n the patient, uncomplaining mother; that she will always do
anything to help out, and to enable the children to have a good time;
and in many homes, sad to say, the mother, just because of her
goodness, is shamefully imposed upon and neglected. "Oh, mother won't
mind, mother will stay at home." How often we hear remarks like this
from thoughtless children!

It is always the poor mother on whom the burden falls; and the pathetic
thing is that she rarely gets much credit or praise.

Many mothers in the poor and working classes practically sacrifice all
that most people hold dearest in life for their children. They
deliberately impair their health, wear themselves out, make all sorts
of sacrifices, to send a worthless boy to college. They take in
washing, go out house-cleaning, do the hardest and most menial work, in
order to give their boys and girls an education and the benefit of
priceless opportunities that they never had; yet, how often, they are
rewarded only with total indifference and neglect!

Some time ago I heard of a young girl, beautiful, gay, full of spirit
and vigor, who married and had four children. Her husband died
penniless, and the mother made the most heroic efforts to educate the
children. By dint of unremitting toil and unheard of sacrifices and
privations she succeeded in sending the boys to college and the girls
to a boarding-school. When they came home, pretty, refined girls and
strong young men, abreast with all the new ideas and tastes of their
times, she was a worn-out, commonplace old woman. They had their own
pursuits and companions. She lingered unappreciated among them for two
or three years, and then died, of some sudden failure of the brain.
The shock of her fatal illness woke them to consciousness of the truth.
They hung over her, as she lay prostrate, in an agony of grief. The
oldest son, as he held her in his arms, cried: "You have been a good
mother to us!" Her face brightened, her eyes kindled into a smile, and
she whispered: "You never said so before, John." Then the light died
out, and she was gone.

Many men spend more money on expensive caskets, flowers, and emblems of
mourning than they ever spent on their poor, loving, self-sacrificing
mothers for many years while alive. Men who, perhaps, never thought of
carrying flowers to their mothers in life, pile them high on their
coffins.

Who can ever depict the tragedies that have been enacted in the hearts
of Amer