.■'.yi^i. ,j ■'■ m mr A MOTHER'S Ideals A Kindergarten Mother's Conception of Family Life / ANDREA HOFER PROUDFOOT Editor Volumes iii-viii of "Kindergarten Magazine;" Editor OF "Child-Garden;" Author of "Child's Christ- Tales," ETC. CHICAGO published by the AUTHOR 1,400 AUDITORIUM TWO COMES KEGclV LB//67 c;OPYRIGHT, 1897, BY ANDREA HOFER PROUDFOOT To /fig /IRotber WJio has beeyi preserved to the simplicities of life through having child companions ; -whose duty to- zi'ard the home has keft her from fursuiiig school- ishness; zvho has studied more deeply into the affections than i7tto psychology ; ayid zvho loves hamanity because it has been given an impulse onzvard through hei' as a channel, and an impulse upward through Jier spiritual striving for her children. • ' But Ma7'y ke^t all these things and pondered them in her heart' The nursery ivas my university, —FRIEDRICH FROEBEL, TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER Introduction .... PAGE. 9 I. The New Family 21 II. The Immaculate Conception 37 III. The Annunciation 47 IV. The Story of Life • 63 V. The Child in Our Midst 79 VI. The Radiant Mother . 89 VII. Child Rearing 103 VIII. The Question of Punishment 121 IX. A Kindergarten Home 133 X. Love Thy Brother • 151 XI. Marriage Ideals 165 XII. A Wife's Problems . , , . 183 XIII. Woman as a Former, Not a Reformer 199 XIV. Professional Motherhood . 213 XV. Woman and Work 229 XVI. Child Study .... ■ 245 XVII. A Reading Course 257 INTRODUCTION. The following letter came to me as editor of the Kindergarten Magazine : *'You must help us to secure a book for mothers who are interested in ideal life. I have been at the Chautauqua Summer Assembly for several years, and while I answered a thousand questions a day, I felt the need of putting such printed matter into the hands of earnest women as shall help them know the true doc- trine and do the work also. We need a book that is not too technical and yet gives practical insight to the uninitiated in the true motives of motherhood — in the bearing as well as in the raising of their children. Will you not help us?" Hundreds of letters come every year from the mothers themselves, asking, What is this science of right living we hear so much about? What is this larger duty in which we seem to fail? On all sides mothers are being advised and argued with by kindergartners and teachers as to their broader duties. Feeding and dressing the little ones are no longer considered the highest duty of the home. The world at large and the mothers themselves are begin- 9 10 INTRODUCTION. ning to realize that the first few years have in them the greatest of all opportunities to start the child right in character, heart, mind and body. It is told that Darwin said to a mother who ques- tioned him as to when she should begin the education of her child, then two and a half years old, "Madam, you have already lost two and a half years." As we study the child we find that there is no rude beginning anywhere to any of its faculties, and there is a growing demand for a book which shall lead mothers to watch over these unseen beginnings, and at the same time help them in all their undertakings toward the family that they may work for true devel- opment. Such a book must primarily deal with "ideals." The bread-and-butter question is not the only one; the spiritual bread is half the question of sustenance. Mothers who try to live and rear their children by "bread alone" are numerous, and this is why so many women have such huge problems. Mahomet has said, "Had I two loaves I would sell one and buy hyacinths to feed my soul." I hope I may be able to give mothers some of this beautiful bread in these pages, for I believe that a mother's book not based on ideals had better be left unwritten. There are plenty of them, and they are constantly lowering the standards of womanhood and should be condemned. INTRODUCTION. 11 Many books on motherhood dictate what to do and what not to do in rearing a family. In these pages I shall not attempt to lay down a law for mothers, but shall strive constantly so to speak as to make the doing of whatever your hands find to do easier and more definite in its purpose toward more ideal life. This book is not a scholarly attempt, but is poured out of my everyday life with all its manifold duties and struggles, and I trust it m.ay pour itself into the every- day lives of my mother friends, who need books much less than they need living words, help and inspira- tion. To begin with, let me say that anyone who takes the pains to read these pages is supposed to be deeply in- terested in finding help from the ideals given; and if few world-accepted doctrines and no guidance of a materialistic order are found, do not complain, dear reader. Every word is written to stimulate and en- courage the mother in her aspirations and higher life. Those searching for remedies and quackery had better close the covers at once and vote the book a failure. I believe there is a growing demand among mothers for such a book, based on the practical demonstra- tions of the writer as a mother. It must be radical and yet not radical. We need radical changes to carry into effect our ideals, and bring about new ways of living and thinking; yet these changes need be only 12 INTRODUCTION. a different view-point from which to reach out. The same old-fashioned sweet mother-love and father-love must always be the one foundation upon which we can build permanently for ideal family life. These passages will naturally run into the questions which mothers are most anxiously putting; and be- cause they seem to be the more fully concerned with the conservation and perfecting of the family, this may truly bear the stamp of a "mother's book." Mother literature is, in truth, rare, the past having imposed upon the mother class scarcely anything save physi- cians' diagnoses of disease and abnormal life condi- tions. The mother is usually addressed purely as a domestic, one whose all-important duties are the feed- ing, clothing and dosing of her children. It is taken for granted that their spiritual life and education are not particularly hers, but the duties of the church and school. We must have a newer and higher literature for our family builder. We all honestly believe that the ma- jority of this race, in spite of its abuses, has more faculties to develop than disease to cure. The mother's opportunities are constant; growth in mind and body will go on in her children whether she cares or not. A normal child is learning during every waking hour, and the question is. Shall the mother put herself intelligently to work and make the years in INTRODUCTION. 13 which she has sole charge the beautiful beginning of all that is lasting and progressive in the child? I would herein call mothers to consider this special period in their own and their children's lives — those sweet days when nothing comes between them, and when the ties that bind forever are being formed. Do we half realize, dear mothers, how sacred are those hours when not only their bones and sinews are yield- ing, but when the heart and mind are as fully re- sponsive to the ''spirit touch"? When we have our children in our own hands we must be honest with ourselves and ask. Are they wise, unselfish hands? Are they perhaps serving only the body, or are they also waiting on the soul? The mother who has her own children in her own care is the m^other who, with intelligence, can do the most for the race. And to these common mothers I would speak; to those who are not occupied in the constant work of reform, on the one hand (the ''con- vention women'' so called), nor yet those struggling toward the highest social functions; but to the stay-at- home, ambitious mothers, with neither poverty nor ignorance to struggle against, but with hands full of family and child problems — to these we must look for the construction work. And to these I write, I trust with a pen sharpened by sufficient experience in the commonplace problem of the home, and enough 14 INTRODUCTION. inspired with the true light to be indeed practical in its ideality. The great Froebel says from out the motherly- depths of his heart: ''Women are to recognize that childhood and womanliness (the care of childhood and the life of women) are inseparably connected; that they form a unity, and that God and nature have placed the protection of the human plant in their hands. Hitherto the female sex could take only a more or less passive part in human history, because great battles and the political organizations of nations were not suited to its powers. But at the present stage of culture nothing is more pressingly required than the cultivation of every human power for the arts of peace and the work of higher civilization. The culture of individuals, and therefore of the whole na- tion, depends in great part upon the earliest care of childhood. On that account women, as one-half of mankind, have to undertake the most important part of the problems of the times — problems that men are not able to solve. If but one-half of the work be ac- complished, then our epoch, like all others, will fail to reach the appointed goal. As educators of man- kind the women of the present time have the highest duties to perform, while hitherto they have been scarcely more than the beloved mothers of human beings." INTRODUCTION. 15 Mothers, copy the above saHent paragraph and pin it up before your eyes to be read every day. See if you are doing your individual share, fighting your "bat- lies" every day and hour in the nursery, and speaking out the right word among your acquaintances. Who shall take hold of our social quandary? Who shall put a foundation beneath the race structure? Walt Whitman answers, "The beloved mothers of large families." To these I, too, would speak; not, however, to mothers who give their children culture through hirelings, but to those who, guided by their hearts' insight, would cooperate with the great work of kinder- garten and school for the sake of the common child- hood about them. Such mothers, perm.anently or- ganized, would form a working army of salvation, pro- ducing their own recruits, before whom every enemy would fall. The question of children's rights and mothers' rights is to me much more fundamental than is the question of woman's civil rights. The mother will always have higher conditions to meet than the ballot ever touches. She must first find for herself freedom from disease and suffering through right living, through right dressing, through right thinking. She above every other needs a sound mind and body. She must help to bring in, through her own children, 16 INTRODUCTION. ihe higher forms of the inner government through giv- ing them self-control. She must help to institute the truer church of the heart, and it is hers to demand that the schools shall be schools of character, not of brains alone. These are the mother's great opportunities, because she cradles the world in her hands of love, and leads it by the heart through her spiritual discernment. She must keep the youth garden blooming, that some day the social desert may blossom as a rose; and then she need not demand the civil rights. They will be hers as a free gift. The problems of the social world will always be the mother's special duty. She should, as her grand right, shoulder them and make herself responsible for them. Natural conditions visit this on a woman, often seeming to wrong her; but she is only wronged in her inadequacy to master her own problems. And she must master spiritually; the world has tried every other method and failed. How many of us are carrying out the ideals dreamed of and promised ourselves in youth? How many of us have just what our hearts desire in happiness and possessions? How many of us are doing our full share toward perfect neighborhood conditions? How many of us can work just a little more to make INTRODUCTION. 17 life sweeter and better through the precious legacy of our children? Then let us be at it and search without ceasing, that we may find the right way. CHAPTER I. THE "NEW FAMILY." "Only the quiet, secluded sanctuary of the family can give back to us the welfare of mankind. "In the foundation of every new family, the heavenly Father, eternally working out the welfare of the human race, speaks to man through the heaven he has opened In the heart of its founders. "With the beginning of every new family there is issued to mankind and to each individual human being, the call to represent humanity in pure development; to represent man in his ideal perfection." — Froebel. CHAPTER I. THE "NEW FAMILY." As we read the inspired words of Froebel they come home to us as being most heartily meant, and directed to each one individually. When we study his words, and remember that he gave his whole life to the work of ideal education, we feel moved to do at least our little share toward our own children that the world may be the better; and we are stirred anew to realize for our own home circle the ideal family life. It is the heart's desire of every parent to be worthy, and to give his or her children the best. Froebel helps us to raise our standards of family and home higher and ever higher, and also to know what is this "best" we so crave for our children. He gives us such blessed fullness in the words at the head of this chapter. Let us take up these sen- tences of Froebel one by one. Read the first one very carefully. Do you believe it? Are you consciously working through your family life for the welfare of mankind? Do you realize that each one that escapes from your hands out into the world is adding either to 31 22 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. its good or its burden, to its joy or its sorrow? Is your home a quiet, secluded sanctuary where you re- hgiously watch over each budding energy, feehng and habit? Is there a wise, watchful, loving cooperation at the head? Is every day being joined with every other day in constancy and patient devotion? Is each child asked to give out and help and respond, or are you doing it all and complaining because of lack of appre- ciation and recognition? Are you cramming your children with material good things because you have plenty, or are you wisely and truly giving them just the necessary, and spending the rest of your energy on the cultivation of the character? How many a rich man spoils his sons and then disinherits them as un- worthy! Are you adding your children to the world as added problems, or are you helping them into that liberation which shall bring liberation to others? Are you, in a word, realizing that the home should be a sanctuary which shall give back to us the welfare of mankind — give back peace to humanity which to-day seems everywhere to be so sick at heart? Take the second sentence: "In the foundation of every new family the heavenly Father, eternally work- ing out the welfare of the human race, speaks to man through the heaven he has opened in the heart of its founders." THE "NEW FAMILY." 23 Think of a home founded on the conviction that it has its work to do for the whole race; where two hearts join that the heavens may open to the race. Think of the home already founded that receives the sweet in- spiration all over again and its founders determine anew to open their hearts and refresh their efforts toward ideal life for the sake not only of their own children, but to make their large social circle a garden spot of blossom and fruit. Blessed are the father and mother who find it never too late to begin over. How many of us know just such families, where the father and mother always appear to be newly married, and whose children seem but their playfellows? To retain this spirit is certainly a great stride toward living the perfect life. Froebel holds the family forever as the ideal funda- mental fact of all human social existence. How he loved the sweet words — "family," ''father," "mother" and child!" He fairly makes them sing as he speaks them, so full are they of prophecy and joy. He saw in these three relationships the constant embodiment of the trinity of God and the expression of his oneness. The word "family" means sanctuary to Froebel al- ways; the place where we join together in unity to find God — heaven. Not a place in which to sing psalms and make long prayers, but a beautiful center of action from which each may consciously reach out; reach with 24 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. helpfulness into each life, and with loving kindness practice the everyday small virtues. The word ''father" means the provider, the pre- server; the lover of the family and the race. The father was to symbolize to his children the higher rela- tionship, and make God a reality to them easily under- stood, because the human father embodied divine qualities. And how universally children consider their fathers all-wise and all-powerful. How often we hear from children's lips, "My papa knows every- thing;" or, "There's nothing my papa can't do." If fathers would only aspire to be what their children believe them! And the word "mother" — who can attempt to define what Froebel makes it include? Here are his words: "The mothers of humanity * * =5« as the first Mary brought up the Saviour of the world." He saw the mother in the constant attitude of bringing us the Christ, "the perpetual Messiah" whether in person or in principle. He found motherhood a universal relationship, and understanding this relationship was to know the won- der of nature and the wonder of spirit. He declared the lowliest woman to contain its whole majesty and power if she but knew it. He showed it to be some- thing which we can all feel but hardly tell, and which is, in a silent way, told only by the lips of the heart. THE "NEW FAMILY." 25 We find it expressed in the words of the poet when he says to women: "You are the gates of the body And you are the gates of the soul." And "child," that word which makes up the greatest third in the "New Family," was the burden of all Froebel's work and thought. Hear what he says: "A child ought to be considered a complete being dur- ing every period of life." "Originally the child is at unity with mankind and with God." What sweet promises he saw in each and every child! He always speaks of it as "the child of God," and the "son of man." Though his benign head was ever above the clouds, how thoroughly crowned was it with practicality ! For he set to work to give this blessed "new family" the most potent help and the most organically arranged scheme by which it could proceed to fill its divine call. This scheme he called the kindergarten. These great thoughts of Froebel blossom into our minds especially as we hang over his precious picture book, the "Mother Play"; from the first page to the last we are given the gems of his thought and word, the mother surrendering herself to her child in joyous care and play; the child surrendering itself in full com- munion and cooperation to the whole, in self-forget- 26 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. fulness and returned affection; the father representing, as he does, the big world, surrendering himself to the whole good — the united work of the united families. Miss Blow says: "What Froebel saw in the heart of the child he has told us in the 'Mother Play.' In this precious volume he 'deciphers all that the child feels in cipher,' and translates for mothers the hiero- glyphic of their own instinctive play. As a child's book this little collection of songs and games is unique in Hterature. As a mother's book, likewise, it has no ancestry and no posterity. It is the greatest book for little children and the greatest book for mothers in the world. When all women shall have laid to heart its lessons, the ideal which hovers before us in the im- mortal pictures of the Madonna will be realized; for then, at last, each mother will revere and nurture in her child the divine humanity." If only we would study Froebel more with our eyes shut and our hearts open, and comprehend his words not through our ears but through our lives! If we strive to touch him with half the reverent touch he gives to all things, how different would be the great work that has already emanated from his presence into this era — namely, the kindergarten. Oh, for love and activity enough to understand him in his thousands of wonderful words, a few of which we wish to show forth in these pages! THE "NEW FAMILY." 27 He shows us how futile is all building or culture un- less it build with and for the family. He warns us that any institution that does not take into consideration the meanest hovel that struggles to stand for home and childhood is useless. He feels that rotten indeed is that law which sets up the rights of property, or anything, above the poorest waif and his claims to protection and home. He proves how poverty stricken is that government that does not center all its motives round the self- governing family, and take every step to preserve and foster such in its highest ideal. The freedom of any nation depends upon how many such families it can entertain. The family, that sweet relationship established by Life itself, how sacred is it to Froebel above all else! He declares that no institution that does not take upon itself the nature of a family can stand, and that the educational system which does not work for the perfecting of family life is worse than useless. In considering ideal family life we must, first of all, have a clear idea of the relationships involved in motherhood, fatherhood and childhood. Motherhood or fatherhood is never a personal thing. When we find it personal it is all pain. It is as universal as the sunlight, expressing through all life its every idea. It belongs to every phase of the universe. Our great 28 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. lesson to learn is to find our parenthood always in the universal, and to keep it there; keep it with God. Motherhood is yours and mine only when we see it as this universal thing. In order to find it truly, we must first lose it personally. When we find ourselves in the universal motherhood, not only of human na- ture, but of common nature, then alone can we give our children their real inheritance and truly be mothers. We must see our children as belonging to the larger family and responsible to the divine par- entage. Even the common laws of the land refuse parents' rights over the children when those rights claim an interference with the good of each and all. I know one mother who thought she was keeping her children too close and loving them too hard and making home too perfect for them. She never wanted them to go from her, and always thought other young people were not good enough to associate with hers. Being urged by her husband to take a rest, she at- tended a convention many hundred miles from home and was astonished to have one of the children write what a good time they were having; papa let them do what they pleased. It distressed her very much to think they could do without her so easily when she had felt so heavily their dependence upon her. It set her to thinking, and she came home a much wiser woman and mother. From that time on she has THE "NEW FAMILY." 29 studied to set her children free and has been one of the most progressive of mothers. She is to-day prom- inent in the larger work for the education and good of the universal child. How many mothers do not learn this lesson soon enough, and their birds fly from the nest as from a prison house! Froebel teaches us that we must begin at home in making definite these universal relations. We must learn to take a broader view of life and be interested in and work for a larger interest than just our own blood. If we are not willing to reach out into our higher and broader self and source, and into an un- selfish work for the good of humanity, we can never expect our children to expand to the full wealth of expression of which God made them capable. Jesus as a man sought to be honest to himself; and believed in himself as a son of God, derived from God, and he ever remained firm to his divine conviction. He preached God as the father of all mankind and man as the child of God, and all men as his brethren, and he himself responsible for each. This is our aim if we are Christians in fact. He taught that we were to be true to our inheritance, our God-derived nature, and to realize it for everyone; thus he declared the heav- enly brotherhood. This is the deepest fundamental principle of Christianity. It is the principle under- lying ideal family life and is the foundation of all 30 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. Froebel teaches. And we are never able to reach ideal life for our children until we reach out beyond self- interest. Tolstoi gives us a version of the Bible and the say- ings of Jesus which very simply brings out these spiritual relationships. It is called "The Gospel in Brief," and I should recommend it to every mother, for he makes practical application of each deep truth to our common experiences, and takes away the words which too often fall on the ear as tinkling cymbals, when they are really golden symbolisms. Chapter five of the ''Education of Man," on Reli- gion, gives a most complete picture of the spiritual relationship of parent and child. As mothers with this sacred opportunity to build for the real kingdom of God which is within, we should read all these things. Each sentence of Froebel's is a volume in itself, as it gushes out of the heart of the warmest lover of humanity the nineteenth century has entertained. What a bridal greeting there is to each one of us in the words of the third paragraph at the head of this chapter. In reality the opportunity is always with us to live the new life and aspire to the "new family," if we but hear this call "to represent humanity in pure development and ideal perfection." Here is a letter from a mother of a "new family" who certainly has probed beneath the shell of things; THE "NEW FAMILY." 31 and surely she will be led on and on by her children to the heights that are beyond. It so fully expresses the inspiration she has received that I cannot refrain from giving it, and trust it may inspire others to take up the search. "1 have been a student of Froebel for five years, and have surely been a most hungry spiritual searcher for more light, since I have so many little ones who are dependent upon me to be fed aright. Through this reading there has come to my inner eye a flash of light so clear and distinct that it illuminates every line to my dull sight, so that frequently when I fail to under- stand the meaning fully I am still inspired to work on. I wish now to know whether this power which I so distinctly feel is embodied in the peculiar psychology of Froebel; or it is because of the personal convictions of those who write about him? "I find myself fed and strengthened in spite of the fact that I am no kindergartner. It is certainly more than a new method which occasions the light which I discern. 'T have thought much on this subject and cannot believe but that it is a universal privilege for every human heart to understand these things, and that it is something broader than a so-called kindergarten philosophy. I have heard this quality called the spirit- ual psychology of the kindergarten as distinguished 32 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. from the material psychology, which I studied, but which did not inspire me. "If only all motherhood could get down to a sincere study of that something which I am sure inspires the inner and outer life of this great movement! There seems to be the greatest promise of the millennium in it — greater than anything else I know of. Whenever I have met kindergartners and mothers who know any- thing about the work, I find them fairly aglow with interest. Some of them speak as if they had passed through a conversion or change of heart. I have watched several young women change from day to day while in the study which prepares them for kinder- garten work, and have witnessed the mellowing of their characters." Here is a mother who evidently is already building one of Froebel's "new families." She has caught from him a peculiar vivid light, a ray of joyous intelli- gence which she finds hard to describe, but it is to her the most real of realities. Words of advice were to her indeed idle. The ideal which has thus vaguely taken hold of her will grow more and more definite as she lives out the myriad everyday problems of life with her children and searches to ideally solve them. No matter what she reads or studies, she has her guiding star of promise that will lead her to the truth. A certain conversion comes over one upon reading THE "NEW FAMILY." 33 Froebel which I wish each one of my mother friends might experience. If you have not read Froebel's own writings you have still before you one of the most delightful and broadening experiences. It is not light reading, however, and, like the Bible, may be read with profit every day of your lives. Will you not read Froebel and be a "new woman" and help add one more of these beautiful ''new famihes" to this "new world" of ours? No matter where you are, in the middle or at the beginning of your family building, Froebel will lend to you the regenerating power with which you may make your work the perfect one. CHAPTER II. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. "With reference to his eternal immortal soul, every human being should be viewed and treated as a mani- festation of the Divine Spirit in human form; as a pledge of the love, the nearness, the grace of God; as a gift of God. Indeed, the early Christians viewed their children in this light, as is shown by the names they gave them. ''Even as a child every human being should be viewed and treated as a necessary, essential member of humanity; and therefore, as guardians, parents are responsible to God, to the child, and to humanity." — Froebel. CHAPTER II. THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. At a meeting of some half dozen mothers during a recent winter we were looking at some of the pictures of the Immaculate Conception by the old masters, and we found ourselves slipping into some very deep sub- jects. Each individual mother, if she had never thought seriously before, found how many a problem she was stumbling over. We read in the Apocrypha of the New Testament the story of the simple, holy lives of the parents of the mother of Jesus. She was conceived without sin. It is fromx these uncanonical writings that the Roman church has promulgated the doctrine of the Immacu- late Conception, which refers entirely to the conditions under which the mother herself was conceived. It was not a miraculous conception, but an immaculate one. To realize purity and perfection is perhaps the only miracle. The great artist Giotto has made of this subject the frescoes on the cloister walls of the church of vSanta Maria Novella, in Florence. The angels are repre- 37 38 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. vSented as rejoicing that a man and woman are found united in marriage who have consciously determined to conceive a child after the desire of the spirit only. Hence the immaculate conception of the Christ. This is a favorite subject of the old masters. They have painted Anna, the mother of Mary, surrounded by angelic children, who rejoice that one of their number can find, through her, a pure avenue into life. Thus the saintly old painters give us a premonition of Froebel's divine idea, which teaches us that all little children should be reconceived of and given the spirit- ual avenues into life, full of activity and great deeds; and he looks to mothers and kindergartners to see this perfect image in each child, call it forth, bring it into self-recognition, and make it the motive power in each life. I wish I might repeat the whole story of that mothers' meeting — how they were startled at being asked to accept God as the actual father, and how for the first time the daylight of spiritual causes flashed upon the loving women. Spiritual consciousness al- ways seems to come with a flash, and these eager mothers realized what shockingly low ideals are usu- ally given women to begin building homes upon. Every one of them was more conversant with the motley lore of materialism, and the condemnation of marriage and child-bearing, than with the sweet truths THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 39 of the spiritual nature and the sanctity of the family. God was an unreal abstraction to most of them ; Love meant hardly anything but personal attraction, and we had to begin like little children. To be asked to look at the story of the Immaculate Conception as the real story of life and birth, and to actually carry it into their homes and domestic rela- tions, seemed hard for these mothers to accept, but just what they had come together to be told; for they had demanded practical help in everyday illumination of the home, and nothing will illuminate it so quickly as to find how related is family life to God. Froebel says: "It is the destiny and life work of the family to unfold the divine unity to reveal God." Is it not sweet to think that we should tell a story of immaculate conception for every child? If we accept God as the good Father of all we must believe that childhood is of the Spirit. Christianity teaches us that the Spirit of God among us is all there is of Life, all there is to our real being. We are of God. One mother of some very clever boys of twelve and fourteen asked: "How about teaching my boys the source of life?" It was rather late for her to be- gin to teach this wonder of heaven and earth, and in answering I told her how I began with my firstborn. I told her of God, the spiritual Father, before she was 40 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. here. To her parents' consciousness she has always been only the precious, God-given charge, for whom we must strive to live perfectly, and search to find the truth in all things. The first occasion for bringing the thought to her was upon the coming of the second one. This sweet little girl was so full of love that she could understand anything. We told her wonderful stories of the baby coming, and though scarcely a year old she would toddle to the window and watch for *'baa-baa." She began to take great interest in dolls; every- thing was a doll. She seemed to comprehend that the doll was a parallel life to her own which she must care for and foster. The first time she saw a doll she knew what it was, and took it into her arms to love. She would lay its cheek against hers and sway to and fro and sing ''baa-baa"; then she would give it to mamma and mamma would answer, "Baa-baa is com- ing soon." And when "baa-baa" did come she was expected, and received into the holiest sanctuary of love — a little sister's heart. "But," proceeded the questioning mother, "how will you continue from year to year? Tell us in just so many words." My dear friend, how can the words help you unless you yourself endeavor to find the spiritual conscious- ness back of them, and endeavor to abide in it? If you THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 41 will take the simplest thought and practice it you will learn more than I can tell you. Could you, day after day, hold your children in the reverent thought that they came to you from the hand of God — Love — and stick to it, no matter what seems to contradict it? Can you love every phase of life and see it environed in the spiritual only? Can you see God as the only excuse for the existence not only of yourself and fam- ily, but of the whole world? If I told you, what would the dead letter of advice be to you? What good would it do if you yourself did not feel and under- stand? Do not most mothers use God as an easy ex- cuse for unexplainable things? Many a woman has told me that when she told her children that God brought the babies she felt that she was lying to them. We are usually told originally that God is the great author of all, and then, perchance, we unfortunately unlearn the sweet reason. But not until it is learned over again do we really know our source and have heart-satisfaction that life is not a mockery reeking with filth and crime. If mothers realized the awful- ness of this sickening experience, they would hasten to tell their children the beautiful, spiritual explana- tion of life. If they would begin young enough, there would never be a hard place, and if they would elevate their thought sufficiently, there would never be any- thing too delicate to tell. 42 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. Emerson says: ''Even children are not deceived by the false reasons which their parents give in answer to their questions, whether touching natural facts, or religion, or persons. When the parent, instead of thinking how it really is, puts them off with a tradi- tional or hypocritical answer, the children perceive that it is traditional or hypocritical." Some one asks: "Of what special worth are the common prescriptions, using the symbols of flowers in teaching children of the source of life?" Why is not the creature, made in the image and like- ness of God, pure enough to use as an example? Man is so precious and life is so precious, why take other things to pieces in order to show our source? In order to find life we must begin with God. When we know our own source as spiritual, then we know all things, and we know the source of the flowers too. Do we not immediately misinterpret man and suggest evil, if we show his source by using other things sup- posedly more delicate, higher and purer? God is man's source, not personality, and neither eye nor ear can know God, for he is the supreme Law and Truth. Some of the first paragraphs of Froebel's ''Education of Man" make these meanings most clear, and think- ing Christian parents should read him devoutly. I hear a mother ask, "But how can I arrive at this beautiful conception? How can I find this uplifting THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 43 power, so beneficial to my family and the whole world?'