being akin to that of angelic ministration. True motherliness is tenderness enshrined and solicitude impersonated. It looks to the well-being of man as man, irrespective of habits or tendencies, beliefs or practices. It is love in its most striking form. "If there be aught surpassing human deed or word or thought, it is a mother's love." The surpassing attribute of a mother's love is its constancy, its blindness to faults, its hope for the best, its charity for weaknesses, its pity for ignorance and defects, its deathless sweetness, and its yearning strength. Mother love may be, and often is, selfish-exceedingly selfish-yet it flows on with the steadiness of a river current, carrying hope and blessing to hearts perhaps by others forsaken and in themselves cheerless. "A father," says Washington Irving, "may turn his back on his child; brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their wives, and wives their husbands, but a mother's love endures through all. In good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth, and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy." Well, indeed, that this is so. The race can not dispense with such a quality, for there is no other to take its place, and without it man would be wretched indeed. More wayward boys would become highwaymen, and more destructionists selfdestructive, but for the restraining influences and endearing memories connected with the motherly spirit. The mother, in her office, holds the key Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage, But for her gentle cares, a Christian man. Then crown her queen of the world. Yes, crown her "queen of the world," and own that her love is the most beautiful thing in the world. "An angel," says Sam P. Jones, "was sent down from heaven one day to bring back the most beautiful thing on earth. He hunted long and carefully, saw a bed of full-blown American beauty roses, lovely beyond compare, and he gathered an armful and started to return to his home above. As he soared into the air he saw a baby's smile, and, filled with rapturous admiration at the sight, he returned to take it too. By its side he discovered a mother's love, and with all three in his arms, he mounted to the place beyond the skies. Just outside the pearly gates the spirit paused for a moment, and lo! the roses had withered and were dead, the baby's smile had vanished, but, strong as ever, the mother's love remained; and he cast the others aside and took this and laid it at the Master's feet as the most lovely and lasting thing on earth." FATHER AND DAUGHTER How delightful is the relation existing betwixt a rightminded father and his affectionate daughter! To such a father, the daughter is almost a princess, and her pure and guileless soul is his shrine of tenderness and tears A tear so limpid and so meek, It would not stain an angel's cheek; A daughter's love is her father's heart-food, notably as he waxes old and begins to realize that the treasures of earth are slipping from his grasp. An aged father may lean on his son, but he wants his daughter to lean on him. Sons frequently lack the sympathy of daughters; they have spirits of higher pitch, perhaps, but they are less inclined to sweet and endearing affection. |