Fal'n, the flower of English youth, O what a delicate sacrifice! Unequal the stake and costly the price They rode to war as if to the hunt, Proud and spotless warriors they Ah, weeping mothers, now all is o'er, May 20, 1902. *From the one volume edition of the Works of Robert Bridges. Oxford University Press, by permission of the author. MATERNITY BY ANNE P. L. FIELD Within the crib that stands beside my bed A little form in sweet abandon lies I know how Mary's heart was comforted. O world of Mothers! blest are we who know "MOTHER" A REVIEW BY GEORGE MIDDLETON Occasionally there comes along a book which for sheer beauty demands merely a record of its recognition rather than an extended review that might contain presumptive criticism. Mrs. Norris in Mother has produced just such a little story: its charm of treatment dignifying the old theme about which it is written. It seems only a frail story in outline yet it reflects so much observation of the tiny facets of human nature that it will, no doubt, float happily by a long stream of readers. Boss Tweed said he did not care what was written about him only he could not stand the cartoons. Mother suggests, in its picture of what is thought to be old-fashioned motherhood, more by the persuasion of its own beauty, the necessity of such an ideal, than all the theoretical discussions of motherhood from the statistical and sociological standpoint. And yet, granting this, we cannot help feeling while it moves us to tears and so serves its purpose of spiritualizing our innate love of all mothers, that it remains only a picture—something we would wish to hang in the gallery of our dearest wishes, possible to realize only in certain tempera ments, not a conclusion or final statement of what should be or can be brought about in our economic scheme. Mothers are and are not made: motherhood is so often functional, accidental, and not a profession, as Mrs. Paget makes it. The restlessness of so many women, under modern conditions, cannot find its expression in family life, like the Pagets, and we are not sure the forceful utterances of men against "race suicide" and unbearing wives, or the more subtle delicate protests of such writers as Mrs. Norris, are not a bit unjust and uncomprehending. The boy of this large family is due to an idealized mother, but, unfortunately, successful motherhood, like wifehood from which it so often differs, is a distinct vocation, and if this story be the protest it seems at our own apparent lack of such mothers and families, the answer lies in the region of each feminine temperament backed and altered as it has had to be by our varying environments. But certainly Mother does reveal the deep chasm which exists between the real homespun mother, like Mrs. Paget with her seven children, and the satinlined mothers who waddle talkatively amid trained nurses, bridge-tables, and a stray Fauntleroyed boy. Margaret, Mrs. Paget's daughter, whose experiences form the thin line of the story, discovers there is a lot of social inconvenience in bringing children into the world, and we are glad such mothers as Mrs. Carr-Boldt limit the supply; only when she returns to her own mother, with a man's love awakening her own instinctive reach for children, does she get her true values and sees it is externals which have been most at fault in the other world. It is a delicate passage, indeed, where she sheds all the verbal fungus about love, marriage and children she has acquired as a rich woman's secretary, and stands naked before her own need. Here Mrs. Norris has touched highwater mark with an intimate understanding of all that is elusive and all that is bold when love speaks. Then Margaret reads a rhythm into what seemed commonplaceness, the sordidness and care of her mother's life, which has been so repellent to her, and she finds, too, how the joy of motherhood for its own sake is its own compensation, giving a selfish satisfaction to what many would call sacrifice. And Margaret had sometimes wished, or half formed the wish, that she and Bruce had been the only ones Good God! that was what women did, then, when they denied the right of life to the distant, unwanted, possible little person! Calmly, constantly, in all placid philosophy and self-justification, they kept from the world—not only the troublesome new baby, with his tears and illness, his merciless exactions, his endless claim on mind and body and spirit—but perhaps the glowing beauty of a Rebecca, the buoyant, indomitable spirit of a Leo, the sturdy charm of a small Robert, whose grip on life, whose energy and ambition were as strong as Margaret's own! Margaret stirred uneasily, frowned in the dark. It seemed perfectly incredible, it seemed perfectly impossible that if Mother had had only two and how many thousands of women didn't have that!-she, Margaret, a pro nounced and separate entity, traveled, ambitious, and to be the wife of one of the world's great men, might not have been lying here in the summer night, rich in love and youth and beauty and her dreams! THE BABY BY JANE TAYLOR Safe sleeping on its mother's breast The smiling babe appears, Now sweetly sinking into rest; Without a mother's tender care, And not a tittle does it know What kind of world 't is come into. The lambs sport gaily on the grass To nurse the Dolly, gaily drest, |