* Would you honestly know, gentle mother? Would you truly make of yourself the actual spiritual creature God must have intended, since he has intrusted you with a child? Are you willing to systematically go to work like a new woman? Are you willing to begin right where you are, no matter what your problems seem to be, whether your children are little, or big, or still un- born? Are you ready to watch your every thought, and never again think cheaply of yourself or of a sin- gle duty, and try and see life as a costly God-derived gift? Are you ready to see your own children in the sight of God, made in his image and likeness, having the seed of the divine within for you to nurture? And, also, are you ready to see every other one as having come from God, "trailing clouds of glory"? Are you willing to render a friendship that shall find only vir- tues, and help each to find his own genius, "taking its rise out of the mountains of righteousness"? Are you ready to help every brother and sister to no longer covet power and beauty, but to possess them both as the pillars of their individuality? To know and live are dictated of our spiritual con- sciousness. If I told you, perhaps you would hardly believe the conditions of, and problems which have been solved in, some homes that I know; it would 44 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. take volumes to tell you, but out of it all has come this talk, inspired, as I trust you will feel it, by my love for all sweet mothers, friends, and homes. The doors of God's families are all wide open, because with God as the only excuse there are no deep secrets. The questioning mother continued: "You answer so many questions in one; I had thought to ask a great many different rules and regulations, but I see I must begin at the source with you and answer my own questions." Love those of your own every day more and more, and they will believe the highest secrets you dare tell them. Present the perfect harmony of everyday life to your husband and children, and they will know what you mean by God. We are demonstrating what Love is to our friends only when we present ourselves har- monious to them. It is a matter of seeing clearly our- selves, and being active in love every day and hour. If God is to be our Father, we must begin by being true fathers and mothers to our children. We may presume to have insight into divine things, and yet if we neglect as unworthy of notice the common rela- tions we lose the key to the divine. As parents, we must administer the priestly office at home by our daily life with our children, and the home will be the center, the holy of holies of that beautiful kingdom which we are taught to build upon earth. CHAPTER III. THE ANNUNCIATION. "All that parents should do before and after the an- nunciation follows readily, clearly, and unmistakably — to be pure and true in word and deed; to be filled and penetrated with the worth and dignity of man; to look upon themselves as the keepers and guardians of a gift of God; to inform themselves concerning the mission and destiny of man as well as concerning the ways and means of their fulfillment. Now the destiny of a child as such is to harmonize in his development and culture the nature of his parents, the fatherly and motherly character, their intellectual and emotional drift, which, indeed, may lie as yet dormant in both of them, as mere tendencies and energies. Thus, too, the destiny of man as a child of God and of nature is to represent in harmony and unison the spirit of God and of nature, the natural and the divine, the terrestrial and the celestial, the finite and infinite. Again, the des- tiny of a child as a member of the family is to unfold and represent the nature of the family, its spiritual ten- dencies and forces, in their harmony, allsidedness, and purity; and, similarly, it is the destiny and mission of man, as a member of humanity, to unfold and repre- sent the nature, the tendencies and forces of humanity as a whole" — Froebel. CHAPTER III. THE ANNUNCIATION. There is no sweeter moment in the life of the true, loving woman, than when she becomes conscious for the first time that she has received the gift of all gifts. We are given a beautiful picture in the first chapter of Tuke of the fervent joy of the mother of Jesus. And every devout woman's soul does indeed "mag- nify the Lord." When this consciousness of new life dawns on the true woman, it comes with a joy that ''angels might share." And there is one indeed who shares it with her if she has cultivated the best friend in all the world to every woman — her husband. What a renewed birth it is to them to come into the blessed unity of motherhood and fatherhood! The mother and father who start out with the heart's desire to make a complete home and family must believe absolutely, to start with, that their great responsibility is but a great resource and blessing, never a burden, and always a joy. And they will, upon the annunciation of an angel in their midst, set about putting their house in order anew, and regulat- 47 48 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. ing their everyday lives that they may better receive and entertain their royal guest. Long before the mother is conscious of the body of her child she is conscious of it in mind, and has in her thought the beautiful image of her holy child. These first months are her wonderful opportunity to liberate and bless her little one, and she cannot hold her thought too high and free. It is a serious matter what she is thinking at this time especially. When we realize that each child will be either a bless- ing or a problem to the whole race it behooves mothers, if it cost every effort, to control their thoughts and feelings. I wish every mother might have heard the address of Prof. Elmer Gates, of Chevy Chase, Md., given to the Mothers' Congress in Washington in February, 1897. I quote some of the facts he cites from scientific demonstration, showing the direct in- fluence of the mind over the body, and the parent's awful obligation to the child before birth. After giv- ing many experiments and relating many incidents from actual experience he sums it up thus: "The evil and painful emotions create in a very few minutes poisonous chemical products in the fluids of the body. Thus, anger produces a different poison than fear, and sorrow a still different product; and all of the evil and the depressing emotions produce kata- bolic and poisonous products which lower the tide of THE ANNUNCIATION. 49 life, while the good and pleasurable and sublime emo- tions create in the blood and within the cellular sub- stances of the body a series of anabolic and nutritiye products, which augment every physiologic and psychologic function. Now it can be shown that these products of the evil emotions interfere with the rate and completeness of cellular development by retarda- tion and by the production of various abnormalities, while the anabolic products promote normal cellular growth. Thus I found that the rate of cellular multi- plication in lower organisms — that is, the frequency of cellular segmentation within a given time — is lessened by these poisonous products. 'The application is this: It is well known that the child during the nine months of gestation grows from a single cell by cell multiplication to a fully developed child, and that during this period at certain times the several developments of certain organs commence. Thus at a given period the spinal cord commences to form; at another period the liver, or the heart, or the brain, or a certain part of the brain, and if at the time when an organ is just commencing to form the mother throws into her blood, through harboring some evil emotion, some of these poisonous products, she will feed the child with them, and thus arrest the normal rate of cell multiplication, and that organ will fail to attain normal growth in size and be otherwise vitiated. 50 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. But if instead of this all of the good emotions are dirigated into activity, then the child will get all of the normal nutritive products essential to complete growth of all its parts. ''But these emotive products afifect also the sperm cell of the male and the egg cell of the female; hence the parents should for at least six months or a year before creating a child avoid all evil emotions and dirigate all good emotions, so that the germ and egg may carry to the conceptive process normal structural and chemical growth; so that none of the evil emo- tions may have distorted the hereditary desirable quali- ties, and so that all of the good emotions through their nutritive products may have enabled these germ plasms to convey the desirable qualities. "During these fateful nine months of gestation the child ontogenetically repeats the phylogenetic history of the evolution of life on earth; it passes through all of the stages from the lowest to the highest, and if the normal anabolic products only feed it, all these stages will be normally completed; but every evil emotion will arrest or pervert some of these stages by interfering with the rate and character of cell development in the child. "Bring into daily use all of the happy, good, moral, aesthetic, altruistic, sublime, worshipful emotions be- fore and during gestation, avoiding absolutely all of THE ANNUNCIATION. 51 the irascible, unhappy, painful, critical, immoral, and evil emotions, and you will transmit the better char- acteristics to your child just to the extent that you have builded their corresponding structures in your brain. Have plenty of normal exercise, plenty to eat, and plenty of rest and sleep." Thus we are pointed to mental causes and effects most conclusively by these scientific experiments, and they prove to us how all-important is our mood, our thought and mental atmosphere in the actual bearing of our children. The loving, fearless mother is the beautiful channel of humanity. When in actual experience the mother is really an open channel to her children of all that is noble and good, how wonderful indeed is her life! The open-hearted consciousness of the loving woman about to realize motherhood, when she accepts her child as derived from the spiritual source, can hardly be described. Hearts made open through open thoughts and affections are wonderful mother hearts, and such hearts open the doors to every high and val- uable characteristic in the child. But how shall a woman about to become a mother secure these open heart channels? For those of us who want recipes here are a few: Practice every day upon every little and every large occasion, affection and charity toward all. Practice 52 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. it consciously as you would a lesson on the piano. You have no idea how happy, light hearted and well it will make you feel. Fear nothing. Fear is nothing but obstruction; it is hurtful, and how beautifully we can argue it away by reassuring ourselves that perfect love and affection will cast it all out. Fear is the most terrible enemy to motherhood that can be imagined, and it is poison- ous to the imagination. Think of how often it is the case that a child is brought forth after nine months of awful anticipation, anxiety, and black fear; imagine such a channel into life, and realize how free born is one who has escaped it. Emerson says: ''Leave me, Fear; thy throbs are base, Trembling for the body's sake. Come, Love, who dost the spirit raise, Because for others thou dost wake." Put down the fears and suggested evils of all the friends about. To the woman passing through the experience for the first time this is hardly necessary advice. Her own fears are, if all is free and natural, entirely eclipsed by her joy. Be engrossed in delight- ful occupation or study if possible. If work and con- ditions seem to exclude light-heartedness, command yourself, with all the mother-love latent within you, to put joy and delight into the commonest necessity, lest you poison and obstruct the life of your child. THE ANNUNCIATION. 53 The best rule of all is not to allow yourself or any- one else to discuss the condition. Quiety prepare yourself for all the exigencies; continue in all your wonted duties up to the full need and to the last. Do not read quack books or listen to idle talk, and trust only your best friends, your ideally thinking friends, with your confidences and for advice. About making the clothes: make them in the sim- plest way. Have them beautiful, but supremely sim- ple. Think how beautiful and simple is the sweet babe who will use them; and the clothes should cer- tainly not outshine the pure soul life, the precious gem from God's hands. For what is '*As sweet as the soul of a babe, bloom-wise. Born of a lily in paradise"? Weave all the beautiful thoughts you can into the garments and into your heart, remembering that such thoughts will beautify your child, and give health and intelHgence. Better still, if you can possibly afiford it, give out the sewing to some one who needs employ- ment; it will broaden your sympathies and allow you to spend your time to better advantage in study and recreation. Think universally of your child; that is, hold it in the broadest sense as a new, original creature, a part of the great humanity. You are but its channel into the world, and the less personal and unselfish you can be, the better. Practice giving; go out into your 54 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. larger neighborhood and do consciously some good where it is greatly needed. Remember the deep meaning in Christ's words, 'Take no thought of the body," and honestly try to live them out by forgetting yourself and yours in higher duties. And the father must remember that the mother can only do half the great duty. He must not worry or question her bodily feelings, but constantly and quietly plan for her fuller freedom and happiness. Let the thoughts be open and high and pure, that the whole being may respond to the conditions of the mind and be open and strong and pure; let the affec- tion play in every direction with hearty activity, and let every atom of the self feel perfect activity and in- dulge in the highest pursuit. This will help the cir- culation of both mind and body. Let life be recog- nized as a spiritual thing and be nurtured not only through wholesome food, but through wholesome ideas. Some one has said that the assimilation of truth is the perfect food, and what is received into the con- sciousness is as important as what is received into the stomach. Let relaxation be practiced; not only relaxation of the body, but relaxation through freedom of mind and heart. Do not hold to a single irritating thought. Put it out as you would a thief or a murderer. THE ANNUNCIATION. 55 Many a mother as she reads will say, "How beautiful a theory, but how impossible for me to live all this!" She will immediately see looming up before her the insurmountable vision of all her family problems and shortcomings; but suppose for once in her Ufe she dares to believe that all things are possible to her in a perfect life; dares to beHeve it just for the sake of the child; dares to believe that the father and her children are perfect, and know that they are, at least in the sight of God if not in hers; dares to stand up and declare each one of the seeming problems void, and in its place puts the perfect harmony that the heart longs for. Do it, if only in words. Jesus tells us that when we ask we are to know we have already received. We should declare freedom and truth as ever present, and they will come. Do we perhaps think that ideal family life costs? Yes, indeed it does. It costs energy; it costs absolute activity; it costs the sacrifice of all our pet notions and pampered thoughts. Ideal life costs the supreme price of all — the laying down of self; and if you wish to pay less you cannot buy it. It cannot be had at a bargain. Froebel says: 'The most original element of the woman's soul is maternal love [it is the womb of the spiritual life], which at no stage of development and in no decline of the human race can belie the stamp 56 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. of the holiest nature." And this natural element in the mother will help her, when she knows the conse- quence, to control herself and make right conditions for her unborn child. Motherhood is the possession of the universe, and we are only the channels. If we see motherhood as personal possession, then what? The Bible says, it is full of sorrow. If we see it as merely physical, then what? We might as well be only a higher domestic animal. If we would receive the fullest blessing of mother- hood we must, in passing through conception, go right on with the order of the world; not think of self or body, but see our child as planted in the universal heart of all. I know one beautiful mother who through straitened circumstances was obliged to face the birth of her seventh child without ordinary comforts. She took up her task with joy. She had demonstrated through it so often it did not seem hard. She knew that the more active she could be the better. She remodeled the old garments, kept up all her work, made her little flock her constant companions and helpers, and marshaled into her house a unity, a peace and strength that few would be able to equal. How many a one can look back and confess, "My own mother did this very thing." Such women make triflers seem absurd. THE ANNUNCIATION. 57 A mother friend of mine, who has had several chil- dren, each time makes for herself a program during this period of waiting. She uses a notebook to serve as a calendar, dividing it evenly into nine parts with about five pages to each part. The first page is the general plan of work for each month. The other pages are gradually filled up, as the days wear on, with helpful ideas and suggestions, recording occurrences that have brought her happiness; and gradually more and more points are added to the program, suggest- ing work and pleasure for the future months. The necessary preparations and sewing are parceled out between the several divisions of time so that there will be no strain, the easiest work being reserved for the last. A course of reading is included in the program, also the visits and calls she hopes to make and the helpful things she desires to do. She plans quite as definitely as though she had a school program to make and carry out. This same mother has had several children, and has kept a diary for herself during the whole period, and a record for each child from the time of conception. Order and definiteness are this woman's marked characteristics, and she is always voted "a woman that can be depended upon." It is unnecessary to say that her husband fully cooperates with her. Some of the points in her program repeat them- 58 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. selves regularly; for instance, the Sunday morning walk with her husband, the weekly visit to the kinder- garten, certain study of Froebel, etc. This same mother has no particularly high ideals, but the order and definiteness of her nine months' preparation prove to be such a smoothing out of con- ditions, that half-formed ideals might carry one to a much less practical outcome. She has plenty of time, is never hurried, or worried, or worn out. When we consciously plan our day we are apt to plan for happi- ness, and if so we usually get it. No one ever plans for misery and loss, for faith and hope are natural to the normal mind. She loves the Bible and finds a great thought in the verse, "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid," and she is consciously doing her share in the building. Indeed, dear mothers, no other foundation can be laid than that is laid, both for ourselves and our chil- dren; but we, and we alone, are responsible for the building. Think what is this building we undertake when we enter into parenthood. There are the first nine beautiful months when we are responsible for the hidden life. Every moment of that is a gradual, con- tinuous growth of both mother and child. Shall this foundation already laid be looked upon with indiffer- ence? Or even worse, shall it be builded with chaff and stubble? Or shall it be of gold? THE ANNUNCIATION. 59 Every hour of these nine months should be con- secrated not to self-comfort and thought of the body, but to higher thoughts and deeds. If the mother realized how the wisdom or the mistakes of the all- important time after "the annunciation" are bound to leave their effects, she would look well to all her do- ings. In word and thought and deed, all three, she would be lifted by reading Froebel along with her Bible. Froebel finds the beginnings of all things in mind, and asks parents to see to it that their thoughts be right. He asks us to recognize God in all things, especially in our relationships to each other. He de- clared that "from every point, from every object of nature and life, there is a way to God." He believes that in bringing our children into the world we are taught this lesson in the deepest way, by having learned the mystery of life through our inter- dependence as parents, and are made responsible for what our offspring shall be. He would have parents be always ready and in the right mind to do fullest justice to the little ones which they dare to give the world. If God is a reality he must be an ever-present reality, always present without beginning or end, and our children have been forever conceived in the divine order. Hear Froebel's own words: 60 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. "Can you tell, O mother, when the spiritual devel- opment of your child begins? Can you trace the boundary line which separates the conscious from the imconscious soul? In God's world, just because it is God's world, the law of all things is continuity; there are and can be no abrupt beginnings, no rude transi- tions, no to-day which is not based upon yesterday. The distant stars were shining long before their rays reached our earth; the seed germinates in dark- ness and is growing long before we can see its growth ; so in the depths of an infant soul a process goes on which is hidden from our ken, yet upon which hangs more than we can dream of good or evil, happiness or misery." CHAPTER IV. THE STORY OF LIFE. "The Spirit of God hovered over chaos, and moved it; and stones and plants, beasts and man took form and separate being and life. God created man in his own image; therefore man should create and bring forth like God. His spirit, the spirit of man, should hover over the shapeless, and move it that it may take shape and form, a distinct being and life of its own. This is the high meaning, the deep significance, the great purpose of work and industry, of productive and creative activity." "Try, oh mother, to bring truth in its faintest prophecy near to your child, and it shall be to him a well-spring of peace and joy." — Froebel. CHAPTER IV. THE STORY OF LIFE. It may seem improbable to those who have never thought about it, but the younger a child is the easier it is to give it truth impressions and teach it of God. Wordsworth tells us of the 'little child who lightly draws its breath, and feels its life in every limb." This child comprehended nothing but life. The great posi- tive truths are fundamental, accepted facts to children, and we need not hesitate to bring them directly to the child if we ourselves fully feel them. The one question above all others which mothers ask is, "How shall I teach my child concerning life?" For this is one of the first things each child clamors to know. No two children can be told alike; but if the mother is filled with conviction on the matter, the right thought will come. We are told by Froebel that all things lead up to God; and if we set out to lead our children to the divine explanation of life, every- thing will come to our assistance. Whether the child questions about the flower, the cat, or the baby, the happy opportunity is given to 63 64 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. bring to his thought some idea of God as the source of all. Here is a short conversation which might be helpful : "Mamma, who made baby?" **God did, my darling." ''But how did / get here?" "Your papa brought you to us." "Where did papa get me?" "Papa got you from the same big world where he came from." "Where is that world?" "It is the world that we cannot see with our eyes." "Then how do we know about it?" "Don't you know anything when you shut your eyes?" "Oh, yes." "There is a world that the eyes cannot see nor the hands touch. It is the world where our good thoughts come from, and that is where you came from. I love to call it heaven, my darling, because it is the perfect place." "Did I come from heaven?" "Yes, you cam.e from heaven, the perfect place, where all is good. You are my child of God, and all of God's angels come with you." "Where are the angels, mamma?" "They are in your hands and in your feet. They THE STORY OF LIFE. 65 help you and work with you, and keep you happy. They shine out of your eyes when you are a sunshine child, and they curl around you when you sleep, for they never sleep." I have a great many talks with my children about the angels, and they are definite realities to them, al- though unseen. They never question where they are or what they look like. They feel and know perfectly that they are some power that works with them for good, as invisible as the wind and warmth. It may be that this same thought would find no resting place in some children, but I believe that in any family where there is reverence for spiritual things the children would easily take it. Froebel teaches us how to use the invisible things as playmates for our children; and if we do this daily it is a very easy transition to give the child the thought of God. In the Mother Play of the "Weather Vane" and the "Light Bird," and in fact in nearly every one of these plays, is brought out the thought of the invis- ible power in cooperation with the child. These invis- ible powers are very easily brought to the child as realities. In our home they certainly do keep watch over the babes. To me they are the divinely given faculties and energies which work with my little chil- dren in harmony when they desire the good. If there is a hurt or fear we call to the angels to come and help. 66 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. Many a mother does the same with kisses, but this often becomes an encouragement of the evils. If there is anything that httle hands must not touch about the body, they are told that if let alone the angels will come and make it their home. This does away with all picking at the body and examination of parts. We often have little visits and look into each other's eyes to find real angels there, and when we cry we hunt for them but cannot see them. These are precious lessons that can be taught daily, wherein the invisible things become visible and God becomes something besides a word. If the mother has the ideal of angel life in her thought she will be sure to give it aright to the child and avoid any misconcep- tion or superstition. Angels are in constant attend- ance at our home with large and small, and the sweet promise, 'T will give my angels charge over thee," is made more tangible every hour. This suggestion of the spiritual presence should not be used too frequently, or the angels talked about too often, else they grow commonplace and tiresome. The angels should be used neither as a punishment nor as a promise. It is not well to say, "The angels will leave you if you are not good;" or, 'Tf you are good, the angels will come." Use the thought as a beautiful benediccion to the good act. For instance, upon being shown a bit of work well done by the THE STORY OF LIFE. 67 child, say, "How the angels must have helped!" or, ''Did you thank the angels for helping?" When little feet hesitate and slowly creep along, remark, 'The mgels in the little feet are helping." The angels would soon grow unpopular if used to criticise, or if they failed to keep their promises; like every high thing, they should be used choicely and wisely. All these sweet pictures will help the child to an idea of God, and then the explanation of what life is and where it comes from will be easy indeed, and it will be hard to cram into a child*s mind thus illumi- nated anything either trivial, pedantic, or evil on the subject of life and its source. The teaching of what life is should never be separated from the teaching of religion, for God is life, and life is always holy. With this holy sense of life comes to the child a reverence for every creature, great and small, and he is put in league with all the powers that work for the protection and reverence of life; thus his own life becomes an ideal thing to him, and his heart is made strong for every righteous cause. Froebel writes as follows : "Jesus, whom we all from innermost conviction consider our highest ideal, says: 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God.' Is not the meaning of this, forbid them not, for the life given the-m by their heavenly Father still lives in them in 68 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. its original wholeness: its free unfolding is still pos- sible with them?" Here is a little story written for a dear friend who took it upon herself to tell the story of life to some children whose own mother shrank from the duty, but who w-as about to again bear a little one and it was necessary to help the boys into an understanding of the reasons for these things. I give it here for what it is w^orth. It can be adapted to suit any case. As it stands it could almost be read direct to a child of six. Just before Christmas would be a beautiful time to take up this question with children, in connection with the stories of the Christ-Child. The holy child and the beautiful storv of its birth give us a very high start, and the higher w^e can build up to the story of the little, common child, the more w^e are fulfilling the Christlike ideals when he set the common child in their midst and defined heaven. We must renew our own conception of life to do this even as did the good Froebel. He says : 'The blessed thought came to me, Human nature in itself does not make it impossible for man to live and represent again the life of Jesus in its purity ; man can attain to the pu- rity of the life of Jesus if he only finds the right way to it. In looking back upon this thought I see that it was the heavenly moment of my life." THE STORY OF LIFE. 69 Here is the little story just as it was first written, and I hope it may at least be a suggestion of the let- ter if not of the spirit : THE STORY OF LIFE. "Did you ever hear the wonder-story of how little babes are born? Of how they come into this beautiful world of earth and grass and stones and trees, with its everlasting blue sky above? Would you love to hear it, and shall I tell you? *'Let me play that I am your own dear mother for just a little while, and tell you all I know about you — and the same story is true of every little baby. "First of all I dreamed a dream. The dream was that you were coming to live with me, and it made me so glad because I knew it was true. And I told the dream to your father, and he smiled and kissed me, and we prayed together that we might be good, and that our arms and hearts might be wide open for you to come in, and that we might love each other forever. "And the first I knew of your dear little body was when I felt you right inside my heart, and inside my heart your little heart was beating, and my heart swelled so large to hold you, and I thought so many wonderful things of you every day. I thought this: how sweet that you should be a part of me and I a part of you, and all of us a part of the whole beautiful world 70 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. of God. I dreamed so many dreams of joy and glad- ness. I dreamed that I myself was a little heart within the heart of God the Father, and that I was his little child, growing within his heart; and it swelled larger and warmer as I grew. And then I would wake up and say, *My heart must be so good and clean for the sake of the little heart within it.' I meant you. And I worked and I loved, and all the world full of children w^orked and loved with me to make a place for you when you should come among them. "And how my hands longed for you, and how your dear father waited and watched until he might take you and hold you close to his heart, too. "And one beautiful morning you came to us — straight from out my heart — right out of my body — through a beautiful door all made ready for you. My heart that had grown so strong with your love gave you up gladly and sent streams of beautiful mother- milk to my breasts for you to drink, for my heart knew what you loved most, and what you had need of. 