Litchfield Enquirer

A MOTHER'S TEARS.
There is a sweetness in a mother's tears;
when they fall on the face of a dying babe,
which no eye can behold with a heart untouched. It is holy ground, upon which
the unhallowed foot of profanity dares not
encroach. Infidelity itself is silent and
forbears her mocking, and here woman
shows not her weakness but her strength;
it is that strength of attachment which man
never did or even can feel. It is perennial,
dependant on no climate, no changes,
nor soil, but alike in storms as in sunshine,
it knows no shadow of turning. A father
when he sees his child going down the
dark valley, may weep when the shadow of
death has fully come over him, and as the
last departing knell falls on his ears may
say, 'I will go down to the grave for my
son in mourning.' but he turns away in the
hurry of business, the tear is wiped, and
though when he returns to his fireside, the
sportive laugh comes up to his remembrance, the succeeding day blunts the poignancy of grief, and it finds no permanent
seat. Not so with her who has borne and
nourished the tender blossom. It lives in
the heart where it was first entwined in the
dreaming hours of night. She sees its playful mirth, or hears its plaintive cries; she
'seeks it in the morning,' and "she goes to
the grave to weep there.' Its little toys
are carefully laid aside as sacred mementos, to keep continually alive that thrilling
anguish, which the dying struggle and
sad look produced, and though grief, like
a canker worm, may be gnawing at her vitals, yet she finds a luxury in her tears a
sweetness in her sorrow, which none but a
mother ever tasted.