FROM those who seek counsel or consolation we receive many letters which we would gladly excuse ourselves from answering, by the plea that such topics come not under our supervision. But we cannot feel that words for “The Household” mean only information about the washing, cooking, and house-cleaning,—simply those things which belong to the temporal state and bodily comfort. We are compelled to attach a broader meaning to that word household. All the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears, all the perplexities and anxieties which the mother, even more than the mistress, must accept when she assumes her position as the head of the home circle, cluster around the word and rise before her each hour of the day, if she conscientiously tries to do her duty. Not alone the health and bodily comfort of those who compose her kingdom, but their life-long usefulness and eternal happiness, are committed to her watchful care, and may be wrecked by one false step, one unguarded act, one ill-tempered word or unjust suspicion. Ah, to attempt to trace her responsibility through all the life that lies before her is overwhelming if she has not learned to feel that “as her day so shall her strength be”!
At times the mother’s life is full of brightness and joyousness; again, she sinks to the depths of despondency, or trembles with wild forebodings as her multiplying duties rise up before her, and she realizes how many conflicting characters and dispositions are depending on her for guidance. Nowhere does she feel this so keenly as in the care of her children. The consciousness of ignorance or inability to judge correctly, to act judiciously, so as to meet the wants of each child and be just to all, oppresses her. If all were alike, so that one code of laws, one well-digested line of action, would be as appropriate to the whole as to each individual case, the responsibility of rearing a family would be far less oppressive.
But there are no two the same. Each differs so widely in taste, disposition, and habits, that it necessitates as many modes of management as there are children in the family. One is loving and gentle. The parents need but express a wish, and, through the affections, the child finds its greatest pleasure in yielding its own wishes to secure theirs. Another is timid and sensitive to the last degree. A sharp “word at random spoken,” or ill-advised censure, may have “eternal power through life to wound,” because this very timidity induces a habit of reticence and concealment; the child preferring to endure the pain, rather than go through the ordeal of an explanation or justification; and the next one may be too proud to attempt it, both coming to the same results through widely different peculiarities.
One is bold and outspoken; another carelessly, recklessly happy, forgetting or neglecting all the rules of home in the overflowing joyousness of living; another is so under the influence of approbativeness, that to please and be approved, crowd independent, manly action out of sight; and the mother is too happy, if the power of this peculiarity does not too often draw the child beyond the bounds of strict honor and truthfulness.
And so through a large family you may look in vain for two so similar in character that, by taking that course which proves best for one, you may safely guide the other by it.
A mother of eight children, whose faith is wellnigh exhausted, who is cast down and wholly discouraged, thinks she would gladly die to escape the great responsibility of managing them; and this responsibility is growing greater and greater each year, as her boys and girls are leaving babyhood behind, and rapidly springing up toward manhood and womanhood. While they were little she enjoyed every moment, never feeling the care a burden. By and by one was taken from her, and for a while she refused to be comforted, till the Saviour spake and drew her to him.
But while she has evidently learned to believe in Jesus, we think she has not yet learned to trust. After her conversion, the sense of her obligations to lead her children by the strait and narrow road has, we think, pressed very heavily upon her, and she is in danger, not only of hedging the path so closely as to render it distasteful, and to drive them from it, but is also depriving herself of all the joy she might possess by their true and loving companionship. She becomes alarmed at every act which teaches her that her children are but mortal, and sees in it evidence conclusive that they are rapidly going to destruction.
She comes to us for counsel and asks, “Is it because I am so sinful or so incompetent, that I do not succeed better in teaching my dear ones to forsake the evil and choose only the good? They are loving and kind; but if their hearts are not entirely astray from God, why do they so constantly forget all I try to teach them, and do those things which they know I think wrong? Did you ever feel discouraged and almost hopeless?”
Yes, O yes! And voluntarily threw away half the comfort every mother is entitled to when her children are young and ever with her. Anxious mothers never fully remember the days of their own youth, or realize that half of what they call sin is but the overflow of bright, young spirits, ready to effervesce and sparkle a little beyond the strict lines that the mother, in her more sedate years, has marked out as the proper bounds. Then mothers are so full of apprehension, so easily alarmed! “The evils of this life appear like rocky precipices,—rugged and barren when seen at a distance”; and they are sure their children will stumble and fall, and be destroyed by them. But wait and trust. When the great pressure of present care is somewhat lifted, and the children, one by one, go out from your immediate influence, and little grandchildren rise up about you,—for whom, though you dearly love them, you do not feel the full responsibility,—you will find on a nearer approach to these “rocky precipices” which so frightened you, “that there are many fruitful spots and refreshing springs mixed with the harshness and deformities of nature.” And remember, above all things, that it is folly to add all the possible cares and burdens of the future to those which can come to you only day by day.
“Does each day upon the wing