'And even though you are my strong, brave child, and playing in the beautiful world of green and blue, yet you are still in my heart. I feel you there even to-day, and you, yourself, can never get out. Your father and I are one." If we always keep the beautiful thought of life as THE STORY OF LIFE. 71 one with the subject of religion, it naturally brings us face to face with the too often neglected duty of train- ing the child's religious thought. Religion is the natural consciousness of the young mind, which is full of devotion, positive and simple in what it believes, reverencing the least and slightest thing and under- standing truth statements only. A misstatement always puzzles a normal child. It has to be taught untruths, it does not know them naturally; and it is a sorry fact that many parents un- consciously do this by their silly pretenses and hypoc- risy. You can teach a child the letter of the law of honesty and he will never conceive of it unless you are living out the spirit of the same law in your own life. To preserve truth to the child he needs but to be loved, as St. Paul describes in I Corinthians 13, and set free according to Jesus Christ by being given the truth; then he stands some chance of coming into full possession of the kingdom of heaven which is within him. Dear mothers, let us pore over, study, and ponder the precious words of the interpreters of life. Let us be reverent toward everything in our homes, and then each thing will reflect that reverence, and the young- est child will radiate it. Direct rehgious teaching based on the Bible is hard for children to understand. It must be brought to 72 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. their childlike understanding. For instance, the words of Jesus, written by the beloved disciple, might be made to read for little children: ''Unless ye love the little child which ye have seen, how can ye love the Christ-Child which ye have not seen?" And then he gives us these beautiful words: "Little children, love one another," which are the center of all the re- ligious teaching children need. Naturally they love one another with an absolute and unquestioning love. The mother needs to lead this natural love into ex- pression through loving deeds toward all, and that is the whole of religion. A mother's stronghold with her children is how much she lives out into their lives and experiences, and by her questions and interest, even though she cannot go with them, she can still enjoy their deepest feelings and live them all over with them at home. The habit of telling mother everything that has hap- pened during the day is a great safeguard from wrong- doing for any boy or girl. Every night at the bedside it is well to indulge in such a review of the day's doings, however slight. With the smallest, those just able to talk, or only able to grunt an answer, a very happy beginning may be made by asking: ''Do you love mamma?" "And papa?" and so on through the whole list of baby's acquaintances. This is very much more tangible to THE STORY OF LIFE. 73 the baby than any prayer could be, and it is really the essence of all prayer to learn to love one another. Thus bedtime grows to be a delightful hour, antici- pated by even the youngest. Let the home be the sifting place for all the ex- periences of every day, and the loving mother at the cradle can thus relate and unify all the thoughts and activities of her growing boys and girls, as well as those of the tiny babe before her. Each and every mother will find her own child a new revelation which will uncover the mysteries of life to her as none other can, and it is well that she share with them their thoughts of religion. If she will take up the stories of the Christ-Child with her children regularly once or twice each week, a sense of religion and love will easily come to them. Nowadays we have such treasures of art and story bringing us the marvelous child. Some children that I know are making wonderful discoveries in what they call the "Love-Baby Book," and will stand at mother's knee and love each picture in turn, crying out at each Madonna, "Mamma!" in such tones of delight as only children can give. Every "baby" receives its caress. The "papas" in the illustrations are a constant source of stories — how they take baby up high in arms, and, in fact, every wonderful thing which can be told of the father, who 74 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. daily goes out into the great world, only to come back and connect the children's days of joy with nights of sweet dreams. These children handle the book itself reverently, and it is untorn and unsoiled, because mother's gentle fingers turn the pages, and the most patient little hearts await in expectant surprise the new picture to be disclosed. Then little feet dance and the tiny hands clap for joy, and the mouths offer kisses untold to the beloved madonnas and the exquisite babies. These beautiful pictures are the rarest opportunity we have of giving our children love and reverence for the Christ and the mother. Try it, even if in the be- ginning you should waste a few of your art treasures or soil a beloved book. They can be replaced; at any rate, who knows but that they may live forever in the heart of your child, and be an inspiration to a great life, full of untiring love and noble deeds? We mothers have such immeasurable opportunities with our own little "child-garden" at our feet, watch- ing with renewed interest each tiny plant therein, and helping it to grow and blossom in the sunshine of real love! There is no sweeter study to share with our children than child-life itself, and if the Christ-Child indeed comes and makes his abode in our hearts, life will have no impossibilities in it, and no mysteries. We may also branch out into our neighbor's home. THE STORY OF LIFE. 75 with its new-born babe, perhaps, and make our chil- dren the sweet custodians and caretakers of it, letting them each day do something, or think beyond them,- selves. Then the children find that after all the Christ- Child is only the spirit of cooperation which proves the great world to be a single, big-hearted family, each loving one another; and nothing is too much to give or to do, and the Christ is with us always if we obey his commandments. This is the ideal humanity, and the little child, unspoiled, understands nothing else, for it is dictated by the purest natural religion which he expresses and lives. CHAPTER V. THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. "You must keep holy the being of the young child; protect it from every rough and rude impression, from every touch of the vulgar. A gesture, a look, a sound is often sufficient to inflict such wounds. The child's soul is more tender and vulnerable than the finest or tenderest plant. It would have been far different with humanity if every individual in it had been protected in that tenderest age as befitted the human soul which holds within itself the divine spark. "The pure and good heart and the thoughtful and gentle sympathies natural in the child constitute in themselves a CHAPTER V. THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. How beautiful are the first days after baby's arrival, especially if the mother's heart is full of thankfulness for health and strength. These are precious hours of quiet when she is so much alone with the newborn. The poet says: "What fills up the soul with such happiness As the love of a baby, that laug^hs to be Snuggled away where the heart can hear?" All the softening, delightful emotion she feels, and the great waves of love and thankfulness which pass over her, are experiences which every woman might well covet. Say what you please, the mere giving birth to a child is an experience most elevating, both in mind and feeling, and its wonder cannot be described. The simplest, most unthinking woman is bound to expand in passing through this miracle of nature. She is bound to be the better, the greater. And if she will only take advantage of this royal moment when she 79 80 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. has thus become one with the most potent quality in nature and humanity — motherhood; if she will only recognize her place and seek to be good enough to fill it, what a leap she will take into the higher realms of living and doing. If only the right word might be spoken to each woman at this crisis in her life — at the moment when she has transfigured herself by giving birth to a child! If only the full import of the event mig'ht be made clear to her, and her life be held to the heights to which it was lifted! We mothers should go to each other in these experiences, and express our deep reverence for this divine uplift and help to preserve it to each. A beautiful friend of mothers has spoken in these lines: "How many Christs are born to-day? How many mothers, prophet-wise, Are gazing into baby eyes? In whose clear depths they thoughtful see All they may ever see, or we, Of God — incarnate Deity. "Madonnas hallow every home; O'er every roof where babies are Shines high and pure a guiding star; And mother hearts do always hear Divinest music ringing clear. And peace and love, good will on earth, Are born with every baby's birth." THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 81 How many a mother's heart will answer these lines with an ''Amen!" for do we not all hunger to trace our children to the higher source? Is not the human heart daring constantly to look to God as the source of life and being? and is not this longing in itself the ab- solute and immortal reason for its truth? And think what a blessing the child receives in this attitude — the mother and father both actively searching for the divine within him! Froebel gives us some very practical methods by which to proceed in the development of our child from the very first day. He says: ''The careful nursing of the inner, spiritual life must begin earlier than the ex- pression of it is possible; before its tender susceptibility is disturbed by outward influences." He means here those sacred hours when the mother comes into such close contact through holding her babe so many times each day to her breast; the constant handling through dressing and washing. He tells us that if each of these duties is done intelligently and for the highest good to the spiritual life it will also result in the highest good to the body. Again Froebel says: "Thus maternal instinct and love gradually introduce the child to his little outside world, proceeding from the whole to the part, from the near to the remote." How seldom do we look upon the advent of the 6 82 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. babe as something of religious import! How seldom do we look at a birth except in a material sense! Baby's reception into the world and his introduction to his fellow beings are often of a very amusing nature. In our worldliness we hardly realize this. When first we examine to see whom he looks like, and find he has hair just like his Uncle John, then we express the hope that he will not be consumptive like him, and forthwith examine his chest. If the pins prick him and he cries — ''Oh, yes, he's irritable; the same tempera- ment that his father has." *'How he does eat! Just like the whole Brown family; they all have big stom- achs." And baby finds himself stufifed to his heart's content, because of his inherited capacity. In this way baby is watched and judged, peculiarities are thrust upon him and held so real that he grows right into the narrow lines that are being prescribed for him. Who does not know this only too well.^ And yet when we stop to think, we confess we should recognize our children as original individuals, who should live and grow in freedom and spontaneity. Froebel says: *'It is man's destiny to become a righteous, reasonable, free being." If we would receive each child without hampering it or condemning it to a fixed destiny through inheritance, a very different result would fol- low. We should struggle to keep the old, false condi- tions in check, and let them die with those who per- THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 83 petrated them through their unscientific habits of Hv- ing. The law of heredity is subject to the molding of righteous thought. Each one of us can cite cases where hereditary taints have been outgrown and ob- literated through intelligence. Emerson says: 'The mind must be the measure of health. If your eye is on the eternal, your intellect will grow, and your opin- ions and actions v/ill have a beauty which no learning or combined advantages of other men can rival." I know of one family in which the mother fought like a tigress against some taints in her family blood. She felt the full responsibility, and in her loving de- sire to free her children, she made every effort to counteract it all. Not one child out of eight was touched, while the children of the immediate relatives were all allowed to fellow in the inherited footsteps. You ask how did she do it? I have often heard the story from her own lips, and it has been a great assur- ance to me that even the least favored mother can ac- complish much through her convictions, for this m.other was a foreigner, with little of what might be termed ''higher education." She tells how she never would believe that her chil- dren would express this trouble. She felt convinced that if she did her duty it would not come, and felt that it must have been neglect in the beginning. She 84 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. never allowed it to be spoken of in her house. If a symptom did arise, she fought it out of her house with a vehemence alm.ost equal to that which made the whipcords in the temple so powerful. She kept her children very close to her, watched them with jealous care night and day, and if one were sick, no one ex- cept the father was allowed to help in its nursing. She always declared that if she did her duty this evil could not lodge in her family, and she struggled to do it with all her might. She had eight children, and only two hands to do the manifold work of her house; but she won her brave battle. To-day she can point to her eight children as men and women clothed in health and intelligence, and twelve grandchildren, and not one touch of the dreaded diseases has come to light. When I tell you that the trouble was asthma on one side and consumption on the other, you will join with me in glorying in this mother's conquest with God's help. There is hardly a mother among us who has not some battle of this sort to fight over bodily or mental ills. Family life is of little value unless there is some- where a chance of mastery over these almost universal conditions. Instead of giving baby a fore-ordained reception, if we could meet him in the free spirit of love, because he is a human being, our battle would be half won. THE CHILD IN OUR MIDST. 85 If there is evidence of any shortcomings or peculiari- ties in his makeup, remember that that very thing is the something yon must help him to overcome. You must live for his liberation, and teach him also how to wipe it out. It must be especially the mother's thought that such is not his true condition, that his rightful inheritance is health and intelligence and good disposition. It is bad enough that he must live down the mistakes of his ancestors, without emphasizing them for him. You have invited him to walk in these pleasant world-valleys with you, and the shadow of the overtopping mountain of materialism all about should be dissolved by the sunlight of your own guid- ing presence. Froebel says: "Why is all childhood and youth so full of wealth and so unconscious of it? And why does it lose it without knowing it, only to learn what it possessed when it is forever lost?" We can all of us answer. Because we, the adult guardians, have cheapened for our children this rich inheritance. We have failed to recognize it and keep it alive, and we have been faithless to our sacred duty. In the "Edu- cation of Man" we are given the clearest picture of what should be the environment of the very young child. In the second chapter is taken up every practi- cal point of food, clothing, play, rest, sleep, and health, all written from the standpoint taken in these pages — 86 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. that the child is in actuality the child of God, to be recognized and considered so above all, and always, and that right in our midst he brings us the possibility of the kingdom of heaven. CHAPTER VI. THE RADIANT MOTHER." 'The destiny of nations lies far more in the hands of women — the mothers — than in the possessors of power, or of those innovators who, for the most part, do not understand themselves. We must cultivate women, who are the educators of the human race, else the new generation cannot accomplish its task. ''In a healthily constituted family it is the mother who first cares for, watches over, and develops the child, teaches him to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest, deriving everything she teaches from its central unity, and gathering up her teaching into that unity again. "The father receives his son from the hand and heart of the mother; with his soul already full of true, active life, of desire for the knowledge of causes and eiifects, for the understanding of the whole and its ramifica- tions; with his mind open to the truth and his eyes to the light, and with a perpetually nourished yearning for creative ability, able to observe while building up, and to recognize while taking apart. Such in himself and his surroundings, always active, creative, full of thought and endeavor, the father receives his son in his home, to train and teach him for the wider life outside." — F'roebel, CHAPTER VI. "THE RADIANT MOTHER." Did you ever start out in the morning to live a per- fect day? If you have ever tried it you will be tempted to persist, for the sake of those most dear to you. It is the separate perfect days joined each to each that make for the perfect life, just as it is each separate per- fect deed that makes the perfect day. We must make a beginning at Hving the perfect life some time, some- where; why not now and here, and while those we love may have the benefit? The poet says: "And I could wish my days to be Joined each to each in natural piety." But wishing for it will accomplish nothing. How to begin is the first question; how to persist is the next, and success follows. The simple mother at home, with her family about her, may think her place is the hardest to fill with per- fection. But it is not so if she can only attune herself to a high enough harmony. A perfect life lived in the midst of a circle of children — think what eternal cir- 89 90 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. cles will radiate therefrom! Is it not worth striving for? I always begin my day and find it expressed in a sort of morning prayer, something like the following: "Thank God for this day, this rare opportunity to live perfectly. Thanks for each living thing about me. There is no great or small ; each one, each thing, is fresh from the Divine hand, and I must know it, feel it, and esteem it. To-day I must love each one, each thing, for only as I love it does it enter into my consciousness — into my life. I must find the Christ, the principle of love, in everything about me; and as I find it, it enters into me and becomes a part of me and I of it. Only as I partake of Love and give it out do I have life in me." The main point is to start out in the right attitude of mind, and then you may be certain the day will un- fold its perfection to you; and if we take hold of our work and do it in the right spirit, it is the heavenly work. "Oh, Day, if I squander a moment of thee, One jot of thy twelve hours' pleasure" — So sings Pippa, the little silk winder of Asola, whom Browning portrays as a type of the vital power of love and purity. She has but one day in the whole year free from labor at the loom, and she thus greets the day as she is preparing to go out for her happy rounds. The poet relates the many unhappy situ- "THE RADIANT MOTHER." 91 ations which she changes from sorrow, discord and crime to happiness, harmony and righteousness by her singing and her simple presence. A mother's Hfe should be such a song and carry such an atmosphere. I want to be practical in these talks to my dear mother friends, and assure them that in this constant practice of right principle each day and hour we can change our homely, humdrum lives into masterpieces, to be imitated and extolled, to be forever remembered by our children. Emerson says that only in the mastery and living out of principles do we ever arrive at peace; and cer- tainly we will not arrive at success in family build- ing on any lower platform. Where principle guides the mother her children will one day rise up and call her blessed, for she has given them the secret of suc- cessful life and happiness. That appresciation and gratitude from our children are the greatest return for all our efforts each mother of us will confess. Be- sides, we might as well make up our minds to do the full duty from the start; for each neglected duty must be harvested, and perhaps the world may be obliged to come up in the rear and reap some of the tares we have sown. Better sow aright and reap the sweet reward ourselves. Every mother finds that she is being constantly pushed to the wall by the ceaseless activity and de- 92 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. mands of her children. Bless the creative genius of perpetual childhood, how it stirs us and probes us! How it urges us and tests us! And if we answer the demand, how we widen our own lives and enhance and heighten the possibilities of each babe! If the radiant mother opens wide the door, the beauty and freshness of eternal life rest forever on her child. If the mother's heart is aglow and her impulses aroused to give her child the noblest preparation for life, there will be few of her burdens but will dissolve themselves in her divine ambition. A mother's heart must indeed be consecrated. Was. there ever a more fervent wish on a mother's lips than that her children might be spared every ill? But do we half realize that the spirit in our homes, the free atmosphere, so to speak, is a great preven- tive? Somehow we are often led to confess that par- ents who seem most careless are least afflicted. A reasonable answer to this puzzling situation is this: perhaps there is more room in such homes for joy than for anxiety; more room for freedom than criti- cism; more room for love than fear; and are not joy and freedom Love's divinest blessings, bringing bless- ings in their train? "For there is no might in the universe That can contend with Love. It reigns supreme." But how shall I find this love? you ask. It is by "THE RADIANT MOTHER." 93 never wasting a moment in anything except in the expression of love — wise love; by the constant putting of it into acts and deeds, and demanding it in return from our loved ones. With babies have the word *'love" always on the lips. Let love be a living pres- ence that watches over them. Never intrude upon the rights of a single child, but quietly sympathize with each one and unselfishly cooperate in every way with each and its love will be given you in return. If we are selfish in one single thought we are not true mothers. We must be unselfish absolutely, and sacrifice all self-comfort to our great purpose. The angel life Vv^ithin each child is more precious than any other thing in the world; yet mothers often plant self- ishness through their own acts when they should be planting a fair heaven of loving and giving within the young mind. What are the different kinds ot acl^sh- ness which even enlightened mothers indulge in? L?t each search her own heart in constant reverence for truth, and be honest with herself and root out all save truth, and we can do it if we recognize that there is not a single evil thing in us that cannot be taken out with the truth. It is possible at every stage and age for us to find our original self, always pure, and aim to return to it. How important that each mother of us should con- ceive of herself aright; that she should find herself 94 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. planted in the Divine, and that she grow in grace ! We have the first opportunity to teach the world its spirit- ual source, for we contribute the family as an eternal stratum in its progress. The mother spirit is at the bottom of everything that is builded for eternity, and love is all there is in beng a mother. With love enough she can fulfill all things; harmony and power radiate from a mother permeated with love — wise love. The entire family will respond and demand the law and order dictated by a love-crowned mother. She will be alive and al- ways full of the expression of love, giving energy and right direction to sons, daughters and father. Her every word will be a joy, a w^onder and a surprise to all, for it will reach with sympathetic understanding into each heart, and liberate in each one ''emotions that angels might share," and open up to each paths into life clear and straight, radiating from herself as the central sun. As mothers we must be full of joy and always find reasons to be glad, practicing gladness. We must be happy, and never undervalue children or husband or even ourselves. We must not doubt our work as mothers, but honor it and also the work of our chil- dren. If we stop one moment to add to the struggle of the world by struggling over ourselves we are rob- bing ourselves and others. "THE RADIANT MOTHER." 95 We must be radiant always, and let every footfall be filled with rebounding impulse. To never be weary we must refresh ourselves in every thought by reach- ing above self, even if at first we are constantly aware that it is an effort to keep a smile round the eyes. Look well and find what it is you are radiating; per- haps you are pouring out over your home, husband and children, thoughts of despair and fear, of restless- ness and criticism, of envy, or even jealousy. They are all bound to throw sand into the family cogs and take the ease out of life. The thought that radiates from the mother makes or unmakes the atmosphere of the home. How many cases we see of children who do not seem to appreciate their parents. It is generally because they have had too much done for them and nothing expected in return. This is one of the commonest phases of self- ishness among parents. If they really loved their chil- dren they would not rob them of their opportunities to do for others; they would not bring them up self- ishly to learn bitter lessons in after life. We will not have problems when we see clearly that our work and what we accomplish, that only is our life. The poet tells us that ^'only the sorrows of others" are ours; and when we stop arguing over our- selves, and discussing our rights and wrongs, we find ourselves free to do and feel truly. We are not in the 96 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. world to heap burdens upon it. When we struggle we are not loving and working; we are wasting time and making hard places for ourselves and battles which we must tight out. There is always a chain of consequences to every indulgence in living and self- ishness. We must respect ourselves as contained in the moth- erhood which is of God, the universal life-giving principle; and if we keep ourselves conscious of the divinity of God in our own hearts, then we are really mothers and stars to the uplifted eyes of our children. If we are loyal to ourselves as mothers, loyal to the father and home, loyal to the spiritual life of our chil- dren, are we not loyal to God? If we are loyal to our families, we are true to the universe. If we begin with the spiritual cause as the true cause of life, and see our children as gifts of God, a spiritual result is bound to run through the entire current which our life sets in motion, which will lead our children out into the great highway of pure living. The moth- er's mind should always be filled with this conviction: "God is the cause of all, and God is Good." The mother's thought is what gives the eternal result in family and race. To be spiritual mothers we should never indulge in personality either with our children or our friends. We must be mothers in everything, and constantly 'THE RADIANT MOTHER." 97 practice taking hold of the truth, and find it every- where. Personal motherhood always limits the child to its own limitations, and it never brings anything but struggle and disappointment. You ask what T mean by personal motherhood. To me it is that in a mother which holds the child selfishly to her own heart, which grows jealous if the child ex- presses affection elsewhere (as though we should not welcome every expression of love) ; it is that which is in constant fear lest evil befall, forgetting God as a real guardian; which will not allow the child a chance to try its power lest it hurt itself. A personal mother has no interest in children other than her own; the moment she loves other children equally, and would share her best with them for the sake of the whole good, she becomes a universal mother. A personal m.other is always selfish, and she generally has her hands full of powerful difHculties — perhaps all with one child. A personal, selfish mother is one who allows her children to indulge in willfulness and un- control, petting and kissing where she should help with divine wisdom and authority — all because she is so weak-hearted in her mistaken love. You see her every day. You realize her intense selfishness when you picture to yourself what must some day be the struggles of these poor children, left for the world to chasten with no ungentle hand. Better it be the hand 98 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. of love. That mother who learns to wisely teach her child self-control is a universal mother, for she is doing the whole world a favor. The pictures of personal motherhood are only too numerous; we might fill many a page with them. Is not a wail going up from the nation because of this type of motherhood? Why are the common avenues of life so crowded with unsuccess and so lacking in characterful men? Because mothers waste their chil- dren's plastic years in indulgence and emptiness. A selfish mother is Satan in the concrete. She is work- ing out the deepest plots of the evil powers, and work- ing them out on her own flesh and blood; for what worse bondage can be heaped upon a child than the bondage to self? It is the bondage our race is under to-day. Selfish motherhood is a paradox and an ab- surdity. Why does humanity mourn to-day? Be- cause mothers in the past have been selfish and have failed to set their children free. Let every thinking mother call herself to her senses and see if she is feeding to her children the muddy stream of selfishness, personality and sensuality; or is each young life allowed to be a well of everlasting, free, universal life, springing up to water the whole earth with its refreshing radiance? Shall we mothers turn this living well of our chil- dren's souls into a cistern, made only to receive, not "THE RADIANT MOTHER." 99 give, and be filled from without? or shall we keep the fresh, living supply ever and ever more alive by draw- ing upon it, and keeping the child forever in touch with the deep, unfathomable sources of its spiritual being? And what about the selfish wife? Does she send her husband out in the morning with the ambition to deal righteously and work out his worldly destiny with some glow of truth in it? Or does she only look to what pleasure and plenty he can bring her, never ques- tioning whence they come? How many women urge their husbands into humanitarian efforts, and offer to go without luxuries that they may help in the up- lifting of the race? How many women even inform themselves as to what their husbands' temptations are — temptations to make money by unprincipled methods? How many women ask when they spend a dollar, what brought it? Was it paid for by a strained vitality, or was it gained at the expense of the husband's soul? A man who is not encouraged to expand into his worshipful self somewhat — who is not urged into hu- manitarianism and philanthropy, if only in a small de- gree — becomes a hardened man, and a selfish, limited and unjust husband and father. The privilege of uni- versal fatherhood should not be denied him, and the unselfish mother and wife will see to it that his larger 100 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. nature have a chance, and that he shall not always grovel after dollars. The mother must radiate ideals for her whole house- hold. She must be the life-inspiring center and ui;ge each one out into broader channels and higher aims. This is the only way we can work if we work for per- manent returns. If we are doing unceasingly, lovingly adding our children as a pure stream out into life, then only are we doing what mothers should do. Then we feel that God is with us and leads us into just what we need, and it ^vill make happiness for our whole circle. God does work with those who love, especially those who love childhood. I repeat, dear mother, be radiant always. Search out causes for joy. True motherhood is always joy- ous. Love and joy are one. They are the loving heart of the world. When a praying mother's bedtime comes her heart will question many, many things: Has this day been full of joy? Have I helped each heart to open wider? Have I inspired each one to better things? Have I for one moment dared to be weary? Can I love those I call mine better to-morrow than I loved them to- day? Is there any joy anywhere that is still undiscov- ered to me and my house? — then I must find it in the sweet to-morrow. CHAPTER VII. CHILD REARING. "For surely, the nature of man is in itself good. "The child ought to be considered a complete being during every period of life. "Some suppose the child to be empty; wish to inocu- late him with life, make him as empty as they think him to be, and deprive him of life, as it were. "Let fathers contemplate what the fulfillment of their paternal duties in child-guidance yields to them,; let them feel the joy it brings. It is not possible to gain from anything higher joy, higher enjoyment, than we do from the guidance of our children, from living with and for our children. It is inconceivable how we can seek and expect to find anywhere higher joy, higher enjoyment, fuller gratification of our best de- sires, than we can find in intercourse with our children ; or more recreation than we can find in the family circle, where we can create joy for ourselves in so many re- spects." — Frocbcl, CHAPTER VII. CHILD REARING. It is certainly meant that the child should come to us a free creature. The question we must ask our- selves is, Do we receive and keep him so, or do we find him a mere bundle of hereditary traits of charac- ter and personal attributes borrowed from his ances- tors, which we are to wrestle with for better or worse? Here is the creed prescribed by our loving prophet of childhood: "The fundamental idea of Christianity, that we are of God's children (or that God lives in humanity), expressed in the New Testament by the words, 'You are of divine lineage,' explains the relation of man to God exhaustively for all times." The child conies and it grows, and it seems hard to see in it the light of the Divine. At first it appears to do nothing but eat and sleep, and its greatest needs are bathing and changing. This in itself does not look particularly inspiring; yet everyone will confess that this little being is the seed of all that is majestic and intelligent, and worth the world itself. Like the flower 103 104 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. in the crannied wall, if we could understand it we would know ''what God and man is." Wordsworth speaks of his month-old babe: "Moving untouched in silvery purity, * * * On thy face, Smiles are beginning, like the beam of dawn To shoot and circulate. * * * Or shall these smiles be called Feelers of love — put forth as if to explore This untried world?" The deepest secret for a mother to possess in the rearing of her children is that every single evidence of thought and expression on the part of her child Is of equal importance. The first smile is as much a feeler out into the universe and the first step a tour of discovery (and as important to the child), as was the sailing of Columbus to the world. In working with children the great secret is to begin soon enough and to begin right — to begin with the whole child. Nearly all questioning mothers are busy asking about the ways of taking care of the body. Their whole time seems spent battling with physical conditions. Froebel says: "In the infant, as is often erroneously done, we take care not only of the bodily powers, by exercising merely the senses and limbs; and then, later, v/hen the school period arrives, make the intellectual powers alone act; but steadily, and CHILD REARING. 105 during the whole period of childhood, body and mind should be exercised and cultivated together." In this lies the secret of perfect development, for if the whole child is cared for all the time there will be no neglected parts, faculties, or tendencies left as stumbling-blocks later on. Children are 30 ready to respond to this unity. To see and think and to do are one to the child; to see and to understand and to do are a single impulse; and if our thinking, seeing and doing toward him are quite as single, unquestioned, orderly and direct, we will be apt to avoid many mistakes. Have you ever noticed how eagerly a six-months'- old child will grasp the slightest opportunity to ex- press itself? It will show you in many ways that it can understand more than it can express. How it loves to hear voices and be with the family; and how the eyes turn to every sound and motion! This is the time to play the little kicking and falling games given in the "Mother Play," and when the first-gift balls are to be suspended, one at a time, for baby to touch and swing. In the kindergarten we study what is called the law of growth. We take the tiny seed for our example, so perfect, so self-contained, and we our- selves represent the gardeners. The comparison is very clearly made between the plant and the gardener and the mother with her child. The tiny thing is so 106 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. complete, so ready to enter into its higher stale, and all it needs is right conditions. The mother must take hold in all eagerness and work with her seedling, understanding, loving and caring for it. Mothers must watch as does the tender gardener — not for seasons, but for years; pruning away the past and training the present into its fullest value. As one writer expresses it: ''A fresh little bud in my garden. With petals close folded from view. Brightly nods me a cheery 'Good morning' Through the drops of a fresh bath of dew. *'I must patiently wait its unfolding, Tho' I long its full beauty to see; Leave soft breezes and warm, tender sunshine To perform the sweet office for me. "I may shield my fair baby blossom; With trellis its weakness uphold; With nourishment wisely sustain it. And cherish its pure heart of gold. "Then in good time, which is God's time. Developed by sunshine and shower, Some morning I'll find in the garden, Where my bud was, a beautiful flower.'* Froebel gives us the keynote when he says: "The child at every stage of its development is a complete being." Not for one single moment can we add any- thing unto the child; we can only help to a more per- CHILD REARING. 