It’s a very easy matter to give away the other man’s baby, but not so easy when it comes to parting with our own. Organized charity does a whole lot for the unfortunate, but often does it in the wrong way. The mothers who are active in organized charity are too ready to separate parents from their children, never thinking for a moment what a loss it is to both parents and children to be thus separated. The only excuse for separating parents from charity children, is the economy. It is cheaper. Charity using painful economy to a painful extent.
I believe it is better, where it is possible, to allow parents the society of their children, and children the society of their parents, even if charity is asked to step in and keep the wolf from the door. It’s better for the parents, I’m sure. If anything will make a man or woman better, the society of their own children must surely come first in the elevating influence.
In my own individual case I can notice the self-improvement since I have a child to look up to me with trusting eyes and feel the tight clasp of his little hand. “A child shall lead them.” The man who wrote this line had the love and power of a child’s influence in his mind. We are all benefitted and made kindlier and more loving in the society of children—and especially our own children.
Only a few weeks ago an old school-mate of mine lost his wife, leaving him with a family of seven small children, including a baby girl of only ten months. The charitable mothers of the neighborhood took an interest in the poor man’s affairs, and began to collect clothing for the little motherless orphans and fit them out for school. They all thought the bereaved man could get a housekeeper much easier if the baby were out of the way, and they began to look around to secure a good home for her. They all agreed on that point—it was to be a good home for the baby, with kind people.
I was present when the committee of charitable women met at the poor man’s house to inform him that they had found a home for Baby Ruth. I shall never forget the look of pain that flashed into his eyes at the mention of finding a home for his baby. He was too full for words, but he picked the baby up from where she was playing at his feet with a yarn ball and string, and as he pressed her to the bosom of his coarse blouse I saw the tears overflow from his grief stricken eyes and run unrestrained down his rough cheeks.
After a few moments of silence he mastered his feelings and thanked the ladies for taking an interest in his children, but hugged the baby again and said: “But little Ruth is my baby! She was Mary’s baby! The last kisses and caresses of my poor dead wife were given to our baby—her baby. How can I put her away so soon after Mary’s death? She’s so small and dependent—must I begin the separation of my family away down at the bottom—away down with the weakest and smallest—with the baby—the one dearest to the mother who is now dead?”
The spokeswoman of the crowd told him how it would be best for the baby, and for him, to find it a good home, with kind people, who would care for it “and give it all the comforts of life.”
“Yes, yes,” he interrupted, “I know you mean it all for the best, and I could agree with you if—if it were some other father’s baby we were discussing, and not my baby—Mary’s baby—the last of our family to feel the loving caress of her embrace.
“Is it a crime that I am poor and wifeless, and my children are orphans? Can I cease to love my children because I am poor and they are motherless? They have been a great comfort and pleasure to me. I love their prattling voices; the sound of the little toy cart, as baby drags it across the floor, is sweeter music than the tones of the pipe organ down in the fashionable church.