Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover art]




[Illustration: (woman and baby)]




                       [Illustration: Title page]

                               A MOTHER’S
                               YEAR-BOOK


                               EDITED BY
                        FRANCIS McKINNON MORTON
                                  AND
                         MARY McKINNON McSWAIN



                                NEW YORK
                        THOMAS Y CROWELL COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                           _Copyright, 1911,_
                     BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY.




                               *PREFACE*


This little volume has been compiled for mothers and is lovingly offered
as a tribute to the memory of the almost perfect mother whose love
cradled my own childhood so sweetly as to make all motherhood forever
more dear to me.

It seems to be true that the years of a woman’s life that sink deepest
into her heart and are fraught with her keenest joy and pain are the
years when her little children are clinging about her skirts. Then it is
that she is truly "wealthy with small cares, and small hands clinging to
her knees."  But then, too, she is often too busy with the passing of
the full days and the long nights, so often punctuated by the restless
clinging of rosy fingers and all the dear demands of babyhood, to
realize fully how blest are the days through which she is living.

It is especially for the busy mother that I have gathered this little
collection of beautiful thoughts about childhood and motherhood, from
some of the world’s best thinkers.

I hope it may bring to some of them as much pleasure in the reading as
it has to me in the preparation.

The selections from the writings of Lucy Larcom, Holmes, Whittier,
Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Celia Thaxter, and Edith Thomas are used by
the courteous permission of the authorized publishers of these writers,
the Houghton Mifflin Company.

The selections from the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson are from "A
Child’s Garden of Verses."

The selection from Sidney Lanier is taken from "The Poems of Sidney
Lanier."  Both are published by Charles Scribner’s Sons and the
selections are used by permission of that firm.  The little poem from
Eugene Field is also used by special arrangement with Charles Scribner’s
Sons, the authorized publishers of the works of Eugene Field.

The selections from the book called "The Finest Baby in the World" are
used by the courtesy of its publishers, the Fleming H. Revell Company.

The selection from Ruth McEnery Stuart is taken from "Napoleon Jackson,"
published by the Century Company, and is used with their permission.

The selection from the writings of Lewis Carroll is taken from the
"Adventures of Alice in Wonderland" and is used by permission of the
publishers, the Macmillan Company.

Acknowledgment is also made to the Bobbs-Merrill Company for the use of
the selections from the writings of James Whitcomb Riley, and to D.
Appleton & Co. for the selections from Bryant.

Acknowledgment is due the courtesy of the New York _Sun_ and the Denver
_News_ for the use of the selections credited to them.

An effort has been made to find the name and the author of each
selection used so that proper credit could be given with each.  This has
not been always possible and I have chosen not to leave out a beautiful
selection on that account.

George MacDonald says, "He who drops a beautiful thought into the heart
of a friend gives as the angels do"; and Emerson says that "Next to the
originator of a beautiful thought is the one who first quotes it."  So I
do not think that any one who has said anything beautiful about
childhood would wish to be left out of a Mother’s Year Book even if the
credit for his work was not given quite correctly.

FRANCIS MCKINNON MORTON.




                               *JANUARY*


JANUARY FIRST

    Where did you come from, Baby Dear?
    Out of the Everywhere into the here.
    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
    But how did you come to us, you Dear?
    God thought of you and so I am here.
      _George MacDonald_



JANUARY SECOND

    What is the dream in the Baby’s eyes
    As he lies and blinks in a mute surprise?
    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
    Bathed in the dawnlight, what does he see
    That slow years have hidden from you and from me?
      _Tom Cordry_



JANUARY THIRD

    Little Life from out the life Divine,
    Little heart so near and dear to mine,
    Little bark, new-launched upon Life’s sea
    Floating o’er the tide to mine and me,
    Little comer on our shore of time,
    Little ray from out God’s great sublime,
    Little traveller from Eternity
    May my love protect and shelter thee.
      _The Denver News_



JANUARY FOURTH

    What shall we wrap the Baby in?
    Nothing that fingers have woven will do:
    Looms of the heart weave ever anew:
    Love, only Love is the right thread to spin
    Love we must wrap the Baby in.
      _Lucy Larcom_