107 feet unfoldment of what is within. Also the psychol- ogist tells us that the child is not a "bundle" of ac- tivities, but "one activity," and what affects the part affects the whole; that it has a perfect center from which it gradually and slowly reaches out into its fuller being. The Bible expresses it as "The seed within itself." Now, in all this, where is the practical thought for us mothers? It is this: That instead of analyzing our chil- dren we shall regard them as ideal individuals; for as God has made them they must be perfect, and for what is seemingly imperfect we are responsible. And the responsibility rests upon us to "take away the stone" we have perhaps unwittingly placed before the door of their spiritual selves. It is our duty to open up the avenues of their lives and let them live out into the beauties of, first, the family life, and then into the broader life relationships. It is ours to make them ready to truly fulfill their own share in this living chain and see that they are not the weakest link. We have undertaken a tremendous work when we have undertaken to raise a child, but one which will bring the sweetest fruits if well done, done little by little and systematically. We ought always to act from love and not duty with our children. What we do purely from duty is, 108 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. in fact, not even begun. Duty without love is an empty millstone, grinding itself. Children are happy in loving cooperation, and never happy in any other way. When a child sees something another has made that is w^ell done, it makes him feel sure he can do equally well if he takes hold, and this teaches us that children should have only perfect examples. Fathers and mothers who as- pire to live perfect lives will have children who grow day by day to be a joy to their hearts instead of ever- increasing problems. Parentage will grow to be less and less a bondage and more and more a blessing and a freer life, to those who enter into it, if the parents look into the heart of their own motives and aspira- tions, purify them, and definitely and intelligently plan to deal with their children aright. In Miss Susan Blow's outlines of the "Mother Play'* she puts this question: "What does the ideal of free- dom imply?" And this very telling answer comes from one mother: "As one who is taught daily by her two youngest children, may I speak and tell what freedom means to me? I have learned one thing above all else — that I must make my ideals live, if my children are in any way to be influenced by them. If I practice them spasmodically the children either miss the point or gradually come to doubt the ideal as well as the ideal- CHILD REARING. 109 ist. To realize freedom has been one of my deepest longings. I have long worn dress reform, and have interested myself in education and even politics in a quiet way. "There have been many things in my home which have held me in bondage. My children were restless, hard to manage, the youngest child being even pee- vish. I discovered that while I was seeking and work- ing for personal freedom my nursery was enjoying anything but sweet liberty. Each child was under bondage of some sort, either of temperament or ill health. It came upon me with great force that my ideals must be made practical and that the work must begin at home — in the, very cradle. On making an in- vestigation of myself, I found that I was in the habit of treating my baby as a helpless tot. I so often said, Toor little dear! you can't do that, you are so little. Come, mamma will help you.' In this way I was giv- ing orders as if my baby were a prisoner in chains before she was a full year old, in a tone of voice which was the contrary to developing and constructing; at the same time I overpowered her with attention and watched every movement she made with precaution. My other children had all been peevish, and I had taken for granted that it was natural or inherited; but, thanks to the kindergarten study, I began to think and observe child nature. The first thing I learned 110 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. was to set my baby free — perfectly free. I learned to do for her and speak to her as to an equal. "I cannot help telling you here of the wonderful response I had. I began to correct my own bad habit by saying aloud to myself, 'I can teach you nothing; I can only let you grow.' 'We are equals, baby and I.' 'I am not serving you, dressing, washing and feed- ing you; it is the hand of love alone that can do that.' 'We love each other perfectly, don't we, dear baby?' 'You and I are equal, and both of us free.' 'You have all the wisdom there is, in your dear heart, and we are perfectly responsible to each other in everything.' Such were my thoughts, my feelings, and my prayers. Every day they grew sweeter, more real, and more completely earnest; and every day not only my wee babe, but the other children grew freer and more self- controlled, more loving and responsive, and less and less peevish, restless and wearing. I was no longer dictating, no longer controlling, no longer watching for failures and limitations, but we were working to- gether on mutual suggestion; we were truly a coop- erating and harmonious family. "I wish Froebel might be translated: 'Come, let us bo children together in the pure freedom of idealizing one another.' To me the ideal of freedom implies the setting of everybody free, and then we find freedom ourselves and become truly of one mind and of one CHILD REARING. Ill body; and there is no place where this can be so beau- tifully illustrated and so completely practiced as be- tween father, mother and children. During the last year my nursery has indeed been a university to me in teaching me to give universally pure freedom to each, even my tiniest babe, and thereby finding it for myself, not only in my mind; but think what a rest and liberation to a tired mother there is in a family of self-ordered and freely determining little ones." If we are earnestly simple with our children, and take hold of every little and big thing we have to do, they will take hold with us and we will do it happily together, and thus come into a deeper understanding of each other and hence a deeper love. Children seldom think over the last thing or the next thing if the interest is keen; they weary more from being hindered and not allowed to be active. With very young children we must not make details for them to stumble over and petty laws for them to break. If the house is simple, and each thing a rounded thought carefully considered by the mother before it is expressed, the children go on and on from day to day keeping this sweet gem of self-activity till it blossoms into maturity. Every child has an inner unity, and if the mother is harmoniously minded and does not dis- turb it, it will grow into a heaven to keep always, and will not be left to be vainly hoped for. 113 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. To the kindergartner it never matters who the child is; she just knows it is right and is naturally con- scious of truth; she believes in it, she works with its natural impulses and brings out full, conscious activ- ity, and that brings out harmony, joy and intelligence. The child feels it all and easily works and grows with- out realizing what problem he has passed over. A kindergartner or a mother must have a deep peace of mind, and be always refreshed and equal to her work if she would have good results. Just as soon as we get out of our own preconceived notions, and be- come conscious that there is truth in a child's mind, planted there originally, our work is quite easy. Froebel says: ''We disdain altogether to examine our own youth, from which we might learn so much to benefit our children. Yet this ambition, too, to turn back and observe our own youth, and to keep our soul fresh and warm in eternal youth, lies in the words of Jesus — 'Become as little children.' " And until we do become as little children ourselves, can we really open our hearts to them that they may come in and find our thought sweet and pure and inspiring? When we do they will bring us their richest gifts and purest thought and strongest love. They are always happy and active in the presence of their lovers; always wise, good and self-reliant if they are trusted and under- stood. CHILD REARING. 113 To work with children we must be happy and always full of sunshine and the expression of it; we must give them a chance to live the full activity and freedom of life by enjoying it with them; and think what it will add to our own lives, and how it will lift the whole circle to thus dwell together! But you will haul me down from my flights to re- mind me that Child Rearing includes a few practical questions, such as dress, food, sleep, baths, flannels, etc. Indeed, I am well aware of this; but believe me when I say that when you aspire to simplicity in your family life in order to give your child's spiritual activ- ity the greatest possible chance, you will discover for yourself the most practical solution to most of these questions. Earnest mothers are everywhere battling with the question of dress, and have an inner sense of the artistic fitness which should belong to children's clothes. Every woman has an aesthetic instinct, which, though never brought to bear on canvas, can be and is expressed in her home decoration and her children's wardrobes. Who does not enjoy the sight of a beautifully dressed child more than a pretty pic- cure? This need not imply a beruffled or berib- boned gown and elaborately plumed hat; but a simple, sweet, childlike costume, which, if appropriate to the best uses of dress, will be truly artistic. Common 114 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. sense is not, need not be, either crude or ugly in its expression, since that which is most natural is always most beautiful and graceful. With children we have a quite difficult task — that of dressing them so as to form tastes not yet matured, and at the same tim.e meeting the requirements of excessive activity and usefulness. There is a beautiful freedom in child ac- tivity, which demands a corresponding freedom in its clothing. Why should not the latter for this very reason, like the former, be of ever-increasing grace and beauty? Ellen Lee Wyman sums up the subject in her own enjoyable way: "Cultivate simplicity in every way. Take life and make life just as easy as you can. For one thing, do not ruffle your temper by ruffling your clothes. Make them simple, not plain and ugly; an unbecoming gannent to wear or to see is a great deal warmer than a harmonious one. But consider the sewing upon which, as a rule, too much time and strength are expended. Consider the laundrying; how would you like to iron it yourself?" The everyday dress of a child should not be so far removed froni prettiness that the occasional wearing of the Sunday gown is something unusual. Nature does not keep her best things for a better day, but wears her best, knowing that to-day is the best day. A simple but dainty dress, at the same time substantial CHILD REARING. 115 and serviceable, can be designed for the daily wear of the little girls of the family, and abided by, until it brings lasting influence of fitness and niceness to the little wearers which would never be produced by end- less changes of more or less elaborate costumes. The beauty of use and the use of beauty are the doctrine of nature, and can be most satisfactorily applied in the matter of dressing nature's children. These should be as unconscious of their apparel as is the rose of its rich-hued petals, and they will be so in proportion as their garments are as fitted to so clothe them. Wise mothers will not discuss dress in general before their children, but will leave them in the unconscious en- joyment of what they have, ignorant of its value or elegance. A mother said not long ago: 'T am so sorry to see the snowy white guimpes and cashmere petticoats for children go out of style, for they were always so pic- turesque." Now, nothing that was ever truly artis- tic and picturesque can go out of style; and rather than follow some extremity of fashion, the sensible mother will hold to that which makes her child ap- pear externally clothed in all the sweetness and purity and freshness of its child nature. Above everything, let the dress in no way restrict the freedom or make the child conscious of its external appearance as something of more importance than its handsome deeds. 116 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. Babies' clothes should be simple and cheap, be- cause they are outgrown and outworn so quickly by the normal child. Have an idea in them — freedom. See that your child is happy, busy and free, and that his dress does not hamper him. As to winter clothing, my experience has proven that in our highly heated houses the children should be dressed lightly, but when they go out given es- pecially heavy wraps, from top to toe, and yet not so cumbersome as to hinder play. For both boys and girls knitted over-trousers are excellent, drawn on over the feet. I never used wool for undergarments with my children, since they were in such superb health. Yet this is no rule laid down by me; each mother should study her own child and its environ- ments. On the question of food, we aim to make our table simple and yet give great variety, and have gradually drifted into a purely vegetable diet, not from any par- ticular conviction, but because we have learned to prefer it and enjoy it. It certainly adds to the sim- plicity and makes it easier for our children to partake of everything with us. There is so much to read on this subject to-day that I will not attempt to go into it, but believe it is something every intelligent woman should carefully consider. As for the bath, let it be frequent, of short duration, and without extremes of temperature. Make it a mat- CHILD REARING. 117 ter of cleanliness rather than a remedy. Let it become a fixed and regular thing, including teeth, nostrils, nails, etc. Have a set time for cleansing the hair and have it done regularly. If all this is established and thoroughly and faithfully carried out in earliest baby- hood, there will never be need of making laws and hav- ing a question about it. It will make cleanliness a habit with little "thought of the body" in it. The same may be said as regards sleep. Establish the hour and adhere to it. Have the bed clean and simple, and in the airiest, best part of the house. Never use the bed as a place of punishment; keep it as a sweet resting place which the child has well earned when sleep overtakes him. He will learn to respect it and establish a habit of regular hours of rest. Never permit him to lie awake in his bed for hours with noth- ing to take up his attention. It is a crime to allow a child to waste himself in vacuity. Make bedtime a happy time, but make it a rule to put lights out and settle down at exactly a certain position of the clock's hands. The question of playmates is often a serious one. I solve it in this way. I make myself responsible for every child within our neighborhood circle, and work for the proper environment of each. There is a kin- dergarten as a result, where the very youngest come together in sweet communion under the most perfect 118 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. guardianship. The school is my dehght, and I know its playground. The mothers of our circle come to- gether regularly, and we work with united hearts that we may lend our children to each other as useful and beloved comrades. I can see no other way out of this queston of play- mates. Isolating the children only makes it worse. Reach out, take them under your own charge, let them play under your own eyes and assume the full responsibility, or some day you will be sorry. The wHhole danger of bad playmates would be done away with if we had kindergartens everywhere, and a kin- dergarten is a possibility everywhere if the mothers demand it and set about having it. The mother can- not do for her own flock; separated from the rest, what a kindergartner would do, and she is only making a greater danger through delay if she keeps her children away from their natural companions. We do not want to ask our children to pass through some of the wretched experiences we have known by having de- grading companions thrust suddenly upon them when th(ey are rushed off to school without proper prepara- tion. Froebel says: *'We can spare our children the details of experiments which mankind has passed through if we educate them aright. They must, in- deed, become wise through their own experience, but they need less rough experience." CHAPTER VIII. THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. "Every age of life has its own peculiar claims and needs in respect to nurture and educational assistance, appropriate to it alone: what is lost to the nursling cannot be made good in later childhood, and so on. The child, and afterwards the youth, has other needs and makes other demands than the nursling, which must be met at their proper ages — not earlier, not later. Losses which have taken place in the first stage of life, in which the heart-leaves — the germ-leaves of the whole being — unfold, are never made up. If I pierce the young leaf of the shoot of a plant with the finest needle, the prick forms a knot which grows with the leaf, becomes harder and harder, and prevents it from obtaining its perfectly complete form. Something similar takes place after wounds which touch the tender germ of the human soul and injure the heart-leaves of its being." — FroebeL CHAPTER VIII. THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. The question of punishment is one of deepest im- portance, for punishments of every phase and kind are indulged in constantly by nearly all parents. There are weighty arguments for the use of the majestic yet awful word ''must," yet we all confess it is not neces- sarily always connected with punishment; nor if rightly presented to the child does it need to be instilled through punishment- I believe that the bulk of all our punishments is due to mistaken methods or neg- lect in the plastic period in the past. There is a time in the affairs of every child, which, taken at its best, can be a time of permanent growth into self-control and out of bondage to the "must." Some of us do not believe in the natural depravity of childhood, and think the right thing can be made the thing most to be desired if wise help is given at the right time. But we have got to take development by the forelock if we would avoid shocking and disgrace- ful encounters with the rod. I have not a doubt but that each reader can point me out a score of excep- 122 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. tions, and tell of children who are ''simply incorrigi- ble," etc., but still I contend that with sufficient appli- cation of ''prevention" there would have been much less need for "cure." Many of us are whipping out of our children things that we should have whipped out of ourselves before they were here. How many m.others are thoroughly satisfied that they are capable of governing themselves before they try to govern their children, and how many more con- sider they are completely obedient to laws divine and human before they demand strict obedience from their children? for they are sure to find us out if we are hypocrites. This question of punishment will forever exercise parents, and there will never be discovered a just and equitable set of punishments if we search forever. My experience has been that right here the kindergarten comes to our rescue. If it were possible for each child to be daily separated for a certain number of hours from the mother, even at the age of two, and put in a little world of children of his own age, he would learn the sharing, the obedience and yielding to "must" that come from living together with many of our own age, instead of fighting out each little point in a hand- to-hand combat with his mother, who has often paved the way to disobedience through harassing him. My babies, who were sent to kindergarten very THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 133 young, so young that they learned their first words and lessons there, came into a deep sense of obedience and looking out tor each other's rights without any conscious effort on the part of anyone. Of course, it was in an ideal and thoroughly graded kindergarten, with a specially prepared helper for the babies. In a large family, with the children all close together and a wise mother-head, this same result will be ac- complished; but so long as our children are compelled to stand out in single combat with the parent, who is perhaps not overly self-controlled, there will be a de- mand for special advice on punishment. Punishment is very rarely necessary in a good kin- dergarten where the right constructive work is being done, and the same can be said of the home. I confess that I have a very small repertory of punishments, small in comparison to the several thousands of pecul- iar weaknesses that childhood seems to be heir to — if one may judge from the mothers' remarks. They do not realize how many of the faults of their children they would refrain from mentioning if they knew how the listening kindergartner viewed them, but was too polite to point to their source. Froebel believed that everything opposite to the nat- ural (which is the spiritual) must be taught the child; that he is original and ever true to his own source un- less educated away from it. As mothers we are only 124 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. too willing to grasp at this as a revelation; we must never forget that children come out of the depths that lie behind our own natures. We should hold our children in the thought of freedom from shortcomings in our own minds, allowing no sense of limitations to appear as lasting and unconquerable. We must seek our way out of them, searching diligently for the thing which will rightly counteract the deficiency; and then only have we done our smallest duty toward our little ones. Froebel says: "Punishment, especially by words, very often teaches children, or at least brings to their notice, faults from which they were wholly free." And again, "Fathers, parents, let us see that our chil- dren may not suffer from our deficiencies. What we no longer possess — the all-quickening, creative power of child-life — let it again be translated from their lives into ours." How Froebel pleads for the recognition of the child's rights! He says: "Are not childhood and youth, are not the longings, the hope and faith of childhood and youth, the exhaustless foundations of our strength, courage and perseverance in later life?" We do not want to whip it out of them; we do not want to break their wills which some day must help them to determine all things, nor do we want to pam- per that hereditary selfishness which we have fos- THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 125 tered in them and which seems to baffle us. There is only one safe ground, and it is this: separate from out the seeming quandary which the child presents you the real central, radiating, loving child of God. See it well defined, and then be noble and good enough to occupy the same house with it and be will- ing to admit that there is equal responsibility on the part of both; live together, and live closely together. There are no rules to lay down; there is no prescrip- tion that will work the same in any two cases, and the loving mother and father will ask for none. They will dare to live with their children, and together seek lives of activity that shall harmoniously work for the good of the whole. If punishment is ever necessary it ought as near as possible to come about through the misdeed itself. As the reward itself follows closely upon the good act, so should also the punishment follow closely and be a direct outcome of the misdeed, else the child, lacking the logic to put both ends together, will fail to learn his lesson — and by the way, there must al- ways be a lesson in the punishment ur it is wasted torture. We do not punish a child simply to get even with him, but to teach him something which we have failed to teach in a better way. Punishment is always a bringing up of the balance somewhere — the balance 126 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. which we have failed to secure through our own igno- rance of the right laws for governing ourselves and our children. If we elders would always look closely into conditions and our own state of mind, we would seldom fail to find the real reason for a child's misbe- havior, and especially we would never indulge in the unjust feeling that we would like to give a child a good spanking just to relieve our own minds. It ispure selfishness to punish the child when it is we that are lacking. "Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city," and especially great is the parent who governs himself in the presence of unruly chil- dren. How specially vexing it is to have one's own flesh and blood arise and taunt us with our own short- comings by repeating them. When we see our own weaknesses masquerading in amateur array the insult and the menace are great. Punishment is often ad- ministered in a sort of double revenge — revenge on the child for daring to repeat the error, and revenge on one's self for allowing the error to be repeated in the child. It is only added weakness on the part of the parent to succumb to the temptation. But how shall a parent, the mother especially, who has not this control, begin? I should say — stop short and stop suddenly in all your old methods, and learn all over again. ''Yes," you will say, "but in the meantime the children will be neglected." A little THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 127 wholesome neglect may be what they need after too much manipulation of their rights. Neglect is cer- tainly better than hurtful surveillance. Again, just to think twice and question your old way of punish- ment will be a wonderful beginning. And even if you do punish the child, take the affair to heart after- wards and study over it in the light of what you know is truth. Talk it over with the father. The man's sense of justice and right is often the keenest sense he has, and it is well to let the children come in con- tact with it; too much woman government for both girls and boys is not the best thing, nor is it the best thing for the father to be entirely relieved. It is al- ways a wise thing to discuss naughty acts with the child himself, and together conclude to bring it up when father comes home, for final decision what is best to do. Children will often discipline themselves if allowed to, and especially if we calmly talk the matter over with them. One child scarcely two years old sug- gested that her hands had better "go in the closet" when they slapped sister, and forthwith a pair of long stockings were drawn on and pinned to the shoul- ders. They staid there the better part of the day, and finally the little one came and declared that the hands were ready to 'love baby now," and since then many a time have I seen these self-same hands, raised 128 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. to push or snatch, fall gently of their own accord, and instead baby was requested most lovingly to accord to her wishes. In the matter of discipline, as in every- thing else, much depends upon an early start; and an early start means — to begin with ourselves and our grandparents. Some argue in favor of whippings in special cases; others recommend them just to turn the tide in an otherwise incorrigible situation — to make a break in the clouds, as it were. Mrs. Ellen I.ee ^^^'man says: "There are times — fathers and motheis know such times — when a spank- ing administered in proper spirit, and in proper parts and proportion, is highly beneficial, not to say indis- pensable. It reallv seems to change and stimulate the circulation. You all know what a clearing effect usually follows such an experience; but let the expe- rience be rare enough to be impressive, and do not threaten it unless you mean it." Remember, I do not quote this because I fully believe it. I consider that whippings are always a makeshift; a substitute for intelligence and self-control. Argue and consider as long as we please, the whole matter of punishment must again and again be summed up by saying, "He who would command must first learn to obey," and parents, when they recognize how constant is iheir responsibility, had better be THE QUESTION OF PUNISHMENT. 129 about it and learn self-command, even to the neglect of every other duty. It is better that our children have self-control than that they have bread, and they will never gain it except through the noble example of the parents whom their young hearts adore. CHAPTER IX. A KINDERGARTEN HOME ''What are fhe external conditions of a family, and who are its most important members? Father, mother, children, and servants. What, now, must be the con- dition of a family if it is to prepare and develop the human being for the attainment of the highest and ultimate purpose of life? They must know this ulti- mate purpose and the means for its attainment; they must be agreed concerning the ways and means to be adopted; they must aid and support each other in all they do, having only this purpose in view. "For the child, therefore, the life of his own family becomes itself an external thing and a type of life. Parents should consider this fact: that the child in his own life would fain represent this type in the purity, harmony, and efficiency in which he sees it." — Froebel. CHAPTER IX. A KINDERGARTEN HOME. If life is to be made a whole, a rounded and perfect thing to our children, we can leave nothing out of the reckoning. To give them perfect lives we must order all our ways and doings after a perfect pattern. The kindergarten gives us such a complete picture of real life, that I am fond of modeling the home after it. Were you ever in a kindergarten home, with a kin- dergarten mother at the head of it, with the laws that govern the kindergarten in force from garret to cel- lar, and from kitchen to nursery? A real kindergarten home, of course, has a great many children in it, and hence a great many problems ; and yet we must admit that problems when they are solved oniy lend the light and shade which are neces- sary to make family life interesting. If you have only one child or few, I should advise that you borrow some, especially if there is no kinder- garten in your community, that your children may have the necessary companionship which every intel- ligent mother will confess is so helpful. But even if 133 134 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. there is a kindergarten in your midst it is most essen- tial that the home be foimded on Uke principles, else half the good effect of the morning will be obliterated overnight. It is the cry of the school everywhere that the home does not cooperate. How few of us reach out in sympathy with that great body, the teachers, who are working for the sal- vation of the children and struggling with things that the homes should have mastered long before the chil- dren were let loose upon them in droves of sixty or more, to be managed by one head and one pair of hands at very small pay. If we would have obedient, inspired and happy chil- dren, we must definitely plant our homes with some high principle, and as parents, act and live and co- operate with the powers at work; for humanity cannot have makeshift homes and have anything but fail- ures for children. The kindergarten gives us such a home-building principle, and yet if I were asked to define it, it would be almost impossible. If we read Froebel we are filled with the idea that family and home should symbolize and actually be heaven on earth. And, really, is it not this we pray for constantly? Yet this kingdom will never come until we individually go about establishing it in our homes, where every room should be the throne room and every inmate in the presence of the holiest things of A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 135 life. We get a glimpse of ideal family life in the kin- dergarten, and if we have nothing better to build up to in our homes, we can make no mistake in aiming at that. Let us visit the kindergarten and learn its simplest lessons and emulate them in our homes. In the perfect home there is no happier place than the kitchen. It ought to be full of interest to each mem- ber of the family. It always is if mother does the work. Yet the mother should have cooperation, if possible. She should also have the best of outside help, and pay well for it, even if obliged to economize somewhere else; but this help should never be an ex- cuse for want of cooperation on the part of any one member of the family. The home is not a home, nor the family a family, unless each one does his share. And outside help will not be on the outside long if all work together; in fact, any assistant in the ideal home should be worthy of the confidence of the home and of being one of the family. If we expect intelligent help in our homes, we must set about making it so, even if we have to start a course of special training; for very few women bring to the work of the kitchen the inspiration that is neces- sary to make it the element it should be in the develop- ment of our children. We should study our helpers and take up with them inspiring things to read and think about. The best of us wear out without inspira- 136 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. tion, and we need more of it in the kitchen than in any other part of the house. Above all, appreciation and love should be rendered the one who gives us the hardest, hence the most royal, service. We should be interested in her welfare and be as solicitously her friend as we are that of any other member of the fam- ily. She will be either helpful or harmful to the whole family, so it behooves us to take our servants into our hearts. Suppose we fail several times in this stupendous servants' problem; let us not give up the possibility of success until we have tried our best. We must try over and over again, for we who are home-makers and mothers can never shift this responsibility so long as we need help. The longer we entertain failures and makeshifts, the longer we rob our dear ones of their proper home environments and happiness. The mother is bound to have to be the mother of every- thing in her home. If she is not mothering her prem- ises she will have to patrol them. The nearer she comes to making her help the assistant mother, the more successful and well oiled will be her kitchen department, and every other department of the house. Make a thorough business arrangement with each one that works for you. Do not call the woman who does your work a servant, nor by that detestable word ''maid." Call her your housekeeper, or, if you will. A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 137 your house-helper. In the first place, have some one you can respect, and then respect her in her position, and in her work; also her time and development should be respected, and unless she has been spoiled before she came to you, you are bound to have satis- factory results if you work along these lines, for I have proven it. I have had many women working for me in my home and in my office. All are treated with equal re- spect, yet if asked to discriminate I would, without question, be in favor of the one who helps in my home- making — yes, in my kitchen; for is not that work more in touch with my family than the keeping of my books? We do not half respect ourselves and our work as mothers, if we degrade the all-important work of our first assistant, the cook, housekeeper, or whatever we may call her; we degrade our whole house in degrading her. With happy cooperative service, think what a choice place is the kitchen, with all its manifold work. It is really the workshop of the house, the most inter- esting of all to the child; the place where the bulk of the comforts of the family is fashioned. We all love the kitchen at our house. It is such a busy, happy place that it is hard to keep away from it; and on a winter's night what a cozy spot in which to draw the pine table up to the stove with its rousing 138 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. fire — certainly more enjoyable and poetic than a radi- ator, and just the right place to pick nuts and eat ap- ples. I do not wish to shock the sensibilities of my refined mother friends, but I must tell the truth; our entire family, actually, even the blessed woman who cooks the food, all sit down at the same table ! Each one has duties of service toward all, or special service toward a child. Good yet unafifected table manners are de- manded. Each thing is done from the basis of love and cooperation. To have the whole family eat at one time demands simplicity, which is good for the health, and makes elaborate service impossible, thus saving time for more profitable use. Yet if we realized that for every grain of simplicity we practice we are blessed with a pound of freedom, and our road to spirituality is thereby widened, we would not hesitate to cut ofl the non-essentials, and take into our loving confidence and break bread with those who have rendered us the truest service. Let those who would search more deeply into this suggestion of life's simpHcities, read the last chapters of Tolstoi's "Childhood, Boyhood and Youth," also Edward Carpenter's (the great En- glish socialist) "England's Ideals," especially the chap- ters on "Desirable Mansions" and the "Simplifica- tion of Life." A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 139 Such a home — although it may seem to lose much that the usual conventional home gives, in smooth running elegance — think what an oasis in the social desert it is — a spot where children and happiness and brotherhood are the highest concern! Think of a jaded society woman coming into such a home ! what a fresh thought it would give her; and if there were one spark of the natural mother left, it would be fanned into new life and ideals for her own family. Let us go on to the nursery, that place of highest importance to the real home (the word "home" does not apply to a house where there is no child and no nursery). The