THE CHILDLESS MOTHER.

BY MRS. M.H.  ADAMS.

There are many childless mothers in our land.  In some homes there never lived a little child to make them happy; but in others the spirits of the little ones have departed.  They dwell in another home—­the “dear heavenly home.”  Their mothers, those childless mothers, weep day and night in their loneliness and sadness.  This sketch is of a mother who had buried all her little babes—­four precious children—­all her little family.  The mother’s name was Ellen Moore.

For many months after the birth of her first child, Ellen was free from sorrow as a bird in the morning.  She never thought affliction might come to her blessed home.  It was not surprising, for she had never known what bereavement and bitter disappointment were.  She was educated to be a child of sunshine.  She had always lived amid smiles and tenderness, and when the fearful cloud of sorrow broke, in an unexpected moment, upon her head, she seemed bowed down, never to rise again in health and beauty.

It was a sad day in our neighborhood when Ellen’s first little babe died; we all wept.  Not so much because he was dead, for we all felt that he was at rest; but his dear mother was so sorely troubled, her heart ached so grievously, it seemed as if she too would die.  Days and nights Ellen wept, and moaned, and walked her house.  The tears seemed to burn their way down her cheeks.  She spoke but seldom, yet that pitiful moan she so often breathed out pierced our souls and made us all very sad.

After a few weeks, the consolation we offered her quieted her feelings, and she became calm.  She went to church, called on her friends, and attended to her duties at home.  But there was ever a sadness in her voice and manners.  Her home was so lonely, so strangely still and vacant, and Ellen so silent, that the voice of gladness was not heard in it again until a second beautiful boy was born under its roof.

We were all happy then.  Even Ellen smiled as she kissed her dear babe—­but a tear followed the smile and the kiss so soon, we knew her wounded heart was not then healed.  She was very sad, and felt that this babe, too, might only be loaned her for a short time.  It was not long before we all felt so.  That little face, so pale, so sad, so beautiful, evidently bore the seal of death upon it.  He refused all nourishment, and pined slowly away.  Ellen knew he must die, but could not say so.  She could not shed one tear to relieve her sorrowful heart.  She neither spoke nor wept, until her infant was laid in its coffin.

A friend had woven a wreath of beautiful flowers, and laid it on the satin pillow of the coffin, and placed a delicate rose-bud in the little hand of the babe.  Ellen went alone to take her last kiss, when, seeing her babe so beautiful in death, she seated herself on the floor and wept freely.