The Mother’s Hour.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2752, 5 March 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Mother’s Hour.

The mischief of a mother getting tired is that it affects the children. There was once an eccentric but wise schoolmaster who, whenever, his pup'ils misbehaved, punished himseif. He was. th e one to blame, he said. That holds true in all dealings with human nature. We must be at our serenest and cheerfulest if we are to transact that sort of business well. The nervous mother makes the children nervous. That is why they always make the most noise when she has a headache. They do not understand wliv they are so uncommonly bad, .and she thinks that they are possessed with devils. But the rea-. son is that, she has poisoned the domestic atmosphere, and they breathe it. Under these)'hard conditions the poor mothers take to rum, and the richer mother employs a night nurse as well as a day nurse. Bub mothers whose circumstances are middle-sized, who ar e neither rich nor poor, are at a loss. Now, a lot of poetry is. written about the “Children’s Hour,” but the number of the children’s hour in many families is twenty-four. It lasts all day and all night. What is needed in the midst of This importunate demand is a “Mother’s Hour:” sixty secluded minutes ; doors shut and locked; children outside in care of somebody else or of each other; mother inaccessible except in case of fire or broken limbs. Then the weary mother oollects her scattered wits, mends her frayed nerves, reads a hook, takes a nap, or sits still and' does nothing—like the winter life of the Maine farmer, who said“ Sometimes we sot and think, and sometimes we just set!” At the end of the hour there enters a new mother, and. new patience, new understanding and! a new smile. Yes, the hour 'is hard; to manage: how can the family get on 1? But it is worth while.