kitchen and nursery are usually the two rooms which receive the least attention, whereas they are the most important departments of the house. The place where the babies sleep should be the fresh- est, brightest, airiest room in the house, and if possi- ble to avoid it should never be played in; the playroom should be in some other part of the house. Mrs. Wyman has contributed such a complete recipe for an ideal playroom to the pages of Child- Garden, that with her consent I repeat it here, believ- ing that a good thing once said should be forever re- membered: ''Have your children a playroom — a day nursery? If they have not, give yourself no rest until you have provided them with one of the most important ele- 140 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. ments for their proper development. Despoil your guest chamber, sleep in your parlor, eat in your kitchen — provide it in some way, for it is a necessity. "The children must have a good, fresh room to go into every morning, where they can have all their treasures, all their plans and their own sweet wills; for their own wills are sweet when they are not rubbed and rufifled by too much contact or restraint. "Children should not be always in evidence; house- hold matters should be arranged for them, not disar- ranged by them. "Fresh, pure air is just as necessary as fresh, pure food. Do not stint the dear little growing bodies in either. Let the room be sunny; let the sun shine in all day through windows unencumbered by draper- ies; let the children look out through these windows, too; the view is their vista of the outside world. Have no dust-collecting, germ-dispensing carpet on the floor. If you cannot have hardwood, and will not have paint, cover your floor with a denim and scatter rugs about. "Have plenty of shelves. Put them half way up the windows for the plants; they like the warm, upper air of the room, and they make pretty hanging gar- dens distilling their sweet influence. The little pots can often come down to the window-sill to see the little owners, and tell a story of growth. Put shelves A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 141 all about in reach of little hands, that they may learn how to keep books and playthings in order and in place. ''Have a 'livery stable' or 'farmyard' in some cor- ner for all the toy animals, carts, etc. Have window- seat boxes for the blocks and loose playthings. Have low table, little chairs, big cushions; everything for comfort; pretty and nice enough to be cared for, not too nice to be enjoyed. "On the walls have such pictures as you would wish to have dwell in the pure memories of your in- nocent children, beautiful in subject, good in execu- tion. Let the children put up their own pictures, their own cuttings and paintings; these can be fastened without much harm with tiny tacks on the woodwork or doors, or by pins to a cord. "I know of one playroom where one door is de- voted to copies of the Madonna and Christ-Child. The children are quick to recognize this supreme sub- ject, and unconsciously become familiar with distinc- tions and good points in some of the masterpieces. "In this child-world let each little member have his or her own domain, which shall be sacredly re- garded and unmolested by others. "Let the decorations, occupations, and atmosphere of this room harmonize with the spirit of the season. "Do you see how work and play may be blended, 142 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. and tend in the one direction for months of happy, busy, home days? There will be no strain, no excite- ment, no nonsense, but vivid impressions in the little minds and the beginning of loyalty in the little hearts! "Oh, mothers, does it not thrill you to think of the great, grand work that is ours in training up these future citizens of our glorious country? Let us live with our children." Passing by the natural requirements of a nursery, let us discuss that higher atmosphere which should permeate it for the truest good of the child. The nursery is the home's holy of holies, and just as we draw upon our highest sense of the beautiful in decorating a sanctuary where the soul is to be refreshed and nurtured, so in making a room fit for the occu- pancy of the little child must we exercise the rarest judgment in selection, that it may most fittingly lend the right thought and idea to the grasping young mind, so open to impressions. The first thing to work for in planning the nursery is, that the whole room express one rounded idea, and that a simple one. It should not be furnished com- plete, and then the child placed in it and asked to be content. Rather have but the bare necessities to be- gin with, and let its completeness and beauty be a growth parallel with the child's own growth and developing desires. A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 143 The leading of the child into real life is the daily work and business of the family, and the nursery is the workshop wherein the heart of the family is the furnace, and the character of the young inmates to be welded into perfection is the labor. If the part of the house chosen for the nursery is well lighted it can take upon its walls delicate tints in grays, olives, slates or russets. If it is not as light as might be desirable, it needs more brilliantly colored finishings, little drapery and plenty of white. What- ever the scheme of color may be, it should be carried to completeness. But explicit suggestion for the decoration of the nursery is unnecessary, since every mother must meet her own emergencies in supplying wholesome surroundings for her child. A few simple principles carried into detail will solve her problems for her, and let these guiding ideas be simplicity, good coloring, and harmonious relation of each to all. The walls and pictures of the children's room are of more importance than even those of the drawing- room. The floors, ornaments, furniture, everything in the nursery, should be chosen with even more critical taste and discrimination than the belongings of that more external part of the house open to society, which often receive the most attention. Pictures? Rather have none than poor ones. Children should grow thoroughly in love with a pic- 144 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. ture before it is hung on the walls ; let it be their own in every sense of the word. Let them be rare art collectors, studying and accumulating according to the dictates of their own love of the idea contained in each picture ere it is allowed to be placed for daily scrutiny. The choice, of course, naturally grows out of such pictures as are placed before them, and through the story connected with them. Gradually the walls fill with wonderful stories which the young imagina- tions hear over and over again, and which the beauty- loving eyes never tire of seeing. Rather than poor coloring have none at all; the good brown tones of the photo reproduction of the masters may always be had, as well as simple etchings. Studies in mother-and-child life, animal-family life, nature — simple and in her milder forms — are the best choice of subjects to place within the child's reach. Very pretty flower and bird studies may be had nowa- days, such as are perfect gems of tint and natural pose; framed in delicate white or unfinished wood they make the purest of ornaments. The furniture of the child's room should be simple, and no piece without its purpose. Books are neces- sary, but not too many; a few well-illustrated volumes of child literature make a good suggestion of what comes after the nursery, and should be added to with careful thought. The nursery should not be too far A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 145 from the library, for we can scarcely overestimate the unconscious development it is to the child to merely live among books. As for the parlors, they should be as beautiful as possible without interfering with the simpHcity and indestructibility of the contents. Have no parlor at all, rather than have the whole family standing in awe of it. Your company would prefer to come into a home than into a lumber room full of furniture and dry goods. Before you add a single piece of furniture to com- plicate the dusting and housework question, ask if you are doing your full duty for the spiritual good of your family. Perhaps the price of that easy-chair you desire would pay a year's tuition for some child at a kindergarten, and better its life forever — your own child or some one else's for whom you are partly re- sponsible; what matters? Is your hand in the pro- gressive movements of the neighborhood? If not, sit on a wooden bench and save your dollars for prog- ress. It is a question if any of us deserve parlors and ease. I am willing to throw mine away if it prove a stumbling- block to even my humblest neighbor, or make my beloved friends envy me my furniture instead of ac- cepting my friendship. A parlor is a symbol of aris- tocracy, something that has no particular use except 146 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. to demand service and put barriers between us and our fellow men. It certainly makes the children of the family very inconvenient at times. I say, let the par- lor be the last department of the house to be thought of; it certainly has the least to do with the happiness and cultivation of our children. Of mother's and father's room I need not speak; that is a place where we must live out our own ideals. One thing only; let me beg that it be not a room from which any are proscribed, or where any inmate must feel restraint. Let it not be a room to shut oneself up in. Do not go to it when you feel ill at ease or depressed; stay among your loving friends and they will do you more good than solitude. Do not use your room as the scolding place or the confessional. Make it the cheery, cozy spot where mother may be found her happiest, sunniest self. I would suggest to every mother who must have some one to help her with her children, that she take a kindergartner into her home if possible. Her thought will infect the whole family. If you cannot afiford to pay a full salary and do justice to the worth you are receiving, give a kindergartner her board and have a certain few hours of her time. But be sure you get one whose training has been of the heart as well as of the head and hand, and then you yourself reach into her thought, her study, and her life, and together be mothers to the children, A KINDERGARTEN HOME. 147 Each one of us may truly have a kindergarten home and live out Froebel's liberating doctrines right in the midst of every duty; and I have only suggested the SA^eet returns that will be sure to follow. CHAPTER X. LOVE THY BROTHER. ''If, then, true brotherly love, true siniiplicity, trust- ful and truly loving gentleness, friendliness, forbear- ance, and respect for the companion and fellow man is to prevail again, this can be accomplished only by addressing ourselves to the feeling of common sym- pathy lingering — however much or little of it there may still be left — in the heart of every human being, and cultivating it with the greatest care. This would surely soon give back to us what we now miss so pain- fully in domestic, social, and religious life," — Froebel. CHAPTER X. LOVE THY BROTHER. Until true Brotherhood is understood, and until we love our brother with an undying love, we can know no religion and cannot know God. So long as we are living to ourselves alone, or those of our own circle who love us in return, we have not fulfilled the simple and grand laws of Christ. Within the sanctified walls of the family we have our highest opportunity to live for each other and to receive the truest discipline for the larger practice of the com- mand, "Love ye one another." The mother and father are certainly asked to sacrifice every day and every hour, and the child, too, if it is to expand into a beautiful and satisfied character, must be taught these deepest and most lasting lessons by practicing at home. And all this is but a preparation for our larger life, out in the brotherhood — in the kingdom which Christ came to establish. We must remember that the brotherhood begins for us right at our door- step, over our back fence, with our nearest neighbor. And that is the great test; we can never live a life of 151 153 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. breadth and satisfaction in the most ideal surround- ings until we live beyond self and self-interests. If we could only work together with a definite plan through home, school and church, we would receive quick results with our children, whose plastic hearts are easily set aglow with a consuming love. We as mothers, neighborhood workers and social elements are bound to be interested in these movements, for everywhere we find unideal conditions to contend with. When we think that only as we come into a warm and cooperative brotherhood life do we approach the Christian life, some of us are urged, at any sacrifice, to work to establish ourselves in pure brotherly relation- ship. The prophecy of to-day is that the word "brotherhood" will be the keynote of the religion of the twentieth century. We hear more and more of the organized work going on all around us toward the fuller brotherhood and better neighborhood life. Perhaps the foremost in all these movements is the work of the social settle- ment. Hardly a city of any size but has taken up work along these lines. All classes and kinds of peo- ple are lending themselves to the work; not as a mis- sion or charity, but in brotherly and sisterly love they are reaching out into neighborhoods that seem quite torn asunder by hard conditions. Lack of sympathy, lack of common interests, and gross selfishness seem LOVE THY BROTHER. 153 to be sapping the heart out of many of our best neigh- borhoods, and are the causes of the worst poverty of heart among the rich as well as the poor. We have in our midst to-day a small army of worthy disciples of Christ who have sold all that they had and have taken up his cross — men and women who have gone down into the valleys of poverty and sin, taken up their abode there and are now working for sweet brotherhood. Some have asked me what this social-settlement work is. I want to tell you how I learned what it is and perhaps you may become interested in the same way: Having several relatives and close connections in actual settlement work, I was often called upon to be interested, and of course the natural thing to do was to give something and feel that I had done my share. Our home is in one of those suburban spots favored in summer with a combination of both country and city advantages, right in the heart of a beautiful wood; so I suggested that there might be an enjoyable picnic given to some of the women of toil in the crowded neighborhoods. A plan was made, but many difficul- ties were encountered. Nearly all the women worked for the support of their families; to leave their "job" would be almost fatal. In several cases they were obliged to hire substitutes and lose their day's earn- 154 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. ings; but they strained every nerve to enjoy this one day of sunshine and joy. They came; there were nearly a hundred in all. And such an arrival into the midst of an easy-going, aristocratic suburb! They had on their very best clothes and their happiest faces. The majority of them spoke German, and what joy to be welcomed in their own tongue! Willing arms were stretched to carry their babies, and a number of baby cabs awaited the little ones. They sat down under the spreading oaks, weary but glad, and imme- diately the happy time began. The babies played, and the mothers rested and drank in their fill of freedom and fresh air. Several German-speaking matrons were invited to assist — women of great dignity and sweetness of char- acter, and they formed into small groups and told stories and chatted about their homes and their chil- dren and their hardships. One very dear woman did much to cheer and encourage them, and as they glanced at the house over the way, and realized the luxury of having a spot to call one's own, with a gar- den, cow and other signs of plenty, they spoke with deep anguish of their lot. And the loving woman shook her head, and told them that the mother in that home also worked day by day in the crowded city; that she, too, had her heavy cares, and she, too, had her sorrows; that after all, life was very much the LOVE THY BROTHER. 155 same thing with us all, and our happiness depended on our content of heart, not on our possessions. And how these poor laboring women flocked about me! Did I really work? Did I really struggle as they did? And how their hearts went out to me! I never had felt such real sympathy from anyone. They loved me with the love of equals, nor did they hesitate to tell their love, to press my hand; and when the fare- well time came each in turn kissed me with a sister's kiss, as we said good-bye at the station, all rushing and crowding upon me with arms full of babies. Many reported afterward that it was their one holi- day in years and they deemed it no hardship to carry along two or three children; indeed, they would will- ingly strain themselves again and again to give this sweet day to their wan babies. I had not anticipated this flood of feeling and affec- tion. I had not dreamed of their bringing me any- thing and leaving me behind an expanded and elevated woman. I had only anticipated indulging myself in sweet charity, and I was compelled to be a neighbor and sister, or be false to the proffered love. I cannot tell you how much I grew that day. It was the deepest religious experience of my life. No one will ever have to define brotherhood to me, nor inform me again of what a social settlement consists. And think how ready I must be not to offend in the 156 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. least; for any day I may run across some one of these beloved friends scrubbing on her knees in a restaurant, or peering from the windows of some saloon where she is cleaning to put bread into her children's mouths. I must be ready with a heart purified of pride and meet them with gladness, for they are my sisters; they and their children have been my guests. They had taught me lessons second only to those taught by the Master himself — lessons in endurance, patience, and that greatest lesson of all, that in the kingdom of the heart there is no respect for persons. I long to meet these same dear women many times again, and shall endeavor to do so, for their welfare has become of the deepest interest to me. But we need not reach beyond our own immedi- ate surroundings to experience all these things. So long as in our own neighborhood there are struggling mothers in whom we lack interest, who are isolated from our circle, there is the same work to do and the same opportunity for self-expansion in that work. We must learn the full meaning of a settlement worker's favorite proverb: "It is easy to talk of love and religion, but it is hard to do and to be love and religion. And where the easy way of mere talk fails, the hard and loving way of being always succeeds In the end." In fact, if you look about you, you will find that there are very much worse situations to face in so- LOVE THY BROTHER. 157 called "high circles" than in the lower ones — selfish- ness, which makes them sit and hug their plenty while their lowly neighbors at the foot of the hill are in want, and which allows them to swell themselves with over-feeding when the little children of these neigh- bors are hungry. When every man lives to himself alone, as in the usual well-to-do neighborhood, we have such pictures as the following, which have come within our actual experience: A rich man leaving his coal bill to a poor widow unpaid for several years, and then trying to palm off an old carriage on her for payment, when her children were in crying need of the commonest necessities of life, and the rest of the neighbors scouring the neighborhood for old clothes and food remnants to help keep her eight fatherless children alive, and then going to the rich man's house in the evening, knowing all this, yet playing cards and complimenting each other and never saying a word in remonstrance. Another suggestive picture might be drawn of fathers and mothers who are willing to send their children to kindergarten, but are not willing to pay their full share of the expense, though they are quite able to do so, but instead get the tuition as cheaply as possible, allowing the loving worker to struggle along and do the best she is able, and at the end of the year make up the deficit out of her own pocket, thus virtually paying for the good the parents 158 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. have received and which they should pay for to avoid accepting charity at the expense of some one who is not able to bestow it. I receive so many pitiful letters from kindergartners who go out in the pioneer spirit and love of. childhood, and open a kindergarten work in a dead neighbor- hood, and the cry is, "The mothers are not interested." "They care more for cards than their children, or any- thing else." "Mothers do not want to be helped," etc. There seems to be a fatal paralysis settled down on motherhood, the land over. What is it and why is it? We have churches everywhere; we have schools every- where; can it be that they are not leading women out of their limitations? Can it be that the avenues of civ- ilization only enslave and lead us into weakness in- stead of strength? I remember calling on one lady and finding her out at "the card party," and the chil- dren down in the basement with an ignorant and low- minded woman, who had been hired because she would work cheap. But you see having the children in the basement was safer for the parlor furniture, and they enjoyed the vulgar stories and rude behavior. Nor could I say a word, either; for think how hateful it would have been for me, how unneighborly, to go even kindly to her for the sake of her children and speak out! And then there is the Lord's work that always comes out short at the end of the year. LOVE THY BROTHER. 159 The least obligation incurred on the part of any- body, and she must be offered some tempting bait or some pie and coffee, to be charmed into giving her mite to carry on what at least stands for spiritual works! When will we be honest? When make life something besides a game of grab? As I go about from one community to another, and hear the words from house to house, I find the same tales of woe everywhere — lack of cooperation, lack of delight in paying for the real things of life, and a rushing after sensations and frivolities. And yet we find the women are busy — are working — never having time to stop for a minute; but see if, after all, their busyness is bringing the highest return. They tell us how they are worked to death in church and char- ity work. They do not stop to question if there be a false basis to their charity and spirituality. They do not ask if they are just jogging along and rehashing the old pat traditions and trite religion of their forefathers, and not applying any of it to everyday problems. Until our church and charity workers take hold of the more constructive work they are bound to be pulling uphill, and to make a weak showing at the end of their year, together with a big deficit. In the church about forty minutes a week are given to child culture — the child, that wonderful be- 160 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. ing from whom comes our greatest chance of regen- eration! How many ministers know through experi- ence what the proper spiritual training of the child is? How many have made a study of the true culture of the young? How many are questioning it even? The most rationally Christian and deepest-laid scheme a church could adopt would be to support kindergar- tens, and take every child under its wing for fifteen hours each week. It would then be a co-worker with the home and the school for the training of the child in the way it should go; and what mother church mem- ber would not appreciate it? What father church mem- ber would not pay his church subscription with greater readiness? But we must begin with our own home and family first, and from that center reach out and see to it that we do not fail to expand into the larger family. There can always be a few of us gathered together in this con- structive work. I speak of the matter of organized work specifically in another chapter, and make suggestions as to how to practically commence sociological work in your own neighborhood; and I beg of every mother who reads these pages that she will not read them merely, having found a little help for her own flock, but that if she has read with any enlarging of the heart she will reach out for the uplifting of childhood every- LOVE THY BROTHER. 161 where, thus broadening her work, which in the end will be of greater value to her own children. To make a more beautiful world for them to live in is of the ut- most importance, for some day they will not have the warm hand of the father and mother to minister and control. CHAPTER XL MARRIAGE IDEALS. "Harmony in family life is the deepest germ, of a genuine religious sentiment. "It is and remains forever true that, in purely and distinctly human relations, particularly in parental and spiritual human relations, there are mirrored the rela- tions between the divine and the human, between God and man. Those pure relations of man to man reveal to us the relations of God to man and man to God." — Froebel. CHAPTER XL MARRIAGE IDEALS The poet Browning has put it — a man's wife should be his star of aspiration; so likewise a woman's hus- band should be her sun, whose light and intelligence are her directing genius. We catch this beautiful vision throughout the pages of this poet, who not only dreamed and rhymed, but lived the ideal marriage. Why should we live together but to understand and love each other? to inspire each other's hearts and minds, and unify each other's lives and deeds? We live together not to sink into each other's lives, but to enlarge each other's lives and hearts and make a sanctuary for the race. If man and wife live together with any lower ideal than this, they will surely enter into the greatest unhappiness for themselves, and build something worse than unhappiness for their children. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and a discordant marriage breeds dissolution of both mind and body for the children who are the fruits thereof. There is hardly a marriage contract entered into 165 166 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. that does not, in the beginning, have shining about its portals the sweet halo of heaven. Then why do we not see even a deeper glow and radiance at each hearth- stone where love is supposed to have reigned for years? Why do these ideals seem to grow less and fade away, you ask — for in too many marriages there is scarcely a trace of the ideal left before the meridian of life is reached. Browning says we must /'have some bliss to die with," and in order to have that it must have attended us all the way. And that is the whole secret — we must have our ideals at the start and see that we preserve them to the finish. How many people marry and then "settle down," as the saying goes; we really and literally should marry and then rise up. The man and wife that aspire to fulfill their pledges and really learn to appre- ciate the holy estate into which they have entered will fail if they waste one day. To live the perfect life we must work without ceasing, and I believe that the most perfect life can be lived in the mother and father relationship. Jesus shows us how in the oneness of flesh into which man and wife enter they begin to have some sense of real unity — oneness of mind. And un- less we find unity in the person we will never find it in spirit, and vice versa. If we have real unity, it will express itself through every avenue of our being, body and mind. MARRIAGE IDEALS. 167 Jesus Christ was constantly beset with suggestive questions concerning marriage, and gave plainly the universal answer for us all. In Mark x, 6-10, we have the doctrine of marriage set forth complete, and what is the answer to the stiff-necked questioners? Christ shows how man and woman are joined together because of their spiritual origin, because God made them in his own image and likeness, and in their God- like natures only are they married, which nothing hu- man can put asunder. Have mothers and fathers been finding each other in the "image and likeness of God," and endeavoring to establish their marriage and their parenthood in the spiritual sense, that in so doing they might receive their children as of the kingdom of heaven? Do they really feel that God, divine love, has joined them to- gether, rather than their personal whim and will? Notice how beautifully there follows in this same chapter of Mark the remark about the children being brought to Jesus — for the mothers brought them when they were drawn by his spiritual recognition of them as mothers. Another beautiful text, and one which details the everyday reverence of father and mother for each other, is mentioned in Ephesians v, 22-23. St. Paul there speaks of the ideal marriage and spiritual rela- tionship between man and woman, who are the tern- 168 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. pies of God not builded with hands. He pictures the perfect ideal which should exist between husband and wife, and makes the relationship symbolic of the spirit- ual unity. He shows how it is our schooling and pre- paratory experience which will usher us into the higher things of spirit. Let us read it, mothers and fathers ; let us study it together and digest each word thoroughly and assimilate it into our everyday lives. In reading Froebel we are constantly brought face to face with the fact that he takes this spiritual state- ment as his starting point, constantly reiterating and restating, in varied forms, his ''confession of faith." He knew that the unwritten volume and the unformulated scheme of life must stand on the fact that the mother and father relation — namely, marriage — must be on the spiritual basis. Very few except Jesus, St. Paul and Froebel have ever dared to claim that it was absolutely and only a spiritual relationship; but this indeed they claimed for every other human relationship. The entire Bible is a commentary on the spiritu- ality of the family and the race, with God as the source; yet strange as it may seem, that great institution — the church — whose sole object is the interpretation of the Scriptures, seldom regulates this one important item of human life beyond the formal rite of the marriage day. This closest of relationships is established by so-called sacred sanction, the ceremony is performed MARRIAGE IDEALS. 169 and paid for, and then the couple is set adrift with sHght instructions and a formal prayer at most. As a consequence, the church grapples all its days with the tangles propagated by heedless marriages. Much in the same fashion does the school to-day. It takes hold of the externals of wisdom and instills them into the intellect, and afterward, if chance has not been favorable, the character must be considered by the reformatory. We must begin at the source of things if we would build for eternity, and if we desire true results as Christians we can find the source only in God and the spiritual unity of human life. The father and mother who consciously plan to have a perfect family; to build a perfect house for them to live in (however small) ; to make, through the spirit, the perfect home — can never be working for anything less than perfected society and state; and they will make for it more definitely than any other agency. It were idle to discuss marriage from an anthropo- logical aspect, or trace even the philosophic and re- ligious establishment of it. It is here among us an established, sacred and necessary ordinance. We need not even discuss whether it is a failure or a suc- cess, as the conclusion always depends upon the Ui% of the one who is arguing. We who have entered into it for truth's sake have only one duty, and that is to 170 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. make a success of it; and we can only do that through persevering and expanding our ideals concerning it. To suggest how to go about this is the immediate ob- ject of this chapter. We know of perfect marriages and we desire noth- ing less for ourselves. Many will agree that marriage is either heaven or hell, and we must conclude that a perfect marriage must have ideals to start out with and ideals to cIos« with. Even if linked with blindness and ignorance, these ideals will stand the wear and tear when nothing else will. They will help over hard places, weaknesses of heart and body. In fact, a woman or man who has set the standard of a perfg^Qt married life will often sacrifice heavily rather than lose it Jesus has said: "Seek first the kingdom," etc.; and if we try to seek the kingdom of heavenly bliss in marriage, we can hardly guess what riches will be added unto us. Where is the woman or man wise enough to sense the full and sacred meaning of parenthood before choosing a mate? To speak ideally, the man and woman together should seek to unite the desires of their hearts with the wisdom which will work for the well-being of their children and the perfecting of the family. Even if we do not see into these things until after we have made many mistakes, let us work and re- construct, for homes we must have; and how can we MARRIAGE IDEALS. 171 have homes unless some one consciously plans the contents and determines the quality of them? Think what home means; it means not a place of shelter nor a place in which to enjoy our food, save in a single sense. Home means the beautiful entirety contained in the family — father, mother, child — all inclosed in a unity, whatever the shelter over their heads may be. Home, like heaven, is a condition, not a place. When we look about us and see how few mar- riages rest on principle or on character, and how few homes are being consciously built on a Christian foundation, demanding of all honesty, cooperation, and respect for each other's highest ideals, it makes us question what means our boasted civilization and our claim as a nation of homes. Not instinct's governing in the marriage relation, nor human ambition, nor desire, nor personality, but Love — the divine intelligence of the Mind of God — that is the only thing that will bring about ideal homes and social conditions. Nor is this an empty phrase to sound sweetly on the ear. But in every ac- tion the father and mother, the husband and wife should be governed by a vast and all-inclusive love, a love that dares sift itself and purify itself daily, know- ing that its eternal qualities will bear chastening and cleansing. And what if the dross do fall away? Where such love is practiced, marriage is a success 172 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. and home is indeed heaven and our children the chil- dren of God. Personal love, as I have said so many times, is all dross. It limits, it is selfish, it is jealous, it is a dan- gerous thing to keep house with, and it can only be washed out through unselfish sympathy, and through the love divine which is so wise, so strong and so un- failing. To make married life a success this sifting process must constantly and consciously go on be- tween the father and mother. Of course if the sons and daughters of our race were properly reared in the beginning their time of mating would never be a time of problem making, but a time of beautiful fulfillment to their own lives and when the abnegation of self should begin for the sake of the child and a new race. But few young people have the full and proper preparation for life, and the greater part of their devel- opment is left until after they have entered the mar- riage state; and how rife with disappointments this crucial time often is ! Most of us are obliged to begin to learn at the time our preparatory stage should be finished. But it is never too late to begin to dare live truly. If each might only feel the deep purport of the united life and lay down selfishness and personal opinion! Daughters and sons before they reach the age to contemplate marriage should be inspired by their parents to feel the richness and truth of the pure MARRIAGE IDEALS. 