Chapter II: Part 2

The mother, with sweet pious face,
Turns toward her little children from her seat,
Gives one a kiss, another an embrace,
Takes this upon her knees, that upon her feet:
And, while from actions, looks, complaints, pretences,
She learns their feelings and their various will,
To this a look, to that a word dispenses,
And, whether stern or smiling, loves them still.
_Filicaia_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SECOND

A living book is mine--
In age three years: in it I read no lies,
In it to myriad truths I find the clue--
A tender little child; but I divine
Thoughts high as Dante's in her clear blue eyes.
_Maurice Francis Egan_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-THIRD

That pure shrine
Of childhood, though my love be true
Is hidden from my dim confine.
_Author unknown_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

Their glance might cast out pain and sin,
Their speech make dumb the wise;
By mute glad Godhead felt within
A baby's eyes.
_Swinburne_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH

Lulla-lo! to the rise and fall of mother's bosom
't is sleep has bound you,
And oh, my child, what cosier nest for rosier rest
could love have found you?
Sleep, baby dear,
Sleep without fear:
Mother's two arms are clasped around you.
_Alfred Percival Gates_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH

And if no clustering swarm of bees
On thy sweet mouth distilled their golden dew,
'T was that such vulgar miracles
Heaven had not leisure to renew:
For all the blest fraternity of love
Solemnized there thy birth, and kept thy holiday above.
_John Dryden_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH

Sublimity always is simple
Both in sermon and song, a child can seize on the meaning.
_Longfellow_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

Take thy joy and revel in it,
Living through each golden minute,
Trusting God who gave you this
Baby child to love and kiss.
_From "The Finest Baby in the World"_

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-NINTH

Still smile at even on the bedded child,
And close his eyelids with thy silver wand.
_Hood_

SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH

Of such is the kingdom of heaven,
No glory that ever was shed
From the crowning star of the seven
That crown the North world's head,
No word that ever was spoken
Of human or godlike tongue
Gave ever such godlike token
Since human harps were strung.
_Swinburne_

*OCTOBER*

OCTOBER FIRST

Little lamb, asleep and still,
God protect thee from all ill;
Those who love thee ne'er can be
Free from pain in loving thee.
_From "The Finest Baby in the World"_

OCTOBER SECOND

Then, when Mamma goes by to bed,
She shall come in with tiptoe tread,
And see me lying warm and fast
And in the land of Nod at last.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

OCTOBER THIRD

How, with a mother's ever anxious love,
Still to retain him near her heart she strove.
_Firdausi_

OCTOBER FOURTH

Windows of mansions in the skies
Must glow with infant faces,
Or somewhere else in Paradise,
The lovely laughter of their eyes
Lights up all heavenly places.
_Lucy Larcom_

OCTOBER FIFTH

That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set
To the little sick child in the basement.
_Henry Cuyler Bunner_

OCTOBER SIXTH

When at morn I first awake,
My mother's face I see,
Smiling and all alight with love
And bending over me.
_Mary Stanhope_

OCTOBER SEVENTH

We need love's tender lessons taught
As only weakness can;
God hath his small interpreters:
The child must teach the man.
_Whittier_

OCTOBER EIGHTH

Then, while thy babes around thee cling,
Shalt show us how divine a thing
A woman may be made.
_Wordsworth_

OCTOBER NINTH

Child of the wavy locks, and brow of light--
Then be thy conscience pure as thy face is bright
_Mrs. Browning_

OCTOBER TENTH

The thankful captive of maternal bonds.
_Wordsworth_

OCTOBER ELEVENTH

The mother should consider herself as the child's
sun, a changeless and ever radiant world, whither
the small restless creature, quick at tears and
laughter, light, fickle, passionate, full of storms, may
come for fresh stores of light, warmth and electricity,
of calm and courage.
_Amiel_

OCTOBER TWELFTH

When grace is given us ever to behold
A child some sweet months old,
Love, laying across our lips his finger, saith,
Smiling with bated breath,
"Hush, for the holiest thing that lives is here,
And Heaven's own heart how near!"
_Swinburne_

OCTOBER THIRTEENTH

Sweet as the early song of birds,
I heard those first delightful words,
"Thou hast a child."
_Hood_

OCTOBER FOURTEENTH

And a pretty boy was their best hope, next to the
God in heaven.
_Wordsworth_

OCTOBER FIFTEENTH

The child soul is an ever bubbling fountain in the
world of humanity.
_Froebel_

OCTOBER SIXTEENTH

Beware that he weepest, for the great throne of
God keeps trembling when the orphan weeps.
_Sa'di_

OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH

One thing yet there is, that none
Hearing, ere its chime be done,
Knows not well the sweetest one
Heard of man beneath the sun,
Hoped in heaven hereafter;
Soft and strong and loud and light,
Very sound of very light,
Heard from morning's rosiest height
When the soul of all delight
Fills a child's clear laughter.
_Swinburne_

OCTOBER EIGHTEENTH

Ere thought lift up thy flower-soft lids to see
What life and love on earth
Bring thee for gifts at birth,
But none so good as thine, who hast given us thee.
_Swinburne_

OCTOBER NINETEENTH

Childhood had its litanies
In every age and clime;
The earliest cradles of the race
Were rocked to Poet's rhyme.
_Whittier_

OCTOBER TWENTIETH

Sweet little maid, with winsome eyes
That laugh all day through the tangled hair;
Gazing with baby looks so wise
Over the arms of the oaken chair.
_Harry Thurston Peck_

OCTOBER TWENTY-FIRST

Everything in immortal nature is a miracle to the
little child.
_Anatole France_

OCTOBER TWENTY-SECOND

Even so this happy creature of herself
Is all-sufficient, solitude to her
Is blithe society, who fills the air
With gladness and involuntary songs.
_Wordsworth_

OCTOBER TWENTY-THIRD

The plays of childhood are the heart-leaves of
the whole future life.
_Froebel_

OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH

When e'er you are happy and cannot tell why,
The Friend of the children is sure to be by.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

OCTOBER TWENTY-FIFTH

So brief and unsure, but sweeter
Than ever a noon-dawn smiled,
Moves, measured of no tune's meter,
The song in the soul of a child.
_Swinburne_

OCTOBER TWENTY-SIXTH

Childhood and its terrors rather than its raptures,
take wings and radiance in dreams and sport like
fireflies in the little night of the soul. Do not crush
these flickering sparks!
_Richter_

OCTOBER TWENTY-SEVENTH

A child should always say what's true
And speak when he is spoken to,
And behave mannerly at table:
At least as far as he is able.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

OCTOBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

Bishop Thorold says that whenever a parent
begins to feel virtuous in sacrificing his sleep for his
child, he ceases to love his child. All I can say is
that the Bishop must have kept a night-nurse.
_From "The Finest Baby in the World"_

OCTOBER TWENTY-NINTH

He it was who bathed the little ones, who "buttoned
up the backs" and tied careful "ribbin bows"
here and there for the whole six; he who drilled them
in "mannerly behavior" in court.

Indeed he had always performed most of these
personal services, which were, so he generously
distinguished them, "acts of love and not labor."
_Ruth McEnery Stuart_

OCTOBER THIRTIETH

O Wonderland of wayward Childhood! what
An easy, breezy realm of summer calm
And dreamy gleam and gloom and bloom and balm
Thou art!--The Lotus-land the poet sung,
It is the Child-World while the heart beats young.
_James Whitcomb Riley_

_From "A Child World." Copyright, 1897. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company._

OCTOBER THIRTY-FIRST

People who write about children should always
tell the truth. For to translate even a child's
simplest day into words is to narrate one of the Seven
Wonders of the world.
_From "The Finest Baby in the World"_

*NOVEMBER*

NOVEMBER FIRST

Self-government with tenderness, here
you have the condition of all authority over
children.
_Amiel_

NOVEMBER SECOND

Heigh ho! Daisies and buttercups!
Mother shall weave them a daisy chain;
Sing them a song of the pretty hedge sparrow,
That loved her brown little ones, loved them full fain:
Sing, "Heart, thou art wide though the house be but narrow";
Sing once and sing it again.
_Jean Ingelow_

NOVEMBER THIRD

Fair little children, morning-bright,
With faces grave, yet soft to sight,
Expressive of restrained delight.
_Mrs. Browning_

NOVEMBER FOURTH

Our youth! Our childhood! That spring of springs!
'T is surely one of the blessedest things
That nature ever intended.
_Hood_

NOVEMBER FIFTH

Ah how good a school is the school of home!
_Anatole France_

NOVEMBER SIXTH

Loving she is and tractable, though wild;
And innocence hath privilege in her
To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes.
_Wordsworth_

NOVEMBER SEVENTH

Sweet baby, sleep; what ails my dear?
What ails my darling thus to cry?
Be still my child and lend thine ear
To hear me sing thy lullaby.
My pretty lamb, forbear to weep;
Be still my dear: sweet baby, sleep.
_George Wither_

NOVEMBER EIGHTH

Through the soft, opened lips the air
Scarcely moves the coverlet.
One little wandering arm is thrown
At random on the counterpane;
And often the fingers close in haste,
As if their baby owner chased
The butterflies again.
_Matthew Arnold_

