that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.”  “There is in all this cold and hollow world,” says Mrs. Hemans, “no fount of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within a mother’s heart.”  “Even He that died for us upon the cross,” says Longfellow, “in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of his mother, as if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought—­the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven.”  Who ever saw

A MOTHER ROMPING WITH HER THREE-YEAR-OLD

that did not look upon her as one of the happiest, therefore, necessarily, one of the best of God’s creatures?  O, in that peek-a-boo, that capturing of that last squealing “pig,” the little toe, that paddy-cake opera, is there not the one great bliss of life, to be happy in making others happy?  And how the laughter rings through the house!  And then the toil and self-denial for the stocking and the tree

AT CHRISTMAS!

Is it any wonder that the child is so easily deceived, and credits all his joys to unseen ministers?  It would not be hard to convince the philosopher himself of the dual earthly character of the mother, visibly a woman, invisibly but not the less really to her child, an ethereal spirit of mercy and goodness!  What gnaws her cheek and cheats Death into the belief a flag of truce summons him to the final parley?  Has not her babe, her hope, been fevered and in pain, and should she sleep lest it should leave her on this world behind, that then would need her not?  “Canst bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades?” No more can her anxiety be

FETTERED INTO SLEEP;

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

MAN ENTERS THE WORLD,

of all animals the most pitiable and weakly.  Left to himself he would immediately perish.  Extinguish the mother’s love and he would at once perish.  His growth is by far the slowest of that of all animals, therefore the wisdom of God in so lengthening the tenure of the mother’s solicitude.  The mighty man who wields the iron halberd which no two people can lift was still a helpless infant, unable to put his own chubby fist into his