173 family relationships, and taught to look forward to ex- periencing them. It ought to be included in the school training of our young men and women in the shape of special lectures by consecrated thinkers — men and women who are working for the purity of the race. Froebel says : "Shall we, men and fathers, and moth- ers too,^not at least be frank, and cease to conceal from ourselves the never-healing wounds and the perma- nently callous places in our disposition, the dark spots left in our souls by the ruthless extirpation of noble and elevating thoughts and feelings in the days of our misguided youth and boyhood? Shall we never see that noble germs were at that time broken and withered — nay, killed — in our souls? And shall we not heed this for our children's sake?" Ah, there is the great secret! If the marriage rela- tionship always looked beyond itself into its relation to the child, the first hour of its consummation would be dedicated to self-purification, to unselfishness, to a reconstruction of the old broken feelings and ideals for the sake of the child. It takes a mighty determination on the part of a man and a woman to hold to the vision of a perfect mar- riage. But in these pages I desire especially to talk with mothers and to hold them responsible for the fulfillment of their whole duty. Not that I hold that it is possible for the mother to do more than half; but 174 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. the mother half is a large half, and a beautiful half, and if she does her half perfectly, perhaps she will find that perfection never divides itself into halves, and that after all she receives the whole blessing. The mother is the highest embodiment of love. If the mother gives love, actual love, it is an undividable thing. A pure woman's love contains the whole; it is the love of a friend, sister, wife, mother, all in one, and carries with it the individual gift of each in unity. God is in such love relationships as a mother estab- lishes with her own family, and through such love we find God in humanity. By loving man whom we have seen, we learn to love God whom we have not seen. Let us discuss the more direct application of the words "love," "brotherhood," and find in it for our- selves the secret of highest living, and the help we need to do our sweet share to make marriage and fam- ily what they should be. A man is but a child of larger growth, and the laws of mind which govern and keep happy the child also apply to the man. He must be treated with infinite tact and feel a quiet guidance; he will take dictation only through love, unbounded love, and he demands and deserves confidence. Women must always gov- ern men in their higher lives; criticism will never do it nor will lack of esteem; quietly suggesting a better way and practicing it yourself is what counts. MARRIAGE IDEALS. 175 Watching for the best interests of the father and the family in everything, and practicing economy for truth's sake (not for the sake of accumulation), is the most practical application of love a woman can show to her husband and the father and provider of the family. Sooner or later the man who has received such sympathy and cooperation, and feels that it is given with the highest motives, will find his heart be- ing tugged at and his life being lifted and purified, no matter how poor his ideals may seem to be. Some one has said, ''Man may hold the destiny of the nation in his hands, but the mother holds the destiny of the man." Marriage does not include only the man and wife; into its circle enters the child with all its right and need of cooperation. Life is an undivided whole. The father and mother and child are an undivided trinity. If one is unconsidered in our scheme of life the whole is a failure. The mother who would plan a perfect life for her child cannot leave the father unconsid- ered, nor vice versa. Paul says, in Ephesians v, that man is the "savior of the body." There are many deep meanings in these words. Mothers and fathers should read it together, and perhaps together they may reach out and give the world this new vision of man and marriage. The world is paralyzed to-day with a prejudice that 176 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. is being harbored in the heart of nearly everyone; it is generally accepted that by nature man is not as good as his sister — woman. Woman has foolishly and in vanity accepted her moral superiority as a fact, and does not see that in so doing she has rent society asunder. St. Paul's talks on love were largely to men, and his lofty sense of man's divinity was a constant reassurance to his followers, who were mostly men. If we read and study carefully the words of Jesus Christ, how much we find this condemnation of the masculine wiped out. Christ's conception of himself was that he was perfect in every respect. The world has taken the love of life and the love of God as two absolutely separate emotions. We have to learn that all that is real and eternal in man, and all that is real in his love for woman, is his hunger for the ideal, the spiritual. The foolish tendency of all times to consider man as prone to evil and woman as the innocent temptress and type of virtue, must be done away with. One writer has said, "In woman's weakness and ignorance is the devil's opportunity," and much truth there is in the speech. Nor can that "ignorance" and "weakness" be wiped out through woman becoming informed from a worldly standpoint. To be thoroughly versed in the errors of the hour and the abnormal conditions of the race is no additional intelligence. Woman's MARRIAGE IDEALS. 177 wit, if she be mother or lover, must be drawn from God's wit — must work for constructive knowledge and creativity. Every woman should make it her highest woman's work to purify her sense of love. Woman is symbolic of love and she should make herself worthy the sym- bol. A mother can do this as perhaps no other woman can; and the rest of womankind would not need to if just the mothers did their duty, and really mothered the sons and the fathers of the race. Think of your own son; is he not as precious and pure to you as your daughter? The mother must keep him so, and work to wipe out this stain on our nation of men, whole armies of whom appear to be for sale, selling their trust and their souls. Perhaps we are somewhat to blame. Woman's financial extravagance and her often slight cooperation bring about man's looseness in money matters and morals, and create a tendency toward irresponsibility in the higher things. If only mothers could take up man in the concrete, and make direct application of their knowledge of truth to that individual man who depends most upon each for interpretation in life; if they were to take noth- ing more than the following statements of the philoso- pher Emerson, and, in making this direct application, turn the negatives all into positives ! Let us try it and see what a wonderful statement it will make for us to build our appreciation of man upon. 178 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. "Man is the dwarf of himself." Man has his full, true stature. "Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit." He is permeated and dissolved by spirit always. "He filled nature with his overflowing currents." He eternally fills nature with his overflowing cur- rents. "But having made for himself this huge shell, his waters retired; he no longer fills the veins and veinlets; he is shrunk to a drop." He forever fills the veins and veinlets of the uni- verse. His measure is infinite. "He sees that the structure still fits him, but fits him colossally." He sees that the structure fits him, for it is his image and likeness. "Say, rather, once it fitted him; now it corresponds to him from afar and on high." Its fits him now; it corresponds to his being. "He admires timidly his own work." It is his work and he admires it boldly; he loves it forever. Such thoughts make us thinkers and seers, if we follow up the symbols and make their meanings prac- tical. As mothers we must discern not only in our chil- dren themselves, but in the children's fathers, the great MARRIAGE IDEALS. 179 elementary powers of thought and life; we will no longer see our children struggling and wrestling with undefined conditions and unknown depths, when the power of truth is under the feet of the parents. Woe always comes to the mother who attempts to do her work without the inner light. How many great men have been quoted as the result of their mothers' ideals. We have Abraham Lincoln, Carlyle, Mill, and many a great name in olden history. These mothers were not great scholars, but great lovers, who burrowed not in books, but into life and the deep things of God. And what a joyful moment it is to a mother when her husband or son who has reached fame and promi- nence gently places his truly won laurels upon her brow, for in their hours of struggle she planted the eternal seeds of light and truth. And what an honar to a wife to be her husband's star! We wives and mothers must believe in the mighty instincts of our husbands and sons, the "obstinate questionings," the "high divinings" before which their mortal natures "tremble like guilty things," those "first affections and shadowy recollections" which are found in every honest breast and are yet the "fountain light" of each common man's being; and then our share in the work of perfecting life's relationships will bring us the full reward for which our high labors alone can prepare us. CHAPTER XII. A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. **It is not the childless woman who has mastered man, but it is the mother, the one who has fulfilled her duty. Such women who fulfill their mission are those who reign over reigning men; those who prepare new generations of men and form public opinion; and therefore in the hands of these women lies the highest power of men's salvation from the threatening evils of our times. Yes, women, mothers, in your hands, more than in those of any others, lies the salvation of the world!" — Tolstoi. "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Noth- ing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." — Emerson, CHAPTER XII. A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. Books ol advice to women on the subject of mar- riage and home building usually deprecate the bring- ing of many children into the world, claiming that large families make decrepit children, worn-out moth- ers, and tend to make the struggle for life an almost unbearable burden to the father. When we look back at the records of our fore- fathers, at the housefuls of children that are con- stantly being boasted of, this argument seems un- founded, for to-day the sons and daughters of those children are the backbone of the race; and how many a woman, the mother of eleven children, is still hale and hearty and in our midst. There cannot be one reasonable argument brought forward to prove that the bearing of many children is a wrong to the race, however injurious it may prove to the mother; and the possible injury is usually due to her ignorance con- cerning the right principles of living. We as a nation are to-day depending upon the for- eign element to fill up our ranks, and it is a question 183 184 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. whether we do not need our own new-world blood for our present regenerated generation. In France, where they have no foreign immigration to depend on, the decrease in population has become so appalling that the government has put a premium on the raising of large families. No government position can be held by any citizen who has not more than three chil- dren or one of a family of more than three. It is cer- tainly true that in America the so-called better classes have few children, and the usual family table of to-day is more apt to call for three chairs than for ten, and this is becoming more and more common among the well-to-do. Those are doing the least who are oftenest best able to afiford to properly and com- pletely give the right preparation to a large number of children for the bettering of society. As a rule the family in moderate circumstances has its several chil- dren; they are one of its sweetest luxuries; and as we all know, the very poorest seem most ready to under- take the largest duty in this direction. There are so many different causes for this state of affairs that we will not stop to discuss them, but pro- ceed at once to glance at the really ideal family circle, which we must all admit should consist of a good round number. Let us draw a picture of a home — a home where the mother and father have a large nestful to care for. A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 185 Is it not a perfect picture of pure activity, children and parents cooperating together, working in perfect har- mony — perhaps to make both ends meet, perhaps to carry out some higher ambition? The poet paints it for us thus: "I pray not for Great riches, nor For vast estates and castle halls; Give me to hear the bare footfalls Of children o'er An oaken floor New rinsed with sunshine, or bespread With but the tiny coverlet And pillow for the baby's head." Even if perfect harmony does not exist, is not a house full of active young people apt to bring about a high grade of individuality? Is not the healthy criticism of growing brothers and sisters the best school for character? Is not the mother of such a family as a general thing a women of broad sympa- thies and great capacities? And is she not as often a woman of health and strength? And what is the in- fluence of a large family upon the father? Think of the responsibility he has to carry; think of the energy he must put forth; of the example he must always be! Is not such a responsibility broadening to his intelli- gence? And as a citizen is he not of double worth because of his interest in the needs of the growing youth about him? 186 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. If we could only see that a home conducted accord- ing to convenronal law and order is a very poor thing to exchange for a home of joy and content, even if the latter be accompanied with bare floors! Many a young woman from a family in good circumstances will engage her affection and devotion to one who can- not provide all the luxuries to which she has been ac- customed in her father's house, and after their union, in order to approximate the old order and style of liv- ing, they will calculate how they may avoid the sweet- est duty of life — raising a family — and lightly excuse themselves on the ground of not being able to afford it. They do not realize what they are robbing them- selves of, poor things! The picture need not be drawn here in order to portray this conception of home and marriage. We see it every day in our midst. How, as to a fresh living fountain, we turn from such a hearthstone to a little home with narrow walls and precious contents, in which the father and mother are bravely striving to give their children the highest and best their two pairs of arms and hands can offer. How often the simple family life in a home of poverty is a picture of grandeur compared to the shallow existence of the soul-poor, conventional, worn-out hearts that beat for the empty world alone. The responsibility of a father for his children is never anything but wholesome, for each child gives A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 187 him an added channel out into his own world while he is preparing one for the child. After struggling and fighting through the problems and intricacies of life, even if the victory over poverty never is his, what is of more satisfaction than the children, and what may be a larger resource in the end? In preserving to our- selves the gift of the child — simplicity and natural- ness — we must deny so much of the world's wordli- ness — being so much in the world and yet so little of it. How much of appearance, affectation, style, and useless expenditure of self many a busy mother and father might spare themselves. How truly the earnest father and mother who are too busy to be worldly, learn to preserve to their fam- ily great blessings and high aims. They learn what many parents do not learn, that not what we give to our children, but what we make them capable of, is their inheritance. Emerson says: "Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat; Wintered with the hawk and fox, Power and speed be hands and feet." In his essay on "Self Reliance" this great philosopher shows us how to bring the quality out of the creature by trying its fiber; how every sort of opposition but tries its metal and molds it into form. Large families 188 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. bring out this power in father, mother and child, all three. How many of us hesitate to have children be- cause we cannot bring them up in luxury and lavish everything upon them, thus weakening their charac- ters! Some will criticise this advocating the raising of large families, because there is much social abuse to be rectified ; and because, through the pressure of the so- called ''hard" times, a large family is bound to be the cause to the parents of a great struggle for existence. But people who "read" seldom need to be scolded for having too large families; people who are intelligent enough to inform themselves on progressive subjects are the ones who ought to have the large families, and they can generally afford to. We have here in Amer- ica a middle class, poverty stricken in neither mind nor money, and to these we look for our best results in family life. Tolstoi, in his autobiography, after carefully work- ing out the reasonable duties and life of man, and after showing the happiness of the man when he has truly fulfilled God's law, turns to the woman, and with deep earnestness gives us his opinion that woman, almost up to the present hour, has fulfilled her specific duty, her work in life and toward the family. By so doing she is to-day in the ascendency, and master of the social situation. Man has fallen from the dignity of A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 189 labor and earning an honest living, and is living by his wits. Woman is beginning to repudiate her chief duty — child bearing — and she surely will work her own ruin in so doing. Tolstoi calls woman to her senses, and puts into her hands the reins by which she may guide us back again to the more perfect life, in which every honest man works daily for his own bread and shelter and that of his family, and each woman gives herself up to the rearing of her children unto God. He makes a picture of the childless woman and the race whose women refuse to be mothers, which is in itself one of despair. But in the picture he points us to hope, and the fact that there is yet time. He says: "If only women would understand their worth, their power, and would use them for the work of salvation of their husbands, brothers, and children — the salva- tion of all men! "Women, mothers of the wealthy classes, the salva- tion of men of our world from, the evils from which it suffers is in your hands! "Not those women who are occupied by their fig- ures, bustles, head-dresses, and their charms for men, and who, contrary to their will, by oversight and with despair, bear children, and then give their children to wet-nurses; nor yet those who go to different lee- 190 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. tures, and talk of psychometrical centers and differen- tiation, and who also try to free themselves from bear- ing children in order not to hinder their folly, which they call development — but those women and mothers who, having the power of freeing themselves from child bearing, hold strictly and consciously to that eternal, immutable law, knowing that the weight and labor of that submission is the aim of their life. These women and mothers of our wealthy classes are those in whose hands, more than in any others, Hes the salva- tion of the men of our sphere in life, from the calami- ties which oppress them. "You women and mothers who submit consciously to the law of God, you are the only ones who, in our miserable, mutilated world which has lost all sem- blance of humanity — you are the only ones who know the whole, true meaning of life according to the law of God: and you are the only ones who, by your ex- ample, can show men the happiness of that submis- sion to God's law of which they rob themselves. "You are the only ones who know the joy and hap- piness which take possession of one's whole being, the bliss which is the share of every man who does not deviate from God's law. You know the joy of love to your husband — a joy never ending, never destroyed like all other joys, but forming the beginning of an- other new joy — love to your child. You are the only A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 191 ones, when you are simple and submissive to God's law, who know, not the farcical pretense of labor, which men of your world call labor, but that true labor which is imposed by God upon men, and know the rewards for it, the bliss which it gives." In talking with an ingenuous mother of a large family she told me how her children ranged from twenty-five to iive years of age; she boasted how for- tunate she had been tO' have escaped motherhood from five to seven years at a time; but one problem seemed uppermost in her thought. Her great ques- tion was, whether I considered it unvirtuous to pre- vent conception; not to destroy the living thing itself, but to merely avoid motherhood. There are so many ways of answering this question, and so many ways of putting it, that for my part I try to waive the discus- sion. Every woman cuts her own path in this seem- ing wilderness of marriage and parenthood, and ac- cording as she gives will she receive. Being pressed for my own personal feeling in the matter, I said that there was no need for me to even consider the question, since neither bodily comforts nor appearance nor con- venience nor duties demanded it; that I was desirous of a family and considered it only too great a blessing to be thoroughly worthy of each sweet addition to our household. But she insisted that if a necessity should arise from the inability of the mother physi- 192 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. cally, what then? Even under such conditions for a woman to be obliged to resort to methods would be tragic, and if she were living with an intelligent com- panion, would be unnecessary. If man and woman are living together for the common good of the fam- ily, and with ideals, such conditions would never arise. If it became necessary for any mother through ill health to avoid motherhood, it should be the desire of the husband that she be made well before attempt- ing motherhood; and further, to live in continual dread and fear of such a thing would be death-dealing in itself to both the body and the ideals of the woman and the man. To live in marriage in such conditions would wrong both. The dread of family building is the bane of this nation. Here is an ideal picture of perfected health and heart such as might well invite motherhood. Emerson says: "But love me then and only, when you know Me for the channels of the river of God From deep ideal fontal heavens that fiow." Would that the prospective mother and father might keep this thought! But to speculate for even ten minutes a week on such destructive things as many women indulge in would rid a woman of all her ideals of self and family. Anything short of perfect family life is bound to bring gloom of mind and evil results. A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 193 Married life must be either all right or it is all wrong. It were hard indeed to "take no thought of the body" with such speculations constantly in the mind. If we admit that life is in its essence a spiritual thing, there is no sweeter law to ever hold in one's thought than that ''only the Christ can express itself in and through us if we keep the mind set on the ideal." The mother's mind gives the cue to every expression that pervades the home life of both father and child, so she cannot hold her thought too high. It is a very good point to seek to use the words "father and mother" instead of ''husband and wife" in all conversations, and see what a different tone goes into the thought. We speak of God's fatherhood and motherhood, and when the Godlike relation exists between the man and woman, these terms are all- inclusive; we can go no deeper. Many a woman will say to herself, "But I began wrong; if I could begin over again I might do differ- ently." That is only a plausible excuse. Were you t-alking face to face with me I would say that many a woman has begun after she has become a grand- mother, and not only worked out in her own home at the eleventh hour, but projected all her new sweet ideas of intelligence into every grandchild, fulfilling their demands, for, as Oliver Wendell Holmes puts it, in every reform we must begin with our grand- parents. 194 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. The great need is the courage to begin; let us dare to be honest in our desires and actually to-day begin to practice whatsoever seems to have come into our consciousness in the shape of a practical truth, a higher plan; and each day will help to lead into the next day's mysteries. Do not let us be afraid of a single condition, no matter how petrified and unyield- ing it may appear. Let us make a beginning; every tangle can be unraveled if careful, patient fingers are applied to it. Remember the truth we have to-day will unfold into a greater truth to-morrow if we use it. Many a mother will excuse herself on the plea of lacking the intellectual and will power to carry out this higher law and order in her home; how many a mother confesses herself as ridden over by her chil- dren and husband, when this is only an excuse for her own spiritual inertia. Every hour and minute of a mother's life can be made to overflow with power and intelligence. A mother's heart and love dictate the purest intelligence, and how many a superior man and master mind have we found as examples in history who were influenced by simple-hearted and uneducated mothers! The spiritual truths of life can be grasped more easily by the simple-hearted mother than by the intellectual one, because the instincts are the secret passages to the spiritual consciousness. The intel- lect has been portrayed to us as the Mephistopheles A WIFE'S PROBLEMS. 195 in the great drama of life as pictured in Goethe's 'Taust." When the secret of Being and Creativity was demanded by Faust, the devil was compelled to step aside and send the inquiring human lover to the mother-source of the universe. Almost every woman with whom you come into confidential discourse feels her life loaded with prob- lems. I say, Stop talking about them; be ashamed of them; and go to work and get rid of them. Hunt the truth at the bottom and find your freedom. Every day that you are tolerating wrong conditions you are adding more. Get hold of all the liberating thoughts you can, and go to work at your seeming impossibili- ties. Women say to me, "It is easy for you to talk about freedom, but all are not situated as you are. Most of us are dependent on our husbands and cannot carry out our ideals." An inteUigent father and mother can know nothing sweeter than absolute interde- pendence. I am glad to say I live in the experience of it daily, and have learned to know that nothing else will make for perfect family life. Perfect interde- pendence between parents teaches children the deep- est social principles, and makes marriage and family life a school wherein to acquire the lessons which shall fit them for the Hfe of the brotherhood and heaven. CHAPTER XIII. WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. "How strangely the world has worked! How at variance with all natural law! For every kinder- garten there are a hundred — nay, a thousand — prisons, jails, reformatories, asylums, and hospitals. And yet society cries out that there is need for more of these. Are we blind, that we fail as a nation, a state, and as individuals, to recognize the incontro- vertible fact that such demand will never cease until we cut ofif the supply? And does it not behoove us to work with a will and together that the little ones of to-day may not require such training as civilization ofifers through its police and courts of law in place of the kindergarten schools?" — Mrs. Theodore W. Birney. CHAPTER XIII. WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. Never before has woman been engaged in so much work of reform as now; and it makes one question — If she is so active, so inspired as to agitate and press these movements, why does she not take her hold lower down and begin where her rightful work is, in the correct forming of the race? It is self-evident that the largest chance to work constructively has al- ways been her opportunity. Why should she leave that and go out into the more remote paths and hunt for a "foreign occupation along the lines of reconstruc- tion? If woman has had this formative opportunity for generations, why is the world so bad and why are things so sadly awry? Why are men so corruptible? Where were their mothers when their characters were building? Were they busy with their children's bodies, or the externals of their conduct, or were they praying in the closet for God to do what they should have been doing and what he had given them to do? Why has not the knowledge been given to women which 199 200 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. would enable them to evolve the beautiful possibili- ties of family life? Why have they in many instances found that sphere narrow and monotonous? We must confess together that for the greatest, most all- absorbing and unending task there is — viz., "child training" — our women have not been prepared. When such a life as that of Henry George goes out for the purification of the race, how we mothers should be moved to work and win for our children right con- ditions of life and emancipation from selfishness! The mother should be brave enough to say, I do not want civic rights until I have fulfilled my social ones; I do not want larger avenues until I have deserved and en- joyed those I now possess, until I have made a gift to the world of a few successes — say myself, and those who are given into my hands to mold — and when I have given to the world a few model daughters and sons; I do not want any larger rights, I do not want civil rights until I have earned them through service to my country in contributing to it good citizens. If these same rights were only granted men upon the self-same ground, we would not have this mutila- tion of power which the world of politics shows. "The childhood of the land is in the hands of the mothers," and also its perfecting. Think of it! And remember God sent it there and made them the cus- todians of it. And we are given charge of not only the WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 201 babes of our own nest, but the greater family is ours to watch over lest they come to menace us. ''The kindergarten is the free republic of childhood, from which everything dangerous to its morality is removed, as its lack of development requires. Child- hood must be taken care of and protected, for it cannot protect itself; and the more tender the age the more it needs guidance, that the body as well as the soul may not be crippled." Some one has said that "Women are the foster moth- ers of every modern movement." Women should be mother leaders rather than mere reformers, and when we consider that there was never a wrong thing that could not have been crushed in infancy, it makes us question why so many evils have escaped into the world; and we are almost forced to confess it is be- cause we mothers have not been working right. The world does not grow better; we have to make it better. And when we sit at home and let the world wag on, it is not going to adjust itself some day and be a flower garden suddenly for the benefit of our chil- dren. If we are going to have right schools, we must be at work demanding them and be intelligent enough to know what kind to demand. We have, got to study and go out into the world and see what is wrong there, and how the wrong is to be righted, lest our children be led into temptation. This will lead us into the re- 202 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. form work which naturally belongs to the mother, and teach us how to make our boys and girls self-guarded against these evils. Do not talk about your neighborhood as hopeless and say, ''There is no cooperation in this town," "Everybody belongs to separate sets," ''The churches are such factions," and other lamentable and seem- ingly hopeless facts that make almost every village a problem. Make a beginning. "Look at the end of work ; contrast The petty done, the undone vast." Metaphorically speaking, roll up your sleeves and go to work at home for new social conditions. Read of the almost impossible reforms which some few have accomplished in vast social settlements of the down- trodden and poverty-stricken districts of large cities. Post yourself in regard to modern social developments. It would pay to make a trip to Chicago, New York or some other great city, and come in touch with the leading spirits in this work and be inspired. It would be the best investment one could make for life and the good fortune of her family if she should become in- spired with a larger love of humanity and an unquench- able desire to better it. I know whereof I speak, and what riches it has brought to me and mine to have learned to thus reach out and give and do. Such a one is always the largest gainer in the end. The WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 203 young man in the Bible was shortsighted when he re- fused the Master's advice to "sell all" and give to the poor. He did not conceive what a great kingdom of heaven there was in self-denial and brotherly love. Social-settlement work at home is a possibility to every woman; everything that works for neighborly cooperation comes under that head. We often despise doing the small things that demand attention at our door, and wish we might reach out and do the great things. We often look upon publicly recognized women with a quiet longing that we toO' might be doing something worth while; but are we willing to make the sacrifices they do? And they really accomplish little more than the woman who does her full duty at home and in her own neighborhood. The women's clubs usually give women of most progressive neighborhoods an opportunity for broader Nvork; that is, if they are studying the things that mothers and women should most thoroughly know. Perhaps there is no such organization in the locali- ties where some of us reside, and the question is, What shall we who live in small neighborhoods do where there is none? Often there are few poor to look after and a small round of church and society duties seems to be all there is. But social-settlement work is always possible to every woman, no matter 204 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. how high or how low may be her station or in what neighborhood she may have her home. Through the kindergarten and church and school every one of us might find a rational way to take up some work for social improvement. Have you a kindergarten in your neighborhood? What would you think of a self-respecting neighbor- hood without a church? It will become quite as un- usual a thing to have a neighborhood without a kin- dergarten. If you do not know why this is true, set about reading up on the question, and see how neces- sary a kindergarten is to every child under primary- school age. It is necessary to the school days that follow that the child be carefully prepared. It is necessary to the mother that she and her children come in touch with the child world as well as the small home circle. It is necessary to the church, which has no substitute for the kindergarten and which must some day recognize it and make it a part of its social spiritual whole. Many leaders in the church are look- ing forward to that day and believe the kindergarten to be the most direct method whereby children may be led into the higher life. Froebel says: "The fitting religious service for children has grown out of the new education of itself, without any special precepts from me. New forms of social life correspond to the new spirit which has WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 205 waked up in society; let us only awaken this spirit in our children; it will work creatively in this field also. But in order to do this, that dry, insipid frame of mind must be avoided which is usually created in children by incomprehensible word-teaching and catechising. "The aim of education is the representation of duti- ful, pure, inviolate and therefore holy life; the God- likeness in man, his essence, is to be developed and raised to consciousness by education, and thus he is to attain self-knowledge, peace with the world, and union with God." Here is a plan for organizing a kindergarten asso- ciation which has been found most successful: A meeting may be called of the few mothers in the neighborhood who are thoroughly interested. After passing resolutions to work as an organization for the support of a kindergarten in the community, let them choose a name and elect regular officers and di- rectors. Let each member of the immediate circle who is willing take a paper and secure signatures from among the neighborhood residents as members of the association, a small membership fee to be voted. With this membership fee, which is supposed to be paid in advance, the first expense of opening the kindergarten and buying materials is met. Then a subscription paper is circulated among those 206 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. who will send children, the subscription paper being headed something like this: 'The undersigned agree severally to pay the sum set opposite their names to [include name of association], for the forty [or less] weeks of the ensuing school year," it being thoroughly understood that no one can send a child except upon a definite arrangement to pay this sum regularly. No other plan could guarantee a success, and every reason- able parent will admit that one cannot enter upon so expensive an undertaking without definite financial arrangement for the whole year. It can be seen by this time about how much money there is pledged for the whole work, and the plan cannot possibly fall through when placed on this business-Hke basis. The association should be chartered to have the right to collect regularly the money subscribed to it, whether the children are taken out or not. Of course in case of emergency, the board of directors can vote to release anyone from the payment of the subscrip- tion. A certain part of the fund might be raised by special subscription or by the aid of entertainments. Set a day for opening the kindergarten, and if pos- sible have every plan made before you start the sub- scription list, so that you may know what you can promise the parents in return for their money. It would be well for the kindergartner who is to take charge to know all the workings of the board and WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 207 render all possible assistance, for as a rule the latter do not understand all sides of the kindergarten ques- tion. This is the general outline of a plan that has been found very successful. The stronger and more com- pact the working body, the more ardent your visiting committee, the better results will be secured in the neighborhood. It would be a very happy thing to have some person or persons of influence occasionally give a public talk — perhaps the ministers from the pul- pits. Have all the good arguments that can possibly be used go along with the circulation of the sub- scription paper and the membership list. Most im- portant and necessary of all, engage the most spiritual and illuminated kindergartner that can possibly be found. Search for her long and well, if necessary, for she will make all your efforts succeed and make each following year a greater success. And when you have secured for your neighborhood this supreme gift — the presence of a true kindergartner — do stand by her and support her and work with her and learn of her. When once you take up this movement and work to organize and support it for the salvation of the chil- dren, you will be led into the broadest channels of thought and be ready to follow the children of your entire neighborhood into their larger experiences. Tolstoi gives us a beautiful picture of the real 208 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. mother who is working formatively and who will ever be excused from entering the ranks of "reformers" and yet be an eternal example and ideal for every woman to follow. It is taken from the last chapters of "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth," in the part called "What must we do then?" He says: "A true mother, who really knows God's law, will prepare her children for the fulfillment of it. For such a mother to see her child overfed, delicate, over- dressed, will be a suffering, because all this, she knows, will hinder it in the fulfillment of God's law, experienced by herself. Such a woman will not teach that which will give her son or daughter the possi- bility of delivering themselves from labor, but that which will help them to bear the labor of life. "She will not want to ask what to teach her children, or for what to prepare them, knowing what it is and in what consists the mission of men, and consequently knowing what to teach her children, and for what to prepare them. Such a woman will not only discour- age her husband from false, sham labor, the only aim of which is to profit by other people's work, but will view with disgust and dread an activity that will serve as a double temptation for her children. Such a woman will not choose her daughter's husband accord- ing to the whiteness of his hands and the refinement of his manners, but, knowing thoroughly what is labor WOMAN AS A FORMER, NOT A REFORMER. 