Home Scenes and Home Influence Part 27

Clarence burst into tears, and throwing his arms ground his mother's neck, wept bitterly.

"I will try and be good, dear mother," he said. "I do try sometimes, but it seems that I can't."

"You must always try, my dear son. Now dry up your tears, and go out and get your dinner. Or, if you would rather I should go with you, I will do so."

"No, dear mother," replied the boy, affectionately, "you are sick; you must not go. I will be good."

Clarence kissed his mother again, and then returned quietly to the dining-room.

"Naughty boy!" said Aunt Mary, as he entered, looking sternly at him.

A bitter retort came instantly to the tongue of Clarence, but he checked himself with a strong effort, and took his place at the table. Instead of soothing the quick-tempered boy, Aunt Mary chafed him by her words and manner during the whole meal, and it was only the image of his mother's tearful face, and the remembrance that she was sick, that restrained an outbreak of his pa.s.sionate temper.

When Clarence left the table, he returned to his mother's room, and laid his head upon the pillow where her's was resting.

"I love you, mother," he said, affectionately, "you are good. But I hate Aunt Mary."

"Oh, no, Clarence; you must not say that you hate Aunt Mary, for Aunt Mary is very kind to you. You mustn't hate anybody."

"She isn't kind to me, mother. She calls me a bad boy, and says every thing to make me angry when I want to be good."

"Think, my son, if there is not some reason for Aunt Mary calling you a bad boy. You know yourself, that you act very naughtily sometimes, and provoke Aunt Mary--a great deal."

"But she said I was a naughty boy when I went out just now, and I was sorry for what I had done, and wanted to be good."

"Aunt Mary didn't know that you were sorry, I am sure. When she called you 'naughty boy,' what did you say?"

"I was going to say 'You're a fool!' but I didn't. I tried hard not to let my tongue say the bad words, though it wanted to."

"Why did you try not to say them?"

"Because it would have been wrong, and would have made you feel sorry; and I love you." Again the repentant boy kissed her. His eyes were full of tears, and so were the eyes of his mother.

While talking over this incident with her husband, Mrs. Hartley said--"Were not all these impressions so light, I would feel encouraged. The boy has warm and tender feelings, but I fear that his pa.s.sionate temper and selfishness will, like evil weeds, completely check their growth."

"The case is bad enough, Anna, but not so bad, I hope, as you fear.

These good affections are never active in vain. They impress the mind with an indelible impression. In after years the remembrance of them will revive the states they produced, and give strength to good desires and intentions. Amid all his irregularities and wanderings from good, in after-life, the thoughts of his mother will restore the feelings he had to-day, and draw him back from evil with cords of love that cannot be broken. The good now implanted will remain, and, like ten just men, save the city. In most instances where men abandon themselves finally to evil courses, it will be found that the impressions made in childhood were not of the right kind; that the mother's influence was not what it should have been. For myself, I am sure that a different mother would have made me a different man. When a boy, I was too much like Clarence; but the tenderness with which my mother always treated me, and the unimpa.s.sioned but earnest manner in which she reproved and corrected my faults, subdued my unruly temper. When I became restless or impatient, she always had a book to read to me, or a story to tell, or had some device to save me from myself. My father was neither harsh nor indulgent towards me; I cherish his memory with respect and love; but I have different feelings when I think of my mother. I often feel, even now, as if she were near me--as if her cheek were laid to mine. My father would place his hand upon my head caressingly, but my mother would lay her cheek against mine. I did not expect my father to do more--I do not know that I would have loved him had he done more; for him it was a natural expression of affection; but no act is too tender for a mother. Her kiss upon my cheek, her warm embrace, are all felt now; and the older I grow, the more holy seem the influences that surrounded me in childhood."

THE POWER OF PATIENCE.

I HAVE a very excellent friend, who married some ten years ago, and now has her own cares and troubles in a domestic establishment consisting of her husband and herself, five children, and two servants. Like a large majority of those similarly situated, Mrs.

Martinet finds her natural stock of patience altogether inadequate to the demand therefor; and that there is an extensive demand will be at once inferred when I mention that four of her five children are boys.

I do not think Mrs. Martinet's family government by any means perfect, though she has certainly very much improved it, and gets on with far more comfort to herself and all around her than she did.

For the improvement at which I have hinted, I take some credit to myself, though I am by no means certain, that, were I situated as my friend is, I should govern my family as well as she governs hers. I am aware that a maiden lady, like myself, young or old, it matters not to tell the reader which, can look down from the quiet regions where she lives, and see how easy it would be for the wife and mother to reduce all to order in her turbulent household. But I am at the same time conscious of the difficulties that beset the wife and mother in the incessant, exhausting, and health-destroying nature of her duties, and how her mind, from these causes, must naturally lose its clear-seeing qualities when most they are needed, and its calm and even temper when its exercise is of most consequence. Too little allowance, I am satisfied, is made for the mother, who, with a shattered nervous system, and suffering too, often, from physical prostration, is ever in the midst of her little family of restless spirits, and compelled to administer to their thousand wants, to guide, guard, protect, govern, and restrain their evil pa.s.sions, when of all things, repose and quiet of body and mind, for even a brief season, would be the greatest blessing she could ask.

