She is like a wild rose, creeping here, climbing there, blossoming where you least expect it, on some rough stone wall or gnarled trunk, at its own free, graceful will. You may dig it up and transplant it into your formal garden if you like, but you would never know it more for the luxuriant wild-rose, this "child whom nobody can do anything with."
Some who read this may ask, and properly, is such a child never to know the restraint of rule? I would be the last to answer in the negative, nor (and here it seems to me the great agony of outraged childhood comes in) would I have parents or teachers stretch or dwarf children of all sorts, sizes and capacities, on the same narrow Procrustean bed of scholastic or parental rule. No farmer plants his celery and potatoes in the same spot, and expects it to bear good fruit. Some vegetables he shields from the rude touch, the rough wind, the blazing sun; he knows that each requires different and appropriate nurture, according to its capacities. Should they who have the care of the immortal be less wise?
"You have too much imagination, you should try to crush it out," was said many years ago to the writer, in her school-days, by one who should have known that "He who seeth the end from the beginning," bestows no faculty to be "crushed out;" that this very faculty it is which has placed the writer, at this moment, beyond the necessity of singing, like so many of her sex, the weary "Song of the Shirt."
One request I would make of every mother. Make your "nursery" pleasant. Never mind about your "parlor," but is your nursery a cheerful place? Is there anything there upon the wall for little eyes to look at, and little minds to think about when they wake so early in the morning; or as they lounge about when a stormy day keeps them close prisoners? If not, see to it without delay. Don't say I "can't afford it;" one shilling—two shillings will do it; if you can spare a few shillings more, so much the better. You know the effect a bright, cheerful apartment has upon yourself, even with all your mature resources for thought and pleasure. Think then of the little children, reaching out their young thoughts, like vine tendrils, for something to twine about, something to lean on, something to grow to,—in fine, something to think and talk about. A blank, white wall is not suggestive or inspiriting. Give the little nursery prisoner something bright to look at. Can that be called "a trifle" which makes home attractive? We think not. Therefore we like flowering plants in windows. There are some houses which make us feel as though we were on friendly terms with the inmates, through these cheerful, mute tokens. Mute! did I say? Have our past lives been so barren of incident that the perfume of a flower never brought before us some bright face, or loved form, which has made life for us blessed? You must have felt it—and you and you; I am sure of it. Just such a rose as that you have "seen in her hair;" and you sit dreamily looking at it, as it sways gracefully on the stem; and you wonder what the dear child, so many hundred miles away, is thinking of now; and whether her full-blossomed life has fulfilled its budding promise. And that reminds you how the whirlpool of life's cares and duties has almost engulfed these sweet memories; and resolutely turning your back upon them all, you sit down and write a warm heart-letter, which comes to her in her distant home, like a white-winged dove at the window of a dreary winter day. And all this came of the little rose in your window; the old love wakened in your heart, and the gladness to hers!
Eloquent? If flowers are not eloquent, who or what is? Then, why are so many withered leaves put away with bright tresses and pressed passionately to lonely lips, whose quivering no eye sees save His "who wounds but to heal?" Eloquent? Could mines of gold buy them? This was twined in her bridal veil; that was laid upon her coffin-lid. No fingers but yours may touch the shrivelled treasures. For her sake you have placed their blossoming counterparts in your window. You shut your eyes when you go near them, that their perfume may seem her very breath.
Eloquent? Why does the old man stoop, and with trembling fingers pick the daisy or violet, and place them in his button-hole? Don't question him about it when strangers are by. It is the key to his whole life—that little flower.
"My mother liked primroses," the matron says to her little child; and so they blossom in her home as they did, many years ago, in the sunny nursery-window of her childhood. Ah, these "mothers!" whose "rights," guaranteed by the Great Law-giver, nor statute makers, nor statute breakers can weaken or set aside. Long years after they are dust, shall some little blossom they loved be placed in a bosom which yearns unceasingly, over and above every other human love, for her who gave it these warm pulsations. Blessed be these memorials of "the long ago!"
There is a class of mothers, easy mothers, who lose much time by not finding time for imperative duties. We wish it were possible to persuade some of them, who are otherwise most excellent mothers—how much trouble they would save themselves, by exercising a little firmness toward their young children. Of course it takes more time to contest a point with a child, than to yield it; and a busy mother not reflecting that this is not for once, but for thousands of future times, and to rid herself of importunity, says wearily—"yes—yes—you may do it;" when all the while she knows it to be wrong and most injurious to the child. Then there comes a time when she must say No! and the difficulty of enforcing it, at so late a period of indulgence, none can tell but "easy" mothers of self-willed children. For your own sakes, then, mothers, if you have not the future good of your children at heart; for your own sakes—and to save yourselves great trouble in the future, learn to say No—and take time to enforce it. Let everything else go, if necessary, because this contest must be fought out, successfully, with every separate child; and remember once fought it is done with forever. When we see mothers, day by day, worried—harassed, worn out by ceaseless teasings and importunities, all for want of a little firmness at the outset, we know not whether to be more sorry or angry.