NOVEMBER NINTH

I saw her in childhood,
A bright gentle thing,
Like the dawn of the morn
Or the dews of the spring:
The daisies and harebells
Her playmates all day;
Herself as light-hearted
And artless as they.
_B. F. Lyte_

NOVEMBER TENTH

Thy small steps faltering round our hearth,
Thine een out-peering in their mirth,
Blue een that, like thine heart, seemed given
To be, forever, full of heaven.
_Mrs. Browning_

NOVEMBER ELEVENTH

Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast.
_Wordsworth_

NOVEMBER TWELFTH

I'd rock my own sweet childie to rest in a cradle
of gold on a bough of the willow,
To the cho-heen-ho of the wind of the west and
the lulla-lo of the soft sea billow.
Sleep, baby dear,
Sleep without fear:
Mother is here beside your pillow.
_Alfred Percival Gates_

NOVEMBER THIRTEENTH

You too, my Mother, read my rhymes,
For love of unforgotten times;
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

NOVEMBER FOURTEENTH

And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach,
From lisping voices learns.
_Whittier_

NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH

The wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Out-valued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round.
_Emerson_

NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH

He saw his Mother's face, accepting it
In change for heaven itself, with such a smile
As might have well been learnt there.
_Mrs. Browning_

NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.
_Wordsworth_

NOVEMBER EIGHTEENTH

When children are happy and lonely and good,
The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

NOVEMBER NINETEENTH

And then, he sometimes interwove
Fond thoughts about a father's love,
"For there," said he, "are spun
Around the heart such tender ties,
That our own children to our eyes
Are dearer than the sun."
_Wordsworth_

NOVEMBER TWENTIETH

May we presume to say that at thy birth,
New joy was sprung in Heaven, as well as here on earth.
_Dryden_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIRST

Dear five-years-old befriends my passion,
And I may write till she can spell.
_Matthew Prior_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SECOND

'T is thus, though wooed by flattering friends,
And fed with fame (if fame it be),
This heart, my own dear mother, bends
With love's true instinct, back to thee.
_Swinburne_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-THIRD

To prayer, my child! And oh, be thy first prayer
For her, who many nights with anxious care,
Rocked thy first cradle: who took thy infant soul
From heaven and gave it to the world: then rife
With love, still drank the gall of life
And left for thy young lips the honeyed bowl.
_Victor Hugo_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air, with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The Gardener of the World, he goes.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH

Children, aye, forsooth,
They bring their own love with them when they come.
_Jean Ingelow_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH

We came upon
A wildfowl sitting on her nest, so still
I reached my hand and touched her: she did not stir;
The snow had frozen round her, and she sat,
Stone-dead, upon a heap of ice-cold eggs,
Look, how this love, this mother, runs through all
The world God made--even the beast, the bird!
_Tennyson_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH

In your hearts are the birds and sunshine,
In your thoughts, the brooklet's flow.
_Longfellow_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

No flower bells that expand and shrink
Gleam half so heavenly sweet,
As shine, on life's untrodden brink,
A baby's feet.
_Swinburne_

NOVEMBER TWENTY-NINTH

St. Augustine said finely: "A marriage without
children is the world without the sun."
_Luther_

NOVEMBER THIRTIETH

The child, the seed, the grain of corn,
The acorn on the hill,
Each for some separate end is born
In season fit, and still
Each must in strength arise to work the Almighty will.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

*DECEMBER*

DECEMBER FIRST

As children play, without to-morrow,
Without Yesterday.
_Agnes Robinson_

DECEMBER SECOND

Shall those smiles be called
Feelers of love, put forth as if to explore
This untried world?
_Wordsworth_

DECEMBER THIRD

When children are playing alone on the green,
In comes the playmate that never was seen.
_Robert Louis Stevenson_

DECEMBER FOURTH

Respect childhood and do not hastily judge of it,
either for good or evil.
_Rosseau_

DECEMBER FIFTH

What does little baby say,
In her bed at peep of day?
Baby says, like little birdie,
Let me rise and fly away.

Baby sleep a little longer,
Till the little limbs are stronger,
If she sleeps a little longer
Baby too, shall fly away.
_Tennyson_

DECEMBER SIXTH

"Mother," asked a child, "since nothing is ever
lost, where do all our thoughts go?"

"To God," answered the mother, "who remembers
them forever."

"Forever!" said the child. He bent his head and,
drawing closer to his mother, murmured, "I am
frightened!"