I have seen a wife and mother, thus situated, betrayed into a hasty expression, or lose her self-command so far as to speak with fretful impatience to a child who rather needed to be soothed by a calmly spoken word; and I have seen her even-minded husband, who knew not what it was to feel a pain, or to suffer from nervous prostration, reprove that wife with a look that called the tears to her eyes. She was wrong, but he was wrong in a greater degree. The over-tried wife needed her husband's sustaining patience, and gently spoken counsel, not his cold reproof.

Husbands, as far as my observation gives me the ability to judge, have far less consideration for, and patience with their wives, than they are ent.i.tled to receive. If any should know best the wife's trials, sufferings, and incessant exhausting duties, it is the husband, and he, of all others, should be the last to censure, if, from very prostration of body and mind, she be sometimes betrayed into hasty words, that generally do more harm among children and domestics than total silence in regard to what is wrong. But this is a digression.

One day, I called to see Mrs. Martinet, and found her in a very disturbed state of mind.

"I am almost worried to death, Kate!" she said, soon after I came in.

"You look unhappy," I returned. "What has happened?"

"What is always happening," she replied. "Scarcely a day pa.s.ses over my head that my patience is not tried to the utmost. I must let every body in the house do just as he or she likes, or else there is a disturbance. I am not allowed to speak out my own mind, without some one's being offended."

"It is a great trial, as well as responsibility to have the charge of a family," I remarked.

"Indeed, and you may well say that. No one knows what it is but she who has the trial. The greatest trouble is with your domestics. As a cla.s.s, they are, with few exceptions, dirty, careless, and impudent.

I sometimes think it gives them pleasure to interfere with your household arrangements and throw all into disorder. This seems especially to be the spirit of my present cook. My husband is particular about having his meals at the hour, and is never pleased when irregularities occur, although he does not often say any thing; this I told Hannah, when she first came, and have scolded her about being behindhand a dozen times since; and yet we do not have a meal at the hour oftener than two or three times a week.

"This morning, Mr. Martinet asked me if I wouldn't be particular in seeing that dinner was on the table exactly at two o'clock. As soon as he was gone, I went down into the kitchen and said, 'Do, for mercy's sake, Hannah, have dinner ready at the hour to-day. Mr.

Martinet particularly desires it.' Hannah made no answer. It is one of her disagreeable habits, when you speak to her. 'Did you hear me?' I asked, quite out of patience with her. The creature looked up at me with an impudent face and said, pertly, 'I'm not deaf.' 'Then, why didn't you answer me when I spoke? It's a very ugly habit that you have of not replying when any one addresses you. How is it to be known that you hear what is said?' The spirit in which Hannah met my request to have dinner ready in time, satisfied me that she would so manage as to throw it off beyond the regular hour. I left the kitchen feeling, as you may well suppose, exceedingly worried."

Just then the door of the room in which we were sitting was thrown open with a bang, and in bounded Harry, Mrs. Martinet's eldest boy--a wild young scape-grace of a fellow--and whooping out some complaint against his sister. His mother, startled and annoyed by the rude interruption, ordered him to leave the room instantly. But Harry stood his ground without moving an eyelash.

"Do you hear?" And Mrs. Martinet stamped with her foot, to give stronger emphasis to her words.

"Lizzy s.n.a.t.c.hed my top-cord out of my hands, and won't give it to me!"

"Go out of this room!"

"Shan't Lizzy give me my top-cord?"

"Go out, I tell you!"

"I want my top-cord."

"Go out!"

My poor friend's face was red, and her voice trembling with pa.s.sion.

With each renewed order for the child to leave the room, she stamped with her foot upon the floor. Harry, instead of going out as he was directed to do, kept advancing nearer and nearer, as he repeated his complaint, until he came close up to where we were sitting.

"Didn't I tell you to go out!" exclaimed his mother, losing all patience.

As she spoke, she arose hastily, and seizing him by the arm, dragged, rather than led him from the room.

"I never saw such a child!" she said, returning after closing the door upon Harry. "Nothing does but force. You might talk to him all day without moving him an inch, when he gets in one of these moods."

Bang went the door open, and, "I want my top-cord!" followed in louder and more pa.s.sionate tones than before.

"Isn't it beyond all endurance!" cried my friend, springing up and rus.h.i.+ng across the room.