209 and what deceit, will always and everywhere, begin- ning with her husband, respect and appreciate men, will claim from them true labor and will scorn that false, sham labor which has for its aim the delivering of oneself from true labor. ''Such a mother will bring forth and nurse her chil- dren herself, and, above all things else, will feed and provide for them, will work for them, wash and teach them, will sleep and talk with them, because she makes that her life work. She will exercise in them the same capacity of self-sacrificing fulfillment of God's will which she knows in herself — the capacity for bearing labor, because she knows that only in that lie the se- curity and welfare of life. Such a mother will not have to ask others what is her duty; she will know everything beforehand, and will fear nothing. ''If there can be doubts for a man or for a childless woman about the way to fulfill God's will, for a mother that way is firmly and clearly drawn; and if she fulfills it humbly, with a simple heart, standing on the highest point of good, which it is only given to a human being to attain, she becomes the guiding star for all men, tending to the same good." In concluding this chapter I wish to urge my mother friends who desire to work for the true forming of life, to join in a compact with me to which we shall forever firmly hold ourselves. That we shall search to give 210 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. our children truths through living them out with them; that we shall govern ourselves first and our children afterwards; that we shall hold inviolate the original perfection of the child; that we shall look upon the body as the temple of the holy spirit; that we shall work to keep the child free for the full enjoyment of all his activities; that we shall see in childhood every- where our first opportunity to bring heaven on earth, and work definitely to bring it to its fullness. CHAPTER XIV. PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. **It would prove a boon to our children, and a bless- ing to coming generations, if we could but come to see that we possess a great oppressive load of extraneous and merely external information and culture; that we foolishly seek to increase this from day to day; and that we are very poor in inner knowledge, in information evolved from our own soul and grown up with it." — Froebel. CHAPTER XIV. PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. Science, education, art, social life, philanthropy and economics, each has its kingdom and its rulers and its laws ; but motherhood, that underlies and overshadows everything, has been given the least thought in all that occupies the life of the race. So it is time that they who enter its sacred orders should know the greatness of their inheritance and the value of its possibilities. If one is willing to grant it, mothers rank both as laboring and as professional women. You all know the old saying, "A woman's work is never done;" and it needs quite as much careful forethought and previous culture to make a thoroughly good mother as it takes to make a school mistress, a lawyer, or to fit one for any profession. Of course there are quacks in every line of work, but, examined from almost any standpoint, we are obliged to confess that the field of motherhood is more than overstocked with a species of claimants to the worthiest spheres, who have not taken the first degree of excellence either in head or heart culture, although perhaps they may be rendering very good service with their hands. 213 214 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. In some parts of the old country one must have papers and certificates from the authorities, giving the right to carry on a trade or practice a profession of even the humblest order, that there may not be turned upon a long-sufifering market work that would tend to degrade the different lines of product. Even a license to marry is made out only after a long and wearisome process of paper signing and certifying as to fitness, and the whole contract is witnessed over and over again by such citizens as are considered in good standing. But here in America trades and professions, and marriages as well, are all on the same unfirm basis. In the latter, illiteracy, deformity, even disease, are no drawbacks to entering the sacred relation. Mother- hood, the best, highest and holiest calling of women in all ages, is the one thing generally regarded as not needing any special preparation or cultivation. Women who have responded most truly to the de- mand for home makers have no more consideration shown by those in authority, no higher protection un- der the laws, nor any fuller rights in society, than those who are careless of their trust, who either through dis- position or lack of education allow children to escape from their hands to be a public menace. When legislation fails to protect a guild or class, the members organize for self-protection that they may the more forcibly demand their rights. Women PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 215 are thoroughly organized in perhaps every capacity save that which is their highest excuse for being — the bringing to the world, again and again, that ''per- petual Messiah," and divine reminder of man's original purity and the cause of its preservation through life. Organizations formed by mothers are usually local, limited and short lived, and work for home reforms by advocating the establishing of schools where servants can be properly trained, thereby lifting household and kitchen work from the realm of drudgery to that of science, rather than through right methods of cultivat- ing the child. Of course there is in all this a fair pros- pect of more rest for mothers, together with more time for study and recreation, thus making way for the higher preparation, both of which are needed if we would truly prepare ourselves to be companions and guides to our children. A mother seldom regards her life work as either a profession or a calling, and barely elevates it above a mere necessity. Only as she wins standing as a mover in society is she recognized, and this is often accom- plished at the expense of her children. It is a sad fact that those hours of service which have been set aside for race-building should be considered of little weight in the vast record of the world's doings. Is it any wonder, then, that women are struggling to get into other lines of work, especially the professional? Only 216 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. through self-recognition of her mother-work as a specialty or a profession will there ever come to woman her due recognition from others. Not until she demands that motherhood be dignified as a pro- fession, that her labor about the foundation of the edi- fice of life be inspected, its worth or worthlessness tested by humanity, will she have her rights as ruler, citizen or servant. This demand, this recognition, can only be obtained through organization, and that upon the specific basis of child culture. What would be the result of an organization of mothers for the benefit of self and the race? The answer lies in another question: What has been the result every time women have seen fit to clasp hands in sisterly union and demand or work for anything? Look at the suffragists, the temperance workers, the women's clubs, and the many other bodies that are sending out their great branches and roots into future reform. Of what might such an organization, based on motherhood, consist? And what would it effect, you ask? In the first place it would call together the strongest and most intelligent woman-element we have, in the interest of the greatest cause it knows. It would elevate the mother to a recognition of her true duties, and awaken in many an unconscious mind the necessity for action in some definite direction for bettering the condition of the child right in the family nest. It PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 217 would open to the uninformed woman a field of inquiry of which she heretofore has not been aware, and give her tools to work with such as no one can weld for her. If there is one idea above another upon which women ought to unite it is that of child culture. It is quite as essential that a mother give her child its full rights to the highest, as that she demand their be- stowal upon herself; and a child's highest right is to be nobly reared. Should the womanhood of our land, with one hand on the heart and the other within the warm hand of a sister, take a stand for the perfecting of the child life that gathers so closely about its skirts, a single generation would leave few battles to be fought or victories to be won; It will take untiring, individual efifort to bring about such organization. It means some intelligent, illu- minated woman in each local center, afire with a divine inspiration to lift up the family to its proper place as the one element of salvation, religiously, socially and politically. It will mean that each time a motherhood organiza- tion is effected, some strong, brave-hearted woman, who is true to her own family trust, will have to stand for the movement with all her will and heart, and that her husband and children will stand with her; that she will lift herself up into the heights of the family ideal, drawing all her sisters unto her thereby, inspiring them 218 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. with her own earnestness, and together they will set to work to build this bridge over which at least their share of humanity shall safely pass into the larger land of brotherly love. When we have many such brave generals here and there, each leading an army of mothers, we will have some chance as a nation to get out of our unclean ruts, "leaving forever the old, with its unending re- formatory movements, and its shattered homes; the keystone of that bridge will be Maternal Love, while in that fair domain the splendid edifice of the new civilization will bear the corner-stone of the Home." The future demands that mothers reach out and organize. It is the only remedy left with which our race may purify itself. We have labor unions, capital unions, temperance unions; why not have mothers' unions, and work for these eternal results? Mothers working in union together will accomplish more for our generation than any other class, for the mother is the teacher, the minister, the healer, the guide and philosopher to her children. Tolstoi writes as follows: "The ideal woman, in my opinion, is the one who, appropriating the highest view of the life of the time in which she lives, yet gives herself to her feminine mission — that of bringing forth, nursing and educating the greatest possible number of children, fitted to work for people, according to the PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 219 view which she has of Hfe. But in order to appropri- ate the highest view of Hfe, I think there is no need of visiting lectures ; all that she requires is to read the Gospel, and not shut her eyes, her ears, and, most of all, her heart." Of course, some of the mothers of the past prove to us the truth of the words, "there is no need of vis- iting lectures"; yet the thoughts that are being given out to-day upon these questions are very different from the lectures Tolstoi refers to. The doctrines of Christ are indeed sufificient to base motherhood upon, but it is their spirit which we must strive after, and it is that which is being lectured about to-day by the true disciples of child culture. Some one has said: "When the king comes to a home, and places the crown of motherhood upon one, who can describe the feelings with which she seems to hear the command. Take this child and nurse it for me'?" We will all admit that the woman who beholds her child as a gift of God can more readily read the meanings in Christ's words than the one who understands only its physical conditions. And with Tolstoi we would all fervently pray that moth- ers may take no lower ideals for their guide than the Divine Example and Christ's doctrines concerning the child and the family. Carlyle declares that if we would plant for eternity 220 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. we must plant into the deep unfathomable depths of the heart; and who can so well plant for eternity as the presiding spirit at the home altar? But you say we must have had preparation to do this. The com- mon lines of education do not prepare us for mother- hood, nor even to look forward to any such occupa- tion as woman's natural place; but instead she has her head crammed and her heart starved in the usual school. There is scarcely a woman who is not "floored" when it comes to bearing and rearing children, no mat- ter how well educated she may be, unless she has had some preparation of a special nature to fall back on. Some one suggests, "The higher branches of book learning are well enough for the girl or woman who has the inclination or time for them, but they should be secondary to the knowledge which shall fit her for motherhood. True, she may never marry ; but as one of the sex on which the care and education of child- hood must rest she should know how with head, heart and hand to serve the cause of helpless infancy in any emergency." Were I asked of what should a woman's proper professional preparation for motherhood consist, I would say, perhaps, in round words, a course of study in a kindergarten training school. But let it be a school in which the culture of the intellect will not outweigh the culture of the affections and worshipful PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 321 instincts; one that gives its courses somewhat more from the basis of the family than the school, one that throws away the letter and national limitations of Froebel, and is guided absolutely by the same spirit which guided him ; one which is not afraid to progress beyond Froebel's consideration of social problems into the consideration of the special conditions of the times and the neighborhood. I love to recommend the kindergarten training for a mother, but must confess that I have seen some of it that has been detrimental in its effects, and has led otherwise sensible women into the mazes of a sense- less use of harmful material, soul-and-body paralyzing in its effects upon their children. If a course of study in a kindergarten training school is impossible, there are many good helps now- adays of which an intelligent woman may readily avail herself. If she can possess the helpful books which to-day are in the market, she may acquire much neces- sary information and then make herself a small circu- lating library to reach out among her sisters who are struggling with the question of what to do with their children and thus become a blessed promoter of bet- ter neighborhood life. If she cannot possess the neces- sary books, and lives in a city that has a public library, she can usually obtain them there; if the library does not already possess them, she might induce the man- 222 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. agement to put them in stock if the mothers all joined her in a petition. If they are in the circulating library of your neighborhood, urge the mothers to read them ; invite them to your house to read with you ; or if that is impossible, carry the book with you on your round of calls, and make your friends listen to a few fine sentences. Maybe you will be able to rouse enough interest to start a mothers' club, and finally a kinder- garten. I should have these helpful books if I were obliged to "take in washing" to earn the money to buy them. I should want to know how to be the proper mother for my children, and how best to help my neighbors to be good mothers, even if it were neces- sary to walk miles, as Abe Lincoln did, for the right book to read on the beloved subject. But it is not reading alone that makes an enlightened mother. She needs freedom of body as well as free- dom of mind. The mother who drags herself down with heavy skirts, and fatigues herself with pressure and weight in dressing up to the styles, is neither a proper, buoyant or healthful mother. She is bound to be depressed in mind if she is in body, and vice versa. A woman who does not dress properly is about as poorly equipped for motherhood as any woman can be. The principles of correct, simple dressing and living are as important to the equipment of a mother as are the principles of right thinking. Many excellent plans PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 223 have been introduced for the correct arrangement of a woman's clothing to give the right warmth, freedom and beauty; but any woman who is determined to en- ter into this freedom can adjust her own clothing ac- cording to her emergencies. Furthermore, to enter upon the preparation for motherhood means that we must ever progress and reach higher and for surer results, both in studying ourselves and in studying our children. It is no small or short-lived calling. It is the only one really upon which we enter for life, and with our whole living be- ing — body, mind and soul. A woman should take up motherhood as she would a professional career, as she would take up the most glorious and illustrious calling — for that is what it is. The most important work of the hour is the illumination of motherhood. That is the one work of reform we can each enter into without stepping out of our regular path, for on every side we find the unilluminated mother working, working ig- norantly, and with bad results. Any mother who thus takes hold for her own re- generation will be inspired to help her mother friends and in my work in the Child-Garden I endeavor to bring a progressive course of study that can be taken up and used as the program for mothers' clubs. Child-Garden brings every month an outlined course of study for mothers interested in taking up some sys- 224 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. tematic work in kindergarten methods for the benefit of their children. The course began in March, 1897 (Vol. V, No. 4), and is not only reliable as to quality, but quite sufficient for daily needs. How to Start a Club. — Let any interested mother in- vite a few mother friends to meet with her — only earn- est ones — and read over these suggestions with them. Propose meeting regularly — weekly, fortnightly or monthly — for the study of child culture, along the lines laid down in the Child-Garden. Make this proposition definite, and decide how often to meet, setting the time and place for the next meet- ing, or several meetings, in advance, at the different homes. Let each mother be instructed to help one more into the circle by explaining its purpose, and have each promise to try and bring this one along. Smaller circles might be added in dififerent neighborhoods, with union meetings at set intervals. Name, Membership and Expense. — Adopt a name for your circle and let regularity of attendance constitute membership. Let there be no fees, unless they be fines for non-attendance. Choose a dififerent member to act as leader at each meeting. This plan works well in many organizations, and saves complications. At an expense of eight and three-fourths cents per month each member may possess herself of the full PROFESSIONAL MOTHERHOOD. 225 course — viz., a yearly Child-Garden subscription at $1.00. Each member should also buy at least one of the special books to be studied for the benefit of all, until each can possess them all for herself. If you feel the need of having officers and by-laws proceed along the regular lines to complete an organi- zation. Meetings. — Short meetings at short intervals are best. The course of study outlined in the magazine is long enough to be divided into weekly parts, and one hour each week is certainly little enough to devote to considering the most important business of a mother's life. At least one meeting during the month should be held in the evening, that the fathers might attend. Special topics will be given for such special meeting. Determined faithfulness to this course of study will at the end of one year bring a wonderful realization of good to each mother and her family. Program. — The program outlined for each month can be divided according to the number of meetings to be held regularly, shortening if necessary. Every member should be actively interested in each meeting. A response from Froebel in answer to the roll-call would be an excellent plan. A different program committee might serve for each 226 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. month, to consider the outlined program in the maga- zine, and assign special parts to members. This course of study can be taken up by any mother without cooperation, but of course the best results are secured by several working together. A short list of books has been carefully chosen to be used in connection with this study course, and every member should, if possible, possess them. Object of the Club. — Aside from the direct good that would come to each member of a Child-Garden Moth- ers' Club, would be the definite purpose that it make itself felt as a power in the community, helping the kindergarten work already started, and in starting the work if there is none. CHAPTER XV. WOMAN AND WORK. CHAPTER XV. WOMAN AND WORK. Let US consider what are the self-supporting lines of work which at the same time train the woman for future wifehood, home-making, and motherhood. To-day there is no more vital subject to interest fathers and mothers, than what shall be the occupation of their daughters. It is growing to be just as much a consideration when a girl leaves school as when a boy leaves school; she asks, ''What shall I be?" More and more women are preparing for professions, and the good old days, when daughters began at twelve to make the linen which was afterward to be their mar- riage portion, are forever past. I tremble to think what an honor it is becoming to be called an old maid. Which one of us has not been guilty of helping some young woman out into the greater freedom of self-support, freeing her from the necessity of marriage? I confess that I have done much mischief along this line, and have helped many a woman into rebellion and strong-mindedness. In fact, I had been going this sorry gait for some time, 229 280 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. breeding discontent wherever I could in the feminine heart, until one day I ran up against an old-fashioned man who had no patience with such ''social anarchy." He set me to thinking as I had never thought before, by talking in this manner: *'You people who have right ideas about raising children ought to be at it, proving your theories. In the kindergarten you have ten or twelve little ones for a few hours a day, and for a year or two, at most. The good you do is largely dissipated in their homes. To make a lasting impression on society you ought to have ten or twelve of your ozvn and give them your daily influence and care for, say, tzvcnty years. Stop talking, and get married!" This antiquated gentleman's advice, I confess, did not fall upon deaf ears. I have, however, not stopped advising young women to reach out into the world's work. In these transition days ideals are hard to realize. Women must often bridge over hardships at home, and help in the bread struggle. It has grown almost sug- gestive of making more unsolvable problems to urge women to be mothers of families. It seems absurd to say it, but it is a fact that the few large families we have nowadays are having a hard time of it. It is often financially and socially impossible to rear large families unless the women go out and work as well as the men. WOMAN AND WORK 231 And this very fact disqualifies women for motherhood. A very small percentage of the human race, as it stands to-day, is fit for parentage, either physically or finan- cially. Among the women a great many who are in the ranks should have sought other employment than wifehood and motherhood. If only women might choose wisely and without embarrassment of circumstances or feeling and go into that employment for which they feel themselves best fitted! A large number of women to-day are working from choice. What shall such women be urged to choose as their occupation in order that they may not lose all ambition to be mothers, nor all fitness for motherhood and v/ifehood? The great majority to-day do not choose their occu- pation; the women whose life conditions are dictated — those blessed daughters of labor — they must go out and accept drudgery of any sort whatsoever, at any pay, in order to help the family. But facts all about us prove that they seldom lose their ambition for mar- riage and home life. They often accept it in the vain hope of relief. This class is more apt, without consid- ering fitness, to marry than not, and have families. It is the privileged daughter of the well-equipped family that we must ask to choose wisely, the woman who has education and opportunity, who would have 232 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. time to prepare herself professionally for social archi- tecture. She is the one we look to to-day, the one who has the most power in the molding of society. Shall she be a grinding business woman, a stenog- rapher, a bookkeeper and enter such other occupa- tions of the financial world as are undeveloping to the inborn feminine instincts? Or even shall she be a lawyer or a doctor, spending her time adjusting the mistakes of the more ignorant women who have en- tered the ranks of motherhood and wifehood? She is our saving remnant, this intelligent middle- class woman. She it is whose mother before her is usually intelligent enough to desire that her daughter shall make up for her own mistakes; she it is who more and more must and will face the situation, even if it seems unromantic and calculating, and prepare herself in the highest way for the loveliest and most blessed of all occupations — the ministry of the home, the rear- ing of children unto Christ, and the blessing of man- kind. Nor need marriage necessarily follow such a preparation. This daughter, beautifully trained, may remain in the ranks as teacher, and there her work is great indeed. There she is a link in the great chain of motherhood that leads our children step by step through their school life. If she be an inspired teacher and can pass the child from her hands on into the charge of another as fully inspired as she, what more can we wish? WOMAN AND WORK. 233 There are many occupations not self-supporting", along the line of church, mission and reform work; and I might say, club work. The largest body of our more intelligent women are keeping themselves busy in this way alongside of their home duties. Woman has always worked ; woman has always been a wife, a mother and a home-maker; but she has not always been self-supporting. A noted scientist asserts that "the great motive of organic nature was to produce human mothers," and a writer* adds: "That fact accomplished, nature has never made anything since. The work of perfecting the human race was delegated to woman, the obliga- tions of maternity were made eternal, and her soul was filled with insatiate longings for something higher and better, so that through these aspirations she should herself be led, and should lead man, onward and up- ward, toward their joint heritage or immortality." But this has not been a particularly remunerative work. *Tn the Building of Anthropolgy at the Columbian Exposition Prof. Putnam illustrated the life of primi- tive woman in such a way as to show conclusively that she was the first potter, tanner, and tailor, and, from the necessities of her environment, the originator of al- most all the industrial arts." But always it was a labor of love. * Mrs. Sallie S. Gotten, before the National Congress of Mothers, held in Washington, February, 1897. 234 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. ''As civilization advanced she employed her time in making ornaments for the adornment of man, who was at that era the ornamental part of creation. After she had originated a way to do these things, man gal- lantly assumed the labor." And, by the way, he made it pay. Woman has since been the more ornamental part of creation. "Both having thus served as ornaments until developed into higher utility, now another ad- vance becomes necessary, and again she must take the first step. Now she must devise a way to invest him with the mental and moral adornments of a nobler manhood, thus repeating on a higher plane the his- tory of primitive experience." And further, woman must invent a process by which she may invest him with these mental and moral adorn- ments, for, after all, carry it as far as you will, it is her one natural occupation. And further, it ought to be a self-supporting occupation. The point of self- support is one of the most important, for we know how fully developing it is of a woman's sense of ap- preciation of what she receives to know what an effort it cost some one, and vice versa. We find women reaching out into work of every kind to-day, even as did her aboriginal sister. Some consider it a solution to the woman problem that she is at last on an equal footing with men. Others see WOMAN AND WORK. 235 in it the closing of avenues to men, the natural sup- porters, and even look upon it as one of the great evils of the hour, because it is unfitting women for motherhood. Tolstoi fights hard for the perfecting of motherhood and wifehood as the only true occupation of women. However, he does not give us a practical plan of train- ing. We might say, perhaps, he left that to be found out by the feminine geniuses who have created for us the kindergarten training school. Tolstoi proclaims against women branching out into professions. Es- pecially as a wife, an intelligent wife, does he picture woman as a maker of her husband's moral conscious- ness. He holds a woman strictly responsible for the manner in which she allows her bread and butter to be earned. He dares each woman to look into the occupation of her children's father, lest she be feed- ing them with bread that has been earned at the cost of his soul. And, by the way, we may some of us well be watching in these days of mercantile specula- tions. It does not occur to the Russian philosopher that unless a woman has launched out into the business world somewhat, and knows the ways of commercial activity, she may be utterly blind to the point wherein her husband's occupation is irregular. Tolstoi would have us be spiritual mothers of our 236 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. husbands, as well as of our children. A modern poet has written charmingly of the rights of that "other baby," a woman's husband, pleading that he be con- sidered with more tender care. Surely man has spent his time struggling in the mercantile, mechanical and financial world to such an extent that he is socially almost a baby still, and it is a woman's larger duty to organize for him his social existence. Nature herself chose woman for this duty when she tied her down with babes to suckle and groups of children to hold together and nurture. Nature makes w^oman the home builder and the guar- dian of the social life of the fathers of the race. And we might as well accept the situation and be a suc- cess at it. We are all bound to come to it, dear sisters, or be blotted out ; and why not definitely plan to make of the daughters in our midst mothers indeed, in heart and mind! Asked what self-supporting occupation will do this and make a woman a better wife and mother, I am compelled to say, first and broadly, ''Any occupation is better than none." A society belle, a reigning beauty, whose sole and soulless occupation is the seek- ing of a husband, is less fitted for a wife than a girl who has had her soul ground down in a factory. An idle woman is a curse to mankind. That occupation is the best preparation for wife- WOMAN AND WORK. 237 hood which makes a woman most self-reHant, which draws most heavily upon her affectionate nature and gives her the broadest touch socially. If asked to name such an occupation, I should say that teaching is perhaps the one which most truly gives a woman a chance to live up to her highest opportunities. The profession of teacher is the very best among all the self-supporting professions. If ideally prepared for and ideally practiced it is by far the most develop- ing to a woman along the line of her special needs as a mother. The more she can put the mother into her work, the better teacher, and we might say she thereby makes herself, through her far-reaching influ- ence, the greater mother. If schools were as they should be, and some day soon will be, we trust, we will have none too many women for our educational ranks. When, instead of from fifty to seventy children under one teacher in one group, we have twelve children to one teacher, with five such groups in each division, then we will treble and quadruple the demand for women in this one line of w^ork. Surely we will spend more money for school salaries, but perhaps we will spend less for reforms. You have all heard the remarkable statistics of San Francisco since the kindergarten has been generally introduced: "Not one child criminal in eight years." We all look forward to the day when scores of chil- 238 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. dren will not be crowded under the care of one teacher. And this is not an idle dream, when so practical a body as the National Educational Association repeats year after year such resolutions as declare that the number of children to the teacher shall decrease, and that the kindergarten and so-called ''fads'' are a natural part of the school course. The grand body of this same National Educational Association is made up of teachers and superintendents from the middle-sized cities of the States. This meafts that it is not merely the chosen few, who are thinking, but that the whole body educational is either sympa- thetic or bound to be influenced in this direction. Would it be a wonder if some day we should, instead of the cut-and-dried high school (remembering that the majority of our high-school students are girls), have four years of special preparation for life, such as the kindergarten training school would give^ — four beautiful years of development of the womanly powers of our daughters instead of four crushing years of cramming and health sapping, with no special prepara- tion for anything at the end of that time! Such a training need not do away with many of the so-called higher branches, but they would be given in the more inspiring way. Spend a few hours in the class room of some kindergarten training school and see what great subjects are given the young ladies, all WOMAN AND WORK. 239 with a view to applying them to the training of chil- dren, and you will question, Why can't we have this sort of work in our high schools, and develop our daughters for life's duties? Such a plan for higher education is already on foot and is already practically working. It would certainly be a better preparation for the oc- cupation of teaching, and this will always be the most ideal, self-supporting occupation for women. Nor will the millennium be here even when we have proper school conditions, with enough fine teachers to do the work thoroughly as well as ideally. We will go jogging on as a nation, compelled to deal with the next big problems that come along, but certainly we will be in much better shape to solve them; when instead of women lessening the chances of men for positions which they are best able to occupy, they will be help- ing to make better men to occupy them, not forcing upon us more need of emergency work and reform be- cause of the greater army of unemployed. My advice to any parents with daughters to start out in the world, who are not inclined to hurry them into marriage, would be to give them a thorough edu- cation and give them the training for the profession of teaching, whether it be for the kindergarten or the grade work. This one profession above all others has room on top and least of all interferes with a woman's natural tastes and povvcrs. 