The Prison Mirror

MOTHER'S LOVE

Mother love! The golden cord that stretches from the throne of God, uniting all animate creation to divinity. Its light gleams down the path of time, from barbarous ages when savage women held their babies to almost famished breasts and died that they might live. Its holy flame glows as bright in hovels where poverty breaks a meager crust as in palaces where wealth holds the most bounteous feasts. It is the one great universal passion—the sinless passion of sacrifice. Incomparable in its sublimity interference is sacrifice, regulation is a mockery.

The wild beasts hear its voice and answer to its call. A tigress, finding her cubs slaughtered, pauses to lick their wounds and then with raging heart seeks out their murderer. A she-wolf standing at the mouth of her den, with gleaming fangs and blood-red tongue, dies in defense of her whelps. Tiger's cub or wolf's whelp. I would rather feel the rough caresses of the hairy paws of my savage mother, I would rather have her care and protection than that of an official animal trainer.

I once saw a little timorous mother quail with marvelous intelligence and still more marvelous courage protect her brood by exposing herself to the hunter's aim I realized then that nothing could take the place of mother love.

If its divine fire so warms and thrills the heart of beast and bird, with what intensity does it consume the bosom; with what ecstasy inspire the soul of a woman for the child of her body! Although she knows she must risk her own to bring forth a new life, she does not draw back. Her love-lit eyes behold only visions of happiness, of glory and of power to be realized by her unborn child. With smiling lips and eager heart she enters the vale of shadows.

The first cry of the new-born falls on her ears, sweet as the music of paradise. Her tender hands caress the tender skin, her soul cries out the anxious question, "Will my baby live?" The torturing days of convalescence fly swiftly upon wings of hope. She nestles the tiny helpless thing to her bosom; sustains it with the milk of her body; every drop drawn from an infinite love.

With indescribable solicitude she watches over her offspring. Even when her body slumbers. her soul keeps vigil and her hands in unison with her spirit will stretch forth to bring the baby back to sleep. With glowing pride she watches the growing child, shields it from harm, guides it along the path of rectitude, inspires its soul with lofty sentiments of honor and of faith in the eternal God.

When time has spilled the snows upon her head and turned her brown or raven locks to white, her love will still abide, riper and sweeter with the passing years. Though she may live until her children are themselves grown old and gray, she will yet see the silken locks of youth; their roughened hands yet have the caressing touch of baby fingers; their voices bear to her the tender and melodious notes of infancy. And when at last she approaches the portals of death there is no solace so sweet as the presence of those she bore "to people and replenish the earth."

For mother love there is no substitute. If there be truth in religion, then this holy sentiment was planted in woman's heart by the hand of God. It has made life possible. It is in truth the very source of life itself. When all other passions are dead it survives. It will pass through the fiery furnaces of disgrace and yet live. It will endure the scorching breath of contumely with unwavering fidelity.

A mother will enter prisons of shame and kiss a felon hand thrust through the bars. She will sit beside the accused in courts of law, when the mob jeers and the heartless machinery of justice grinds out its grist of agony, and with unwavering faith maintain that her child is innocent. She will stand at the foot of the scaffold and, when the trap has fallen, cover the condemned body with kisses and with flowers. It is still to her the innocent suckling she once hugged to her breast.

But if the path of life has led her son to fields of honor, her heart will glow with pride, ineffable, unspeakable. If he is called to war, she will bid him goodbye with dry eyes although her heart is filled with tears. She will maintain a firm and hopeful mien, that he may gain sublimer courage from her sublimer example. When he sleeps upon the tented field her spirit will watch. In the agony of waiting she will die a thousand deaths but will choke back her sobs and hide her torture. She will search for him among the slain and try with kisses to warm the dead and unresponsive lips to life.

She will coffin her heart with the beloved body, and her soul will keep the eternal vigil of a deathless love.

Mother love! It has produced, fondled. reared, inspired and glorified all of the shadowy hosts who have passed across the "bank of time" since man first raised his eyes toward the heavens.

It is, I say again, the golden cord that binds the earth to God.—By Former U. S. Senator James A. Reed.