"Yet must I think less wildly:—I have though
Too long and darkly, till my brain became,
In its own eddy boiling and o'erwrought,
A whirling gulf of phantasy and flame:
And thus, untaught in youth my heart to tame,
My springs of life were poisoned,"
In like manner, though in a different way, the character of Mrs. Foote, the actor's mother, was curiously repeated in the life of her joyous, jovial-hearted son. Though she had been heiress to a large fortune, she soon spent it all, and was at length imprisoned for debt. In this condition she wrote to Sam, who had been allowing her a hundred a year out of the proceeds of his acting: "Dear Sam, I am in prison for debt; come and assist your loving mother, E. Foote." To which her son characteristically replied—"Dear mother, so am I; which prevents his duty being paid to his loving mother by her affectionate son, Sam Foote."
Mothers ought not to deceive themselves so far as to think that when they over-indulge their children they are exhibiting genuine mothers' love. In reality they are merely shifting their method of self-pleasing. We believe the love of God to be the supreme love; but have we ever reflected that in that awful love of God for His poor children of clay there must be mingled at once infinite tenderness and pity, and at the same time a severity which never shrinks from any suffering needed to recall us from sin? This is the ideal of all love towards which we should strive to lift our poor, feeble, short-sighted, selfish affections; and which it above all concerns a parent to strive to translate into the language of human duty. This is the truest love, the love which attaches itself to the very soul of the child, which repents with it, with tears bitterer than its own, for its faults, and, while heaping on it so far as may be every innocent pleasure, never for an instant abandons the thought of its highest and ultimate welfare.
The loving instruction of a mother may seem to have been thrown away, but it will appear after many days. "When I was a little child," said a good old man, "my mother used to bid me kneel down beside her, and place her hand upon my head while she prayed. Ere I was old enough to know her worth she died, and I was left too much to my own guidance. Like others, I was inclined to evil passions, but often felt myself checked and, as it were, drawn back by a soft hand upon my head. When a young man I travelled in foreign lands, and was exposed to many temptations; but, when I would have yielded, that same hand was upon my head, and I was saved. I seemed to feel its pressure as in the happy days of infancy; and sometimes there came with it a voice in my heart, a voice that was obeyed: 'Oh do not this wickedness, my son, nor sin against God.'"
With children you must mix gentleness with firmness. "A man who is learning to play on a trumpet and a petted child are two very disagreeable companions." If a mother never has headaches through rebuking her little children, she shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up. At the same time, a mother should not hamper her child with unnecessary, foolish restrictions. It is a great mistake to fancy that your boy is made of glass, and to be always telling him not to do this and not to do that for fear of his breaking himself. On the principle never to give pain unless it is to prevent a greater pain, you should grant every request which is at all reasonable, and let him see that your denial of a thing is for his own good, and not simply to save trouble; but once having settled a thing hold to it. Unless a child learns from the first that his mother's yea is yea, and her nay nay, it will get into the habit of whining and endeavouring to coax her out of her refusal, and her authority will soon be gone.
Unselfish mothers must be careful not to make their children selfish. The mother who is continually giving up her own time, money, strength, and pleasure for the gratification of her children teaches them to expect it always. They learn to be importunate in their demands and to expect more and more. If the mother wears an old dress that her idle son may have a new coat, if she works that he may play, she is helping to make him vain, selfish, and good-for-nothing. The wise mother will insist upon being the head of her household, and with quiet unobtrusive dignity she will hold that place. She should never become the subject of her own children. Even in such mere external matters as dress and furniture her life should be better equipped. The crown should be on her head, not on theirs. Thus from babyhood they should be habituated to look up to, not down on, their mother. She should find time, or make it, to care for her own culture; to keep her intellectual and her art nature alive. The children may advance beyond her knowledge; let her look to it that they do not advance beyond her intellectual sympathies. Woe to both her and them if she does not keep them well in sight!
Happiness is the natural condition of every normal child, and if the small boy or girl has a peculiar facility for any one thing, it is for self-entertainment. One of the greatest defects in our modern method of treating children is to overload them with costly and elaborate toys, by which we cramp their native ingenuity or perhaps force their tastes into the wrong channel. The children of the humbler and the unpampered classes are far happier than are those children whose created wants are legion and require a fortune for their satisfaction.
Some mothers believe that they are exhibiting the proper "maternal feelings" in keeping their children at home when they should send them forth into the world, where alone they can be taught the virtue of self-dependence. A time will come when the active young man who is checked by foolish fondness will exclaim with bitterness—
"Prison'd and kept, and coax'd and whistled to—
Since the good mother holds me still a child,
Good mother is bad mother unto me!
A worse were better!"
Far more truly loving is the mother who sends her son into the battle of life preferring anything for him rather than a soft, indolent, useless existence. Such a mother is like those Spartan mothers who used to say to their sons as they handed to them their shields, "With it or upon it, my son!" Better death than dishonour was also the feeling of the mother of the successful missionary William Knibb. Her parting words to him were "William, William! mind, William, I had rather hear that you had perished at sea, than that you had dishonoured the Society you go to serve."