240 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. Besides, the profession of teaching is one which will turn to ashes in the grasp if woman follows it for mere self-support, and it will give her the golden crown of a rounded life if she follows it as an ideal, fitting her for ever and ever higher work and greater returns. And the more she makes her work pay ideally as a teacher, the more will it pay financially. Here is Froebel's ideal of the true teacher: 'This standing above life, and yet grasping life and being stirred by life, is what makes the genuine educator. "Jesus, whom we all from innermost conviction con- sider our highest ideal, says: 'Suffer the little chil- dren to come unto me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God.' Is not the meaning of this, Forbid them not, for the life given them by their heavenly Father still lives in them in its original wholeness — its free unfolding is still possible with them? Do we not in this, as in all that Jesus says, recognize the voice of God? Whom, now, shall the educator obey, God or man? And whom, if he could do so, shall he deceive, God or man? Woman's highest value to society and to the nation always will be her capacity to rear children, whether it be as mother or as teacher. If she fails to see this fact, she fails to find her truest avenue. Yet it is not in merely populating the world nor in teaching chil- dren that woman really serves best; motherhood is WOMAN AND WORK. 241 necessary for her own development in order that she herself may realize the richest type of womanhood. And what more worthy gift can she bestow on society? Ruskin would have us believe that the highest point in the development of the plant is not in the seed nor in the fruit, but that the blossom time is the ideal. So also it is the flower of womanhood with which each one of us should aspire to bless our race, and that can be most fully bestowed upon us by motherhood. Those among us who may differ and point out the beautiful lives of the childless devotees, to them I say, ''Beautiful indeed! but think what a crown of added beauty were motherhood." It is the duty of those women who go the highest, feel the most, and think the best, to be mothers. We need not rea- son why. A wise friend who is a kindergarten trainer said to her girls in my presence, "Enter this profession with the full feeling that you are taking it for the sake of a home of your own, full of little children and a loving father to bless, and then you will get the most out of it." It is indeed the spirit with which you enter any life work that determines how high a preparation it shall be for something better. Not the occupation, but what you put into it, is what gives the best returns. And women once in those broader lines outside the mere frivolities of society, are very apt to always keep 242 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. themselves in touch with some progressive work, even after marriage. It is sweet to beHeve that such a woman gives her children a greater inheritance and a broader sympathy with the world, than the mother who pours out her entire life upon her own imme- diate family group. Mrs. Ballington Booth has given a great assurance to mothers who dare lend themselves to the world somewhat for the sake of the good they can do to others than their own. She says: "I glory in the fact that the woman who carries a share of the burdens of the world, who goes out on the platform, or speaks from the pulpit, or goes to the bar, or stands out for those things she thinks right and true, can be a truer, better mother in her own home than any other woman." And in fact whatever occupation may be yours, dare to be old fashioned enough to pursue in it that which will most thoroughly perfect you for the complete life of a woman. Women, let us work, let us work in any and every avenue of life, that we may pour into these avenues the healing of the race that comes through the pure mother. The error of this age is not that women are leaving motherhood and have entered every occupa- tion, but that there is one single idle woman, neither a mother nor a laborer, as a blot on our escutcheon. CHAPTER XVI. CHILD STUDY. *'In every human JDeing, as a member of humanity and as a child of God, there Ues and lives humanity as a whole. Let a clear picture of their past lives be given to children, let them learn to see themselves mirrored in it, and when they are grown up the light which illumines the way behind them will help them to see clearly the road that lies before them; child- hood will be seen to be a part of all the rest of Iffe, and a distinct conception of the childhood of humanity and of its connection with the rest of history will be possible." — Froebel. CHAPTER XVT. CHILD STUDY. Tolstoi and a dear old grandmother friend of mine believe in common that mothers should study two things, their children and the Bible. This age has well been called the age of the dis- covery of the child. The writer, the painter, the teacher, and even the parent, are beginning to recog- nize the depth upon depth that hes in the unconscious mind and heart of the child, and are studying it that they may be true to the beautiful source of humanity in all that they do. That parents and teachers above all others should take up this special study seems but natural. There are mothers who for generations back have records of the development of their children, although no gen- eral use of this suggestion was made by educators until recently. To-day every progressive educator in the land is alive to the importance above all else of a knowledge of the child himself. Chauncey P. Colgrove says: "One of the encour- aging signs of the present is the fact that teachers are 245 246 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. turning their faces childward, are giving more earnest attention to the living factor in the problem of edu- cation, and to me it is a significant fact that this great movement in child study has come so soon after the mother instinct and the artist instinct, and through women teachers has been utilized in school educa- tion. With men and women teachers equally inter- ested in the movement, it would seem that child study bids fair to become one of the few movements in his- tory in which an artistic ideal and a scientific spirit have from the first been harmoniously united." Certainly nothing concerns a mother so deeply as the life and mind of her babies. There is an ever- growing sentiment in favor of systematic child study, not only on the part of pedagogues, but among parents ; and although the acknowledged leaders in the move- ment are men, yet the most ardent workers along this line are mothers, women teachers, and kinder- gartners. Each mother is confronted with this need of understanding her children; she feels she must put herself on their simple plane, but how to do this sys- tematically and truly is a hard point to arrive at. It takes in the first place deep insight, great common sense, and a proper conception of the individuality of each child lest his particular rights be interfered with, and above all lest the child be made falsely con- scious through being observed and discussed. CHILD STUDY. 247 Mothers who have the deepest welfare of their children at heart may perhaps reach into their lives most safely; but it is to be urged that they take up child study for the benefit of the school as well as the home. In studying our children we begin to realize what depths lie behind them, how we must not only reach back into the lives of our ancestors, but press forward even to our grandchildren before we can say we have begun to know half the import of the ques- tion. Think how each child is one of the myriad trib- utaries toward universal good or ill which flows from each single family stream! The school w^orld to-day is studying the child in the mass, but it will always be the mother's particular province to study the child as an individual, and it is from the mother's standpoint that I shall ask you to look at the subject with me. The mother is bound to have a larger share of sentiment and affection to bring to this study, and I fully beUeve that she has a donation to make to child study much as such scien- tists as Thoreau and Burroughs had to make to sci- ence — a contribution which shall widen and deepen the sympathy-side of the question, and ever bring us higher and better methods than can be reached through laboratory work and the more bloodless dis- section and probing which have marked the early stages of this study. The mother knows the inner 248 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. life of her child, his inherited tendencies, his tastes, habits, temperament, temptations, aspirations; she knows all the facts of his existence; she does not need to probe into him to find them out. She has the suggestion and the explanation buried in her own being. Nor would the natural mother pry into her child as the scientific psychologist might. She will not question nor urge him to give up his secrets to her; she will divine most of them. She will not press him to think of certain subjects, nor to do or say cer- tain things in order to find out the contents of his mind or the method of its action. She will leave him untouched and unmolested, and yet she will learn the most. As mothers we must put ourselves in touch with the movement but never give up our special province to observe from within; nor must we remove the rose- colored glasses of love through which we do our observing, for even the most scientific searcher after the child is learning that he must don these same glasses himself if he would not be led into erroneous conclusions. The mother winds about her child's life from the very start these wondrous, mystic webs that are bound to defeat the material observer who would wrench from him his secret. All these things must be taken into consideration when we would unveil to the child student the real child. CHILD STUDY. 249 The kindergarten advocates the study of wholes, and would not have us dissect the parts of a living organism. The mother stands in this phase of the child study question, and her contribution to the movement has great value for this very reason. And besides, it is the mother's special privilege to see her child in his perfect relation to the whole family and toward the environment which has produced him. If the child is studied for the sake of finding him in his right place, or that we may know what power he is capable of and what is standing in his light, who has a better opportunity to do this than the mother? It is true that the teacher of to-day is taking a more vital interest in the child than is the mother, yet she cannot do her work as she should without the co- operation of the parents. As in every other question, child study is after all a question of cooperation if we are^to obtain the best results. The mother and teacher must work together, and the teachers being already alive to this fact, it behooves the mother to widen her lines and become an active factor in the move- ment. Child study is the peculiar and fundamental study of the home builder — the mother — and if the home do its duty one half the work of the teacher is needless and her efforts may be turned elsewhere and to better advantage in guiding the child in his studies and into nature. 250 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. The mother is the one to-day who must be urged to reach into this organized movement. The teacher and the kindergartner have already done it. A recent educational journal says: "One of the most hopeful features in the educa- tional world is the rapidly growing interest in every phase of child study. This interest is shown in in- numerable ways — in the formation of child-study clubs, in the incorporation of the kindergartens as a part of the public school system, in the increasing number of those who are fitting themselves for kin- dergarten teachers or for the application of kinder- garten principles in primary work; also in the forma- tion of mothers' and parents' study clubs. The situa- tion is a unique one; this interest in the study of chil- dren has grown so rapidly and the public schools have opened their doors so fast to the kindergarten that the supply of teachers is not equal to the demand. Of what other department in education can this be said?" And if each mother among us will make the start we will find the way. Froebel says: ''Parents should not be timid, should not fear be- cause they know nothing themselves and do not know how to teach their children. If they desire to know something, their ignorance is not the greatest evil. Let them imitate the child's example ; let them become children with the child, learners with the learner; let CHILD STUDY. 251 them go to father and mother, and with the child be taught by Mother Nature and by the fatherly spirit of God in nature. The spirit of God and nature will guide them." But each one of us can begin at home if there is but a baby in the house to cooperate in the study. A friend of child study makes these happy suggestions: "Perhaps the fond mother didn't know she was a scientist when she watched carefully to see when first the baby 'took notice/ when it first really smiled, when it first crept, first stood, first walked, and first spoke. But she does watch for all these things, and delights to compare her observations with those of other mothers, and seeks to draw therefrom the general rule in regard to all these things. Nevertheless, what she is studying is really a science — the science of baby- hood, and it is the most delightful science that the mind of woman (or of man either) ever applied itself to. The Harvard Annex maid, who, microscope in hand, studies the growth and development of a flower, can never feel but a faint fraction of the pleasure in her subject that the young mother takes in watching the development of her baby's body and mind. "But while m.ost mothers observe scientifically, they confine their observations to a few leading points like those above mentioned and usually make no exact record of their observations. They knew, at the time, 252 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. when the baby first laughed out aloud, but a year later they could not tell exactly when it was — because the baby has done so many more wonderful things. "But this very lack of absolutely scientific method gives special interest to the case of a mother who used her notebook and pencil as well as her eyes and ears. And every mother, could she but read them, would be delighted with just such observations, scientifically re- corded, published in the Child-Study Monthly under the title of The First Five Hundred Days of a Child's Life,' Mrs. Winfield Hall being the author." The method you pursue is of the least importance. If you are eager to study the child, and your own chil- dren especially, you will surely find a method. The best suggestion of all comes from one who has tried it — study some other children in connection with your own, for it gives greater liberty to both your own mind and that of the little ones. And, remember, while you study your children you will be learning that deepest lesson of all, to know yourself. 'Tt is not only the mother's sacred privilege, but her high obligation — to know herself in order that she may know her child, and the measure of her self-knowledge is the measure of her sense of responsibility." And, "When a mother in her own home reverently studies the threefold nature of her child she will ac- quire the truest, finest culture the world can offer, and CHILD STUDY. 253 then knowledge will be added to love, mother- patience and gentleness — attributes which transcend all learning." There are many child-study societies, or Round Tables, as they are called. If you live in a large city you will undoubtedly be able to associate yourself with the work. Perhaps the teachers in your schools are following in these lines and you might keep in touch with them. Another feasible plan would be to cor- respond with the department of University Extension of the University of Chicago, which sends out special lecturers. If you belong to a woman's club urge that they take up this line of study — the one legitimate study of women and mothers. If you do not study anything else, study your children! Last of all, if you cannot get anyone to cooperate with you, send to the editor of the Child-Study Monthly , Chicago, or to G. Stanley Hall, Worcester, Mass., and receive data concerning the work, and go at it alone. Every mother ought to join some large movement somewhere directly connecting her with the culture of her children. Work up a teachers' union and study educational methods, or some progressive educational magazine. The church perhaps may have some soci- eties already formed that could take up such a course. CHAPTER XVIL A READING COURSE. CHAPTER XVII. A READING COURSE. There is a constant demand made by mothers for a practical course of reading which they can follow at home and which will give them deeper insight into this many-sided and all-absorbing question, ''Child Culture." I believe that with an intelligent woman little else is necessary save a thorough course of the right read- ing and a group of children to live with. And if only she will become interested enough in the broader need and look beyond her own children, the whole natural work of a woman lies in her hands to do. Such a mother will reach out actively and aggressively to widen the interest of her neighbors; she will work for the estab- lishment of kindergartens; she will want to help every child to find what she failed to get in her own youth; she will feel that she owes it to the cause of childhood that she warm everyone within her reach to the living truths which Froebel and his followers have given us; she will help form the fast growing sentiment and see that it be correctly formed; she will use her every op- 257 258 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. portiinity with every woman who is not thinking, and will make herself a potent factor in this great move- ment toward better family and social life, through up- lifting the child. The first books for any mother to read are the Bible and Froebel, because they above all others give the spiritual interpretation of the child, and of the race. Froebel's most important books to be had in the market to-day are as follows: "Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel," translated and annotated by Emily Michaelis and H. Keatly Moore, $1.50. This book is most delightful reading and depicts the development of Froebel's own mind as he became more and more absorbed in the study of the child and right methods in education. It is an inspiration to every beginner, for it tells of the many obstacles in his way and how he overcame them. "Education of Man," by Froebel; translated by W. N. Kallmann, $1.50. A great book indeed is this, ever evolving higher and newer light to the student. It is the gist of the New Education in one volume. Its contents are: Groundwork of the Whole; Man in the Period of Earliest Childhood; The Boyhood of Man; Man as a Scholar or Pupil; Chief Groups of Subjects of Instruc- tion; Connection Between School and Family, and the A READING COURSE. 259 Subjects of Instruction it Implies; Conclusion. Notes and comments add to the clearness of the text. No commentary on this book is necessary here. Every parent should possess it and study it for life. "The Mottoes and Commentaries of Friedrich Froebel's Mother-Play," by Susan E. Blow and Hen- rietta R. Eliot. Cloth, $1.50. This volume has been called the mother's Bible, and should take its place in every mother's daily reading. As W. T. Harris, National Commissioner of Educa- tion, says: It is not merely a translation of Froebel's Mother-Play, but an attempt to transplant the work into English. According to the design of the editor this isnhe mothers' volume, and the "Songs and Mu- sic" the children's. "The Songs and Music of Friedrich Froebel's Mother-Play," prepared and arranged by Susan E. Blow. Cloth, $1.50. While the "Mottoes and Commentaries" are intended for the mother, this volume is meant to be the children's picture book, while the songs are a valuable collection for the home as well as the kindergarten. "Froebel's Pedagogics of the Kindergarten," or. His Ideas Concerning the Play and Playthings of the Child. Edited by Dr. Wichard Lange, 1861. Trans- lated by Josephine Jarvis, with introduction by W. T. Harris, $1.50. 260 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. This is a collection of Froebel's miscellaneous es- says, which it would be well for all kindergartners to study, since here he dwells on the theory of his ideal education. He also interprets the first five Gifts and their development. The book closes with a story, "How Lina Learned to Read and Write." The trans- lation is excellent. Froebel's life and writings have created a literature, and among the most prominent books of this nature are the following: ^'Reminiscences of Friedrich Froebel," by Baroness von Marenholtz-Bulow. Translated by Mrs. Horace Mann, with a sketch of the life of Friedrich Froebel, by Emily Shirreff, $1.50. ''Child and Child-Nature," by Baroness von Maren- holtz-Bulow, $1.50. One of the first books on kindergarten philosophy. Contents: Introductory; Child-Nature; The First Ut- terances of the Child; The Requisites of Education in General; Early Childhood; Froebel's Method, and What is New in It; The Kindergarten; Froebel's "Mut- ter und Koselieder"; Earliest Development of the Limbs; The Child's First Relations to Nature; The Child's First Relations to Mankind; The Child's First Relations to God; Conclusion. "Symbolic Education," by Susan E. Blow, $1.50. This book discusses in a practical way the founda- A READING COURSE. 261 tions of the philosophy of Froebel as found in "The Mother-Play and Nursery Songs." It is emphatically a book for mothers as well as for teachers, as it gives the desired aid and interpretation of the actions, feel- ings, and thoughts of infancy, and unfolds the true method of training as taught by Froebel. A book long waited for by professional kindergartners, and is writ- ten from the deepest convictions and highest demon- strations of a kindergartner who first showed the pos- sibilities of making Froebel's idea practical as a part of our educational system. It comes most oppor- tunely, and speaks with authority. It is destined to become an accompanying text-book to Froebel's "Mother-Play" and the "Education of Man." It is for use in kindergarten training schools, in mothers' classes, and as reference book for public school teach- ers looking into the kindergarten. "Froebel's Mother-Play Songs," a commentary, by Denton J. Snider, $1.25. A study of the thoughts and principles underlying the play songs, and of the inter-relations between sepa- rate songs and groups of songs, also of the connections between motto, song and picture, and of Froebel's own explanations of the games. "Froebel's Educational Laws for All Teachers," by James L. Hughes, $1.50. This book is a collection of various lectures upon the Froebel pedagogy. 262 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. "A Study of Child-Nature," by Elizabeth Harrison, $i.oo. Here is given a clear and simple statement of some of Froebel's philosophic principles of education, to- gether with illustrations of the value of the same to all who have to deal with little children. 'This book is written from the kindergarten stand- point by one who has lived for years in loving, con- scious contact with children. The author has before her mind continually the endeavor to transmute the mother's loving guidance from unconscious instinct into real, intelligent, acute insight. It is a real contri- bution to the science of motherhood, and therefore pre- sents the unfolding of the mind and body of the child in a more or less systematic, scientific manner. In dis- cussing the development of the body Miss Harrison presents in a delightful manner both the motor and sensory sides. One of the strongest and most sugges- tive chapters in the book is that on 'Training the Senses.' The psychology of the author is certainly sound in that she regards the sense experiences as the raw material upon which the higher powers of mind must draw in their development. Note this sentence: 'The one thing that prevents most of us from being what we might have been is the dull, stupid way in which we have used our senses.' This certainly is the keynote of mind-development, and never does it have A READING COURSE. 263 such a clarion ring as when sounded by a practical kindergartner like Miss Harrison. "In the same suggestive manner the book treats oi training the Emotions, Affections, Reason and Will The author's insight into child-life is in no place shown more clearly than in her treatment of the 'Instinct of Justice,' or 'right and wrong punishments.' "The book is admirably designed for use as a book for studious, careful individual reading by the mother and teacher, and will serve equally well as a basis for discussion in Mothers' Clubs and Child-Study Round Tables. We cheerfully commend it, because it is so worthy of commendation." "Republic of Childhood," by Kate Douglas Wig- gin and Nora A. Smith, in three volumes. Cloth, each $1.00. Vol. I, Froebel's Gifts. Vol. 2, Froebel's Occupations. Vol. 3, Kindergarten Principles and Practice. These three books give a most complete exposition of the theory and use of kindergarten material and principles, not only from the pens and lives of these two prominent educators, but also giving the best thought and ideas on the New Education of the most progressive thinkers of the age. "Children's Rights," by Kate D. Wiggin, $i.oo. This book contains ten fine essays from kindergarten 264 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. standpoint. Start a club of mothers and use this book. Contents: The Rights of the Child; Children's Plays; Children's Playthings; What Shall Children Read?; Children's Stories; The Relation of the Kindergarten to Social Reform; How Shall We Govern Our Chil- dren? The Magic of 'Together"; The Relation of the Kindergarten to the Public School; Other People's Children. "The Kindergarten System," by Emily Shirrefif, $1.00. Principles of Froebel's system are herein given, and their bearing on the education of women; also remarks on the higher education of women. "Kindergarten and Child-Culture Papers," $3.50. Papers on Froebel's kindergarten, with sugges- tions on principles and methods of child culture in dif- ferent countries. Revised edition, published from the American Journal of Education. Henry Barnard, LL, D., editor. This book covers the whole subject of which it treats, and although somewhat expensive, it is a profitable investment for any primary school teacher. A complete cyclopedia of the kindergarten. Its eight hundred pages contain a history of the pioneer days of the movement in this country, also many prac- tical articles on the life, work and methods of Friedrich Froebel. It deals mainly with the theory, and is used as a reference book by many kindergarten students. A READING COURSE. 265 The following are some of the most universally read educational books, and are used by most schools of pedagogy and are recommended for general reading: "How Gertrude Teaches Her Children"; An At- tempt to help Mothers to Teach their own Children, and an Account of the Method. A report to the So- ciety of the Friends of Education (Burgdorf). By Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, $1.50. The first complete translation of this important work, which embodies Pestalozzi's theories and methods of education. "Levana, or the Doctrine of Education," by Jean Paul Richter, $1.50. A classic educational novel. This volume is trans- lated from the German, and treats of such matters as the importance, spirit and principle of education; in- dividuality, music, games of children, etc. "Educational Reformers," by R. H. Quick, $1.00. Giving a sketch of all the great men who have made the child heart and mind their life study. Educators and parents should appreciate and read of them, and know their demonstrations. "Talks on Pedagogy," by Col. F. W. Parker, $1.50. The book gives the doctrine of concentration, and the outcome of the work done in the Chicago Normal School, of which the author is the principal. It is a resume of the child in education, its powers and possi- 266 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. bilities when rightly directed, and flowing sponta- neously and actively through the channels of knowing. It brings food to the struggling teacher. It is a book for parents as well. ''The First Three Years of Childhood," by B. Perez, with an introduction by Prof. Sully, $1.50. The eminent English psychologist, Prof. Sully, says that Perez combines in a very happy and unusual way the different qualifications of a good observer of chil- dren, and that he has given us the fullest account yet published of the facts of child life. Educational History, Method, and Psychology: Quick's "Educational Reformers," $1.50. Compayre's "History of Education," $1.75. Painter's "History of Education," $1.50. Gill's "Systems of Education," $1.00. Plailmann's "History of Pedagogy," $0,75. Laurie's "Life of Comenius," $1.00. Krusi's "Life of Pestalozzi," $1.30. De Guimps' "Life of Pestalozzi," $1.50. Stanley's "Life of Thomas Arnold," $1.00. Mrs. Mann's "Life of Horace Mann," $3.00. "Life and Education of Laura Bridgman," $1.50. Rosmini's "Method in Education," $1.50. Rosenkranz's "Philosophy of Education," $1.50. Preyer's "Senses and the Will," $1.50. Parker's "How to Study Geography," $1.50. A READING COURSE. 267 Adler's "Moral Instruction of Children," $1.50. Preyer's "Mental Development in the Child," $1.50. The following are among the most useful books to kindergartners in their everyday work: "Systematic Science Teaching," by Edward G. Howe. Part i, a general outline and work of first three years, $1.50. A manual of inductive elementary work for all in- structors in graded and ungraded schools, the kinder- garten and the home. "Song Stories for the Kindergarten," by the Misses Hill. Boards, $1.00; cloth, $1.50. The latest and newest collection of exquisite songs for every day in the year. Written and adapted by practical kindergartners, and tested by actual use in kindergarten. A book which will add to the home library much of the kindergarten spirit. Contents: Opening and Closing Songs; Ring Songs; Prayers; Songs of the Seasons; Fall Songs; Thanksgiving Songs; Winter Songs; Christmas Songs; Easter Songs; Summer Songs; Songs of Night and Day; Weather Songs; Industrial Songs; Miscellaneous Songs. "In the Child's World," by Emilie Poulsson, author of "Finger Plays," $2.00. Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman. Arranged as a series of mornings' talks and stories for a full year. Beau- tifully illustrated, printed and bound. A gift book as 268 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. well as a text-book. A unified collection of the best stories, rhymes and suggestions apropos to child life. ''In Story-Land," by EHzabeth Harrison, $1.25. All mothers and teachers will welcome this new vol- ume from Miss Harrison's hand. It is a charming collection of stories, teaching, by fairy tales and hero stories, the lessons of unselfishness, seeing good and beauty in all things, sympathy, helpfulness, content- ment, perseverance, humility, faithfulness, courage and patriotism. Most of the stories are new, but among them are "The Vision of Dante," "The Story of Chris- topher Columbus," "A Story of Decoration Day," and a few others told again for little children. "Child's Christ-Tales" (revised edition), by Andrea Hofer Proudfoot, $1.00. Just as the stories of the Christ-Child are told in the kindergarten, giving also the legends of the Christ- Child. Illustrated with reproductions from the great- est masters. It is full of spiritual significance. Just what mothers and kindergartners have long wanted to help present the child-life of Christ to children. Simple enough for the youngest, and deep enough to interest all. With an autograph letter if especially requested. "Home Occupations for Children," by Katherine Beebe, $0.75. A READING COURSE. 269 Very practical for mothers at home, whether their children are or are not in kindergarten. ''Kindergarten Stories and Morning Talks," by Sara E. Wiltse, $0.75. A practical everyday help, as well as a child's story book. Outlining a full year's morning talks, show- ing the development of true story-telling. "Songs for Little Children," by Eleanor Smith, as- sisted by Mrs. Alice H. Putnam. Vols, i and 2, each $1.25. Quality of composition based on child's needs and ability as well as musical science. "Songs and Games for Little Ones," by Walker and Jenks, $2.00. Full of adaptable and beautiful songs. A standard kindergarten text-book of song and play. Child-Garden, a monthly kindergarten magazine for young children. Edited by Andrea Hofer Proud- foot. Per year, $1.00. The only magazine for children gathering up the pure current literature of the kindergartens. No other children's magazine discriminates so scientifically in its choice of contents, having a deep purpose behind all that it brings to the child. Full of helps to kinder- gartners and mothers. Written by kindergartners from their daily experience. "Child- Garden Mothers' 270 A MOTHER'S IDEALS. Club" is a recent department, giving a fully outlined course of study for club work. ''Kindergarten Guide," by Maria Kraus-Boelte and John Kraus. Two volumes. Each, paper, $2.00; cloth, $2.75. An illustrated handbook designed for the self-in- struction of kindergartners, mothers, and nurses. A most thorough and practical book. With the gifts and occupations systematically explained. The fruits of years of work. Two volumes, one devoted to the gifts and one to occupations. THE END. n eJ3 t^f \/ ^°-n^ D0B8S BROS. 7-^ ^ LIBRARY BINOINC O MAR 81 .-^.^"^Oo ST. AUGUSTINE ^^^^^ * FLA. ^£H^o lO^r^. ^0^ .4 o.