MY ROSE AND MY CHILD.

I held in my bosom a beautiful rose,
All gay with the splendor of June;
Its dew-laden petals like sheen of soft snows,
Its blush like the sunshine at noon.
But e'en as I held it, I knew it must fade;
Its bloom was as brief as the hour.
The dews of the evening like soft tears were laid
On the grave of my beauteous flower.
I held in my bosom a beautiful child,
The splendor of love in her eyes;
No snow on high hills was more undefiled
Than her soul in its innocent guise.
But I knew that my angel in heaven was missed;
I knew, like my rose, she must go;
So with heartbreak and anguish her sweet lips I kissed—
She sleeps with my rose in the snow.

It was not so very long ago that I chanced to overhear a lively young woman make this remark about her mother:

"Oh, mamma is nearly always taken for my sister. She never seems like anything more than one of my girl friends."

Poor child, thought I, your state is only another phase of orphanhood, for the young life that has no counsel of motherhood is bereft indeed.

No girlish comradeship, however juvenile and delightful it may be, can possibly take the place of protecting, counseling, mother-love. Not but what the sweetest relationship possible exists where the mother keeps her heart young and in sympathy with her daughter, but there is something else requisite to mother-love.

The best mothers are those who have roomy laps where the big girls love to sit while they whisper the confidences they never could reveal to sister-mothers. They have all-enfolding arms, these right kind of mothers, wherein they gather the tired girl, yes, and the tired boys, too, and rock them to rest and peace, long after their "feet touch the floor."

They used to tell me I must never sit on anybody's lap after my feet reached the carpet, but, thank God, that rule never applied to my mother.

You are never afraid of disturbing mother's "beauty sleep" when you come in late at night if she is of the good reliable sort, as far removed from frisky girl companionship as the moon is from its reflection.