ONE MOTHER'S AWAKENING
One mother in a western state—a county superintendent of schools—told us the following interesting story of her own experience, which we think may be of help to some of our mother readers.
One morning her seven-year old son rushed into the house exclaiming: "Oh, mother, there is a new calf out in the barn, and I know where it came from; I saw a wagon load of calves come by here yesterday, and one of them must have dropped off, for it is right out there in the barn with old Bess this minute."
The mother was very busy with her papers and her reports, and she let the incident pass with a smile, thinking it was a very pretty little story. A week later the six-year old brother came in saying: "Mother, I think there must have been another wagon load of calves passed by, and one must have been lost off, for old Nell is cleaning up a little calf out in the barn for all she is worth," while the older brother piped up: "Sure, it was another load of calves; that is just exactly the way the other calf got here;" and the two little fellows went off to school.
About a month later that county superintendent suddenly became a much wiser mother than she was before, although her heart was made to ache. Both boys came home from school one day and the older one met her with something like this: "I am mad! I've been lied to; all the fellows at school say I have, and they are making sport of me, too," and with a glare in his reddened eye he continued, "You know that new calf did not come off that wagon; you know that calf came from old Bess herself; all the fellows say so at school, and they are making all kinds of fun of me, and I don't want to go back. I'd like to run away from home." The mother quietly drew the boy to her side and reminded him that she had simply listened; that she had not opened her mouth; that he came into the room and told about the incident himself, but this did not satisfy him. He turned to her wounded and crushed, saying: "Well, you let a fellow believe it, and that's just as bad;" and this educated mother—this trusted custodian of a county full of school children—beseeched me to warn mothers everywhere to teach their children the truth, and to never let a child go to school with a sex misunderstanding. She told me that it took her six months to get that boy's confidence back again.