almost coördinate rank with God, and harmonizes perfectly with Bulwer Lytton's well known expression, "Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother." The "proxy" idea grows out of the fact that the mother's instincts, acting as they do independently of and prior to reason, and being superior to and disconnected from the understanding, are in close and vital touch with the infinite source of all wisdom, and hence a substitute for God within the limitations of their function.

While it is true that highly educated mothers have written most feelingly of motherhood it is also true that the best thinkers among men in all ages have acknowledged the supremacy of the maternal tie, often ascribing divine attributes to her surpassing tenderness. Michelet says, "It is the general rule, that all superior men inherit the elements of their superiority from their mothers." To this add the words of the immortal Lincoln, "All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother"; and the tribute of John Quincy Adams, "All that I am my mother made me." Such acknowledgments can be duplicated over and over again from the literature of all countries and all times. Thus Napoleon, “The future of the child is always the work of the mother"; and again, Napoleon, "Let France have good mothers and she will have good sons."

Longfellow drawing his inspiration from the contemplation of motherhood says, "Even He that died for us upon the cross, in the last hour, in the unutterable agony of death, was mindful of His mother, as

if to teach us that this holy love should be our last worldly thought, the last point of earth from which the soul should take its flight for heaven."

MY MOTHER

BY WILLIAM BELL SCOTT *

There was a gather'd stillness in the room:
Only the breathing of the great sea rose
From far off, aiding that profound repose,
With regular pulse and pause within the gloom
Of twilight, as if some impending doom

Was now approaching;- I sat moveless there, Watching with tears and thoughts that were like prayer,

Till the hour struck, the thread dropp'd from the

loom;

And the Bark pass'd in which freed souls are borne.
The dear still'd face lay there; that sound forlorn
Continued; I rose not, but long sat by:

And now my heart oft hears that sad sea-shore,
When she is in the far-off land, and I

Wait the dark sail returning yet once more.

* From "The Victorian Anthology." Houghton Mifflin Company.

MOTHER AND CHILD

BY WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS

The wind blew wide the casement, and within
It was the loveliest picture! — a sweet child
Lay in its mother's arms, and drew its life,

In pauses, from the fountain,- the white round
Part shaded by loose tresses, soft and dark,
Concealing, but still showing, the fair realm
Of so much rapture, as green shadowing trees
With beauty shroud the brooklet. The red lips
Were parted, and the cheek upon the breast

Lay close, and, like the young leaf of the flower,
Wore the same color, rich and warm and fresh:
And such alone are beautiful. Its eye,
A full blue gem, most exquisitely set,

Looked archly on its world,- the little imp,
As if it knew even then that such a wreath
Were not for all; and with its playful hands
It drew aside the robe that hid its realm,
And peeped and laughed aloud, and so it laid
Its head upon the shrine of such pure joys,
And, laughing, slept. And while it slept, the tears
Of the sweet mother fell upon its cheek,-
Tears such as fall from April skies, and bring
The sunlight after. They were tears of joy;
And the true heart of that young mother then
Grew lighter, and she sang unconsciously
The silliest ballad-song that ever yet
Subdued the nursery's voices, and brought sleep
To fold her sabbath wings above its couch.

PENSIONING MOTHERS

FROM The Literary Digest

In spite of a good deal of sincere opposition from charity workers and philanthropic organizations, the

socialistic device of State "pensions" for indigent mothers is making remarkable headway in the legislatures and is being received with very general favor by the press.

The Illinois" Mothers' Compensation law" was enacted in 1911. In November, 1912, a writer in The World's Work reported the following facts concerning its operation:

"The Cook County Juvenile Court, in the city of Chicago last summer, had some 327 mothers, with an aggregate of 1,200 children, cared for on this plan. (Funds for Parents or Mother's Pension Act.) It is costing the community an average of $5.75 per month per child, as against $10 per month per child under the old institutional plan.

It will cost the State of Illinois this year about $100,000. Eventually when enough mothers have learned about it, that figure, it is expected, will rise to $200,000. The State authorities have said that they do not care if it goes to $500,000. The contract with the mothers will be cheap at that. For it is counted on to diminish the bill for crime that is now costing Cook County alone $6,000,000 a year."

The same writer added:

"Working mothers and the consequent lack of care are what has sent many of the city children on the way toward failure in life. The child that does not have enough of his mother is likely to get that way. The institutional child, separated entirely from her, is more than likely to. Statistics from the Elmira

Reformatory in New York State show that 60 per cent. of the inmates were brought up in institutions. Of four young men hanged in Cook County, Illinois, early in 1912, all had been raised in charitable or reformatory institutions. The motherhood pension way is to form children by home raising so that they will not have to be reformed."

Colorado's Mothers' Compensation Law, which was put on the statute book at the recent election by a referendum vote of the people, does not differ materially from the Illinois law. It provides, writes George Creel in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, that "the State may award money to widowed and indigent mothers for the support of children in the home." Mr. Creel, who, with Judge Ben B. Lindsey, was one of the chief sponsors of the bill, points out that "it is not only good Christianity, but good business." He

says:

"For one-third of the money that it takes to keep a child in an institution, that child can be kept at home. And who will say that a 'home' child is not better off than an institution' child?"

The last clause of the Colorado law provides that it "shall be liberally construed for the protection of the child, the home, and the State, and the interests of public morals, and for the prevention of poverty and crime."

The Newark Monitor is inclined to think that the idea of State pensions for mothers "rests on sound social and business principles." A measure sanctioned by both sentiment and economy, it says, is at