blinded her. "Mother" is a story of a girl who was saved from the shipwreck of mistaking luxury for happiness and escape from duty for freedom; in pleasureloving America, with its increasing class of women of leisure, such a story, in a quiet way, has a real service to render. And so has Mrs. Riggs's " Mother Carey's Chickens" a story of real boys and girls with a real mother, who faces a great crisis in the life of her little family with saving good sense and with the courage that is half the battle. There is no high tragedy in the retreat of a fatherless family into the country, no dramatic staging of the fight with poverty; there are loyal affection, clear perception of real values, plenty of humor, and that wholesomeness of tone and spirit which breed health, courage, and character. These two unpretentious stories are good examples of the kind of reading which serves as an anti-toxin at a time when many demoralizing, relaxing, enervating stories are in the hands of young girls who know nothing about life, and are in danger of losing their footing on those fundamental principles sometimes covered with foam and spume, but never moved from their indestructible bases. In a time in which there is a wide and inspiring movement toward real freedom there are many who are in danger of falling victims to a false idea of freedom, only to find when it is too late that, instead of escaping from bondage to reality into a beautiful idealism, they have flung themselves against immutable laws, and the drama of emancipation has turned into cheap farce or pitiful tragedy. If a record could be kept of the " affinities" and "soul unions" reported by the newspapers and of their results five years later, the tinsel romance would turn to tawdry melodrama. MATERNAL GRIEF BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Departed Child! I could forget thee once A shadow, never, never to be displaced The Child she mourned had overstepped the pale To all the Little-ones on sinful earth Not unvouchsafed a light that warmed and cheered Those several qualities of heart and mind Which, in her own blest nature, rooted deep, Daily before the Mother's watchful eye, Have you espied upon a dewy lawn That Nature prompts them to display, their looks, And character of gladness, as if Spring Such union, in the lovely Girl maintained Now first acquainted with distress and grief, Shrunk from his Mother's presence, shunned with fear In his known haunts of joy where'er he might, And stilled his tremulous lip. Thus they were calmed In walks whose boundary is the lost One's grave, Which, soothed and sweetened by the grace of Heaven As now it is, seems to her own fond heart, Immortal as the love that gave it being. Mother! MOTHER AND HOME BY JOHN JARVIS HOLDEN Home!- that blest refrain Sounds through every hastening year: All things go, but these remain. Held in memory's jeweled chain, Names most precious, names thrice dear: Mother! Home! - that blest refrain. How it sings away my pain! How it stills my waking fear! All things go, but these remain. Griefs may grow and sorrows wane, Tenderness in every strain, Thoughts to worship and revere: All things go, but these remain. Every night you smile again, Every day you bring me cheer: Mother! Home!- that blest refrain: All things go, but these remain! |