men, how you would feel if the conditions were reversed, if you were obliged to take the dependent, humiliating position of your mother!
Whatever else you are obliged to neglect, take no chances of giving your mother pain by neglecting her, and of thus making yourself miserable in the future.
The time may come when you will stand by her bedside, in her last sickness, or by her coffin, and wish that you had exchanged a little of your money for more visits and more attentions and more little presents to your mother; when you will wish that you had, cultivated her more, even at the cost of making a little less money.
There is no one else in this world who can take your mother’s place in your life. And there is no remorse like that which;comes from the remembrance of ill-treating, abusing, or being unkind to one’s mother. These things stand out with awful vividness and terrible clearness when the mother is gone forever from sight, and you have time to contrast your treatment with her long suffering, tenderness, and love, and her years of sacrifice for you.
One of the most painful things I have ever witnessed was the anguish of a son who had become wealthy and in his prosperity neglected the mother, whose sacrifices alone had made his success possible. He did not take the time to write to her more than twice a year, and then only brief letters. He was too busy to send a good long letter to the poor old lonely mother back in the country, who had risked her life and toiled and sacrificed for years for him! Finally, when he was summoned to her bedside in the country, in her last sickness, and realized that his mother had been for years without the ordinary comforts of life, while he had been living in luxury, he broke down completely. And while he did everything possible to alleviate her suffering, in the few last days that remained to her on earth, and gave her an imposing burial, what torture he must have suffered at this pitiful picture of his mother who had sacrified everything for him!
No man worthy of the name ever neglects or forgets his mother.
I have an acquaintance, of very poor parentage, who had a hard struggle to get a start in the world; but when he became prosperous and built his beautiful home, he finished a suite of rooms in it especially for his mother, furnished them with all conveniences and comforts possible, and insisted upon keeping a maid specially for her. Although she lives with her son’s family, she is made to feel that this part of the great home is her own, and that she is as independent as though she lived in her own house. Every son should be ambitious to see his mother as well provided for as his wife.
Really great men have always reverenced and cared tenderly for their mothers. President McKinley provided in his will that, first of all, his mother should be made comfortable for life.
The first act of Garfield, after he was inaugurated president, was to kiss his aged mother, who sat near him, and who said this was the proudest and happiest moment of her life.
Ex-President Loubet of France, ever after his elevation to the presidency, took great pride in visiting his mother, who was a humble market gardener in a little French village. A writer on one occasion, describing a meeting between this mother and her son, says: “Her noted son awaited her in the market-place, as she drove up in her little cart loaded with vegetables. Assisting his mother to alight, the French president gave her his arm and escorted her to her accustomed seat. Then holding over her a large umbrella, to shield her from the threatening weather, he seated himself at her side, and mother and son enjoyed a long talk together.”
I once saw a splendid young college graduate introduce his poor, plainly dressed old mother to his classmates with as much pride and dignity as though she was a queen. Her form was bent, her hands were calloused, she was prematurely old, and much of this deterioration was caused by all sorts of drudgery to help her boy to pay his college expenses.
I have seen other college men whose mothers had made similar sacrifices, and who were ashamed to have them attend their graduating exercises, ashamed to introduce them to their classmates.
I know of one peculiarly ungrateful son whose mother slaved for him for years, taking in washing, and going out to work by the day in order to send him to college, and who looked forward as a reward for all her labors to seeing him graduated. When the time came, just before commencement, she told her son how she longed to hear his commencement address, but he said that that would be impossible, because she did not have proper clothes to wear; that everybody at that fashionable college commencement would be elegantly dressed. In other words, he tried to discourage her from going because he was ashamed of her and did not want to introduce her to his classmates and teachers. But she was determined to go, and, keeping carefully out of her son’s sight, she gained entrance to the rear of the hall. The young man’s address was a good one; and so proud of her son was the poor old woman and so overjoyed at his success that when he finished speaking, in the very midst of the applause, she rushed up to the platform and tried to throw her arms around his neck. He repulsed her, and afterwards told her that he was ashamed that at his graduation she should have made such a scene! That was all the mother got for years of sacrifice and effort to help her ungrateful son, and she went home alone and brokenhearted.
I have never known a man who was ashamed of his mother to make a real man. Such men are invariably selfish and mean.
Think of the humiliation and suffering of the slave mother, who has given all the best of her life to a large family, battling with poverty in her efforts to dignify her little home, and to give her children an education, when she realizes that she is losing ground intellectually, yet has no time or strength for reading, or self-culture, no opportunity for broadening her mental outlook by traveling or mingling with the world! But this is nothing compared to the anguish she endures, when, after the flower of her youth is gone and there is nothing left of her but the ashes of a burned-out existence, the shreds of a former superb womanhood, she awakes to the consciousness that her children are ashamed of her ignorance and desire to keep her in the background.
But no matter how callous or ungrateful a son may be, no matter how low he may sink in vice or crime, he is always sure of his mother’s love, always sure of one who will follow him even to his grave, if she is alive and can get there; of one who will cling to him when all others have fled.
One of the saddest sights I have ever seen was that of a poor, old, broken-down mother, whose life had been poured into her children, making a long journey to the penitentiary to visit her boy, who had been abandoned by everybody but herself. Poor old mother! It did not matter that he was a criminal, that he had disgraced his family, that everybody else had forsaken him, that he had been unkind to her—the mother’s heart went out to him just the same. She did not see the hideous human wreck that crime had made. She saw only her darling boy, the child that God had given her, pure and innocent as in his childhood.
Oh, there is no other human love like this, which follows the child from the cradle to the grave, never once abandons, never once forsakes it, no matter how unfortunate or degenerate it may become.
“So your best girl is dead,” sneeringly said a New York magistrate to a young man who was arrested for attempting suicide. “Who was she?” Without raising his eyes, the unfortunate victim burst into tears and replied, “She was my mother!” The smile vanished from the magistrate’s face and, with tears in his eyes, he said, Young man go and try to be a good man for your mother’s sake.” How little we realize what tragedy may be going on in the hearts of those whom we sneeringly condemn!
What movement set on foot in recent years, deserves heartier support than that for the establishment of a national Mothers’ Day?
The day set apart as Mothers’ Day by those who have inaugurated this movement is the second Sunday in May. Let us unite in doing all we can to make it a real Mothers’ Day, by especially honoring our mothers; in the flesh, those of us who are so fortunate as to have our mothers with us; in the spirit, those who are not so fortunate.
