White lids with silken fringes
Shut out the waning light;
A little hand close folded,
Holds mamma's fingers tight;
And in their soft white wrappings
At last in perfect rest,

Two dainty feet are cuddled,
Like birdies in a nest.

All hopes and loves unworthy
Fade out at this sweet hour;
All pure and noble longings
Renew their holy power;
For Christ, who in the Virgin
Our motherhood has blest,
Is near to every woman

With a baby on her breast.

EUGENE FIELD ON MOTHERHOOD

BY IDA COMSTOCK BELOW

While his love and thoughtfulness for children was one of his greatest charms, both in his life and writings, he did more to elevate motherhood than any other writer of the present day.

The women he admired most were not the devotees of fashion, nor even those of the higher literary attainments, unless they also best loved their own firesides and to rock the cradle. The mother-love is nowhere more beautifully portrayed than in the story

of "Félice and Petit Poulain," where an old family horse is seized by the German soldiers while marching upon France, and driven many miles away; after a fierce battle, riderless and blood-stained she gallops over the country back to the little colt she left behind, only to find him dead amid the ruins of the farmyard. I quote from that story this little tribute to our animal friends:

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There are those who say that none but humankind is immortal · that none but man has a soul.

I do not make or believe that claim. There is that within me which tells me that nothing in this world and life of ours which has felt the grace of maternity shall utterly perish, and this I say in all reverence, and with the hope that I offend neither God nor man."

MOTHER'S LOVE

BY THOMAS BURBIDGE

He sang so wildly, did the Boy,
That you could never tell

If 'twas a madman's voice you heard,
Or if the spirit of a bird

Within his heart did dwell:

A bird that dallies with his voice

Among the matted branches;

Or on the free blue air his note

To pierce, and fall, and rise, and float,
With bolder utterance launches.

None ever was so sweet as he,

The boy that wildly sang to me;

Though toilsome was the way and long, He led me not to lose the song.

But when again we stood below
The unhidden sky, his feet

Grew slacker, and his note more slow,
But more than doubly sweet.

He led me then a little way
Athwart the barren moor,

And then he stayed and bade me stay
Beside a cottage door;

I could have stayed of mine own will,
In truth, my eye and heart to fill
With the sweet sight which I saw there,
At the dwelling of the cottager.

A little in the doorway sitting,
The mother plied her busy knitting,
And her cheek so softly smiled,
You might be sure, although her gaze
Was on the meshes of the lace,
Yet her thoughts were with her child.
But when the boy had heard her voice,
As o'er her work she did rejoice,
His became silent altogether,
And slily creeping by the wall
He seiz❜d a single plume, let fall
By some wild bird of longest feather;
And all a-tremble with his freak,

He touch'd her lightly on the cheek.