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plays her part in novel after novel, and is one of the most odious women in fiction.

Dickens's description of Mrs. Jellyby is a satire on literary women who neglect children and home. Mrs. Jellyby was the mother of a large family, but as devoid of the maternal spirit as though it had no existence in life. Of course the character is rather overdrawn, but exaggeration does not deface reality. There are Mrs. Jellybys to-day, as there were when Bleak House House was written. The foolish mother constantly indulging and flattering her boy, blind to all his faults, is drawn for us in Mrs. Steerforth.

Bayard Taylor gives us a most touching and pathetic picture of true mother love in John Godfrey's Fortunes. We see the widow taking in sewing that she may educate her boy, and concealing from him the cancer that tortures her whole frame. To make provision for John's future was the one object of her life. For his sake she lived bravely and cheerfully, till the concealed malady laid her on the bed from which she never rose. Surely something more substantial than imagination accounted for Mrs. Godfrey! "At one time, I think, she would have willingly stopped the march of my years, and been content to keep me at her side, a boy forever. I was incapable of detecting this feeling at the time, and perhaps I wrong her memory in alluding to it now. God knows I have often wished it could have been so! Whatever of natural selfishness there may have been in the thought, she weighed it down, out of sight, by all those years of self-denial, and the final sacrifice,

for my sake. No truer, tenderer, more simple-hearted mother ever lived than Barbara Godfrey."

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In the Scarlet Letter, when they thought of taking the child away, Hawthorne gives us a masterly characterization of a mother's strong love turned almost to madness. We feel the throbbing of the mother's heart as she exclaims, "God gave her into my keeping. I will not give her up. I will not lose the child." There is a deep and beautiful tenderness in the tribute which St. Clare pays to his mother in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mrs. Stowe says this expresses the influence their mother had left with them all. St. Clare's mother was the personification of all that is beautiful and good.

On the death of Mr. Barrie's mother and eldest sister, within three days of each other, it became known that they were the originals of Jess and Leeby in A Window in Thrums. "Leeby had taken Jess's hand a worn old hand that had many a time gone out in love and kindness when younger hands were cold. Poets have sung and fighting men have done great deeds for hands that never had such a record." Robertson Nicoll tells us that Mrs. Barrie's happy, peaceful life knew one tragedy, and that Barrie drew his inspiration from this tragedy in his mother's life when he wrote the intensely pathetic chapter, "Dead This Twenty Years." Jess will always claim and hold the love of every one who cherishes the memory of a good mother.

In East Lynne, Mrs. Henry Wood shows us a mother's bleeding heart as no one else has done with

equal pathos and completeness. The immense effect which Lady Isabel had upon my mind when I first read the book has continued through life. When she has the opportunity of going to the Carlyle's in the capacity of governess to her own children, the picture becomes almost intolerably pathetic. "She battled with herself that day; now resolving to go, and risk it; now shrinking from the attempt. At one moment it seemed to her that Providence must have placed this opportunity in her way that she might see her children in her desperate longing. . . . Evening came and she had not decided. She passed another night of pain, of restlessness, of longing for her children; this intense longing appeared to be overmastering all her powers of mind and body. The temptation at length proved too strong; the project, having been placed before her covetous eyes, could not be relinquished, and she finally resolved to go. What is it that should keep me away?' she argued. ery? Well, if that comes it miliation than ever would be my portion, when they drive me from East Lynne with abhorrence and ignominy, as a soldier is drummed out of his regiment; but I could bear that, as I must bear the rest, and I can shrink under some hedge and lay myself down to die. Humiliation for me! No; I will not put that in comparison with seeing and living with my children.' There is something characteristically maternal in Mrs. Hare's deep and tender love for poor Richard. "Fretting after that vagabond," the stern old Justice called it.

The dread of discovmust. . . . Deeper hu

Though we might prolong our list almost indefinitely we may safely say that, as the office of mother is the most sacred upon earth, the literature of motherhood is the one certain field in which the best is yet to be said.

THE MOTHER'S HYMN

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT *
"Blessed art thou among women"

Lord who ordainest for mankind

Benignant toils and tender cares,
We thank thee for the ties that bind
The mother to the child she bears.

We thank Thee for the hopes that rise
Within her heart, as, day by day,
The dawning soul, from those young eyes,
Looks with a clearer, steadier ray.

And grateful for the blessing given

With that dear infant on her knee,
She trains the eye to look to heaven,
The voice to lisp a prayer to Thee.

Such thanks the blessed Mary gave
When from her lap the Holy Child,

Sent from on high to seek and save

The lost of earth, looked up and smiled.

All-Gracious! grant to those who bear

A mother's charge, the strength and light To guide the feet that own their care

In ways of Love and Truth and Right.

*From the " Bryant Anthology." Ford, Howard, Hulbert.

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