Which of us has not felt the same?
_Selected_

DECEMBER SEVENTH

Happy little children, seek your shady places,
Lark songs in their bosoms, sunshine in their faces.
_Lucy Larcom_

DECEMBER EIGHTH

The mother, with anticipated glee,
Smiles o'er the child, that, standing by her chair,
And flattening its round cheek upon her knee,
Looks up and doth its rosy lips prepare
To mock the coming sounds: at the sweet sight
She hears her own voice with new delight.
_S. T. Coleridge_

DECEMBER NINTH

A babe, in lineament and limb
Perfect, and prophet of the perfect man.
_Tennyson_

DECEMBER TENTH

In the children lies the seed-corn of the future.
_Froebel_

DECEMBER ELEVENTH

When the bedtime shadows fall,
I'm always sure of this,
Just as I'm drifting off to dreams,
I feel my Mother's kiss.
_Mary Stanhope_

DECEMBER TWELFTH

_Grandma's Prayer_

I pray that, risen from the dead,
I may in glory stand--
A crown, perhaps, upon my head
But a needle in my hand.
I've never learned to sing or play,
So let no harp be mine;
From birth unto my dying day,
Plain sewing's been my line.
Therefore, accustomed to the end
To plying useful stitches,
I'll be content if asked to mend
The little Angels' breeches.
_Eugene Field_

DECEMBER THIRTEENTH

The studying child has all the needs of a creating
artist. He must breathe pure air; his body must be
at ease; he must have things to look at and be able
to change his thoughts at will by enjoying form and
color.
_George Sand_

DECEMBER FOURTEENTH

At one dear knee we proffered vows,
One lesson from one book we learned,
Ere childhood's flaxen ringlets turned
To black and brown on kindred brows.
_Tennyson_

DECEMBER FIFTEENTH

Art thou not a sunbeam,
Child, whose life is glad,
With an inner radiance
Sunshine never had?
_Lucy Larcom_

DECEMBER SIXTEENTH

No rosebuds yet, by dawn impearled
Match, even in loveliest lands,
The sweetest flowers in all the world;
A baby's hands.
_Swinburne_

DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH

Sweet was the whole year with the stir
Of young feet on the stair.
_Lizette Woodworth Reese_

DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH

The religion of a child depends on what its father
and mother are, and not on what they say.
_Amiel_

DECEMBER NINETEENTH

So was unfolded here, the
Christian lore of salvation,
Line by line, from the soul of childhood.
_Longfellow_

DECEMBER TWENTIETH

It is good to be children sometimes, and never
better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder
was himself a child.
_Charles Dickens_

DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST

We greet the joy that Christmas brings;
But, where the heart of childhood sings,
There all the months are full of cheer
And Christmas-tide lasts all the year.
_Francis McKinnon Morton_

DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well
not believe in Fairies! You might get your Papa
to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on
Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did
not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that
prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus but that is no sign
that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things
in the world are those that neither children nor men
can see. Nobody can conceive nor imagine all the
wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.
_From New York "Sun" of Sept. 21, 1897_

DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD

You once told me that in the school of God the
wisest man never gets beyond the Infant Class; I
thought it a strange idea at first but now I know it is
true. For, in the matter of the Eternities, a man's
only hope of learning is to remain in the Infant Class.
Children invariably have the ear of God first. They
have been in His company last.
_From "The Finest Baby in the World"_

DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH

To you this night is born a child
Of Mary, chosen mother mild,
This little child of lowly birth
Shall be the joy of all your earth.
_Luther_

DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH

For unto you is born this day, a Saviour, which is
Christ the Lord. And suddenly there was with the
angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising
God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace, good-will toward men."
_Luke ii. 11, 13, 14_

DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH

A child is the greatest living revealer of the Eternal
in this world. You are nearer God when you have
your child in your arms than at any other time.
_From "The Finest Baby in the World"_

DECEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH

I never realized God's birth before,
How he grew likest God in being born,
This time I felt like Mary, had my babe
Lying a little on my breast like hers.
_Robert Browning_

DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH

What do I dream of, far from the low roof
Where now ye are children? I dream of you,
Of your young heads that are the hope and crown
Of my full summer, ripening to its fall,
Branches whose shadow grows along my wall,
Sweet souls scarce open to the breath of day,
Still dazzled with the brightness of your dawn.
_Victor Hugo_

DECEMBER TWENTY-NINTH

Verily I say unto you, "Whosoever shall not
receive the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child
shall in no wise enter therein."
_Luke xviii. 17_

DECEMBER THIRTIETH

Heroic Mother!
What can breath add to that sacred name?
_Author unknown_

DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST

The mother has eternal youth.
_Edith M. Thomas_