JANUARY FIFTH

    Look at me with thy large brown eyes,
      Philip, my King!
    For round thee the purple shadow lies
    Of babyhood’s regal dignities.
    Lay on my neck thy tiny hand,
    With Love’s invisible scepter laden;
    I am thine Esther to command,
    Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,
      Philip, my King!
        _Dinah Mulock Craik_



JANUARY SIXTH

    Nay, but our children in our midst,
    What else but our hearts are they,
      Walking on the ground?
    If but the breeze blew harsh on one of them,
    Mine eye says "No" to slumber all night long.
          _From the "Hamasah"_
        _Hittan idnibn al-Mu’alla of Tayyi_



JANUARY SEVENTH

    We must take all our children bring us whether it
    be Joy or Pain.
      _Auerbach_



JANUARY EIGHTH

    Oh child, what news from Heaven?
      _Swinburne_



JANUARY NINTH

    Sweet floweret, pledge o’ meikle love,
    And ward o’ mony a prayer,
    What heart o’ stane wad thou na move,
    Sae helpless, sweet and fair?
      _Robert Burns_



JANUARY TENTH

    His child’s unsullied purity demands
    The deepest reverence at a parent’s hands.
      _Juvenal_



JANUARY ELEVENTH

    Little Gossip, blithe and hale,
    Tattling many a broken tale,
    Singing many a tuneless song,
    Lavish of a heedless tongue,
    Simple maid, void of art,
    Babbling out thy very heart.
      _Ambrose Phillips_



JANUARY TWELFTH

    O child!  O new-born denizen
    Of Life’s great city!  On thy head
    The glory, of the morn is shed
    Like a celestial benison.
      _Longfellow_



JANUARY THIRTEENTH

    Ah! This taking to one’s arms a little group of
    souls, fresh from the hand of God, and living with
    them in loving companionship through all their
    stainless years is, or ought to be, like living in Heaven,
    for of such is the Heavenly Kingdom.
      _J. G. Holland_



JANUARY FOURTEENTH

    The sun of dawn,
    That brightens through the mother’s tender eyes.
      _Tennyson_



JANUARY FIFTEENTH

    We are so dull and thankless; and too slow
    To catch the sunshine till it slips away,
    And now it seems surpassing strange to me
    That while I wore the badge of Motherhood,
    I did not kiss more oft and tenderly
    The little child that brought me only good.
      _Mary Louise Riley Smith_



JANUARY SIXTEENTH

    Children are God’s apostles, day by day
    Sent forth to preach of Love and Hope and Peace.
      _Lowell_



JANUARY SEVENTEENTH

    She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the
    child is born.
      _Kipling_



JANUARY EIGHTEENTH

    A Baby’s feet, like sea-shells pink,
    Might tempt, should Heaven see meet,
    An angel’s lips to kiss, we think,
      A Baby’s feet.
    Like rose-hued sea flowers, toward the heart
    They stretch and spread and wink
    Their ten soft buds that part and meet.
        _Swinburne_



JANUARY NINETEENTH

    Greek babies were like the babies of modern
    Europe: equally troublesome, equally delightful to
    their parents, equally uninteresting to the rest of
    society.
      _Mahaffy_



JANUARY TWENTIETH

    They knew as I do now, what keen delight
    A strong man feels to watch the tender flight
    Of little children playing in his sight.
      _Edmund Gosse_



JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST

    The child would twine
    A trustful hand, unasked in thine
    And find his comfort in thy face.
      _Tennyson_



JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND

    This little seed of life and love,
      Just lent us for a day.
        _Parsons_



JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD

    Pray for the infant’s soul:
    With its spirit crown unsoiled.
      _Philip James Bailey_



JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH

    Child of brighter than the morning’s birth,
    And lovelier than all smiles that may be smiled
    Save only of little children undefiled,
    Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth,
    Like rose of love, mute melody of mirth,
    Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild,
    Adorable as is nothing save a child,
    Hails with wide eyes and lips on earth,
    His lovely life with all its heaven to be.
      _Swinburne_



JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH

    Where has he gone to, Mother’s boy,
    Little plaid dresses and curls of joy?
    Who is this Gentleman, haughty in glance
    Walking around in a new pair of pants?
      _Folger McKinsey_



JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH

    It is very nice to think
    The world is full of meat and drink,
    With little children saying grace
    In every Christian kind of place.
      _Robert Louis Stevenson_



JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH

    Did truth on earth ever hide,
    Hath innocence anywhere smiled,
    Did purity anywhere bide,
    They are found in the eyes of a child.
      _Harry Alexander Moore_



JANUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH

    Now he thinks he ’ll go to sleep:
    I can see the shadows creep
    Over his eyes in soft eclipse,
    Over his brow and over his lips,
    Out to his little finger tips:
    Softly sinking down he goes!
    Down he goes!  Down he goes!
    See!  He is hushed in sweet repose!
      _J. G. Holland_



JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH

    To what shall I liken her smiling
    Upon me, her kneeling lover?
    How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,
    And dimpled her wholly over,
    Till her outstretched hands smiled also
    And I almost seem to see
    The very heart of her mother
    Sending sun, through her veins, to me.
      _Lowell_



JANUARY THIRTIETH

    Innocent child and snow-white flower,
    Well are ye paired in your opening hour!

_Reprinted from Bryant’s Complete Poetical Works, by permission of D.
Appleton & Company._



JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST

    Ye are better than all the ballads
    That ever were sung or said,
    For ye are living poems
    And all the rest are dead.
      _Longfellow_




                               *FEBRUARY*


FEBRUARY FIRST

    I wonder so that mothers ever fret
    At little children clinging to their gown;
    Or that the footprints, when the days are wet
    Are ever black enough to make them frown,
    If I could find a little muddy boot,
    Or cap or jacket on my chamber floor,
    If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot
    And hear it patter in my house once more;
    If I could mend a broken cart to-day,
    To-morrow make a kite to reach the sky—
    There is no woman in God’s world could say
    She was more blissfully content than I.
      _Mary Louise Riley Smith_



FEBRUARY SECOND

    The very souls of children readily receive the
    impressions of those things that are dropped into
    them while they are yet but soft.
      _Plutarch_



FEBRUARY THIRD

    As babes will sigh for deep content
    When their sweet hearts for peace make room,
    As given, not lent.
      _Jean Ingelow_



FEBRUARY FOURTH

    Childhood soberly she wears,
    Taking hold of woman’s cares
    Through love’s outreach, unawares.
      _Lucy Larcom_



FEBRUARY FIFTH

    I searched for love through many a weary mile,
    Till, sick and weary, to my homestead turning
    Thou earnest to greet me with a mother’s smile
    And there upon thy dearest features burning
    I saw that love I long had sought in vain.
      _Heine_



FEBRUARY SIXTH

    And still the children listed, their blue eyes
    Fixed on their mother’s face in wide surprise.
      _Matthew Arnold_



FEBRUARY SEVENTH

    So we will not sell the Baby!
    Your gold and gems and stuff,
    Were they ever so rare and precious
    Would never be half enough!
    For what would we care, My Dearie,
    What glory the world put on,
    If our beautiful darling was going,
    If our beautiful darling was gone.
      _Selected_



FEBRUARY EIGHTH

    The happy children!  Full of frank surprise,
    And sudden whims and innocent ecstacies:
    What Godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes.
      _Edmund Gosse_



FEBRUARY NINTH

      In him woke
    With his first babe’s first cry, the noble wish
    To save all earnings to the uttermost,
    And give his child a better bringing up
    Than his had been, or hers.
        _Tennyson_



FEBRUARY TENTH

    Children have more need of models than of critics.
      _Joubert_



FEBRUARY ELEVENTH

    I wait for my story—the birds cannot sing it,
    Not one as he sits on his tree;
    The bells can not ring it, but long years oh, bring it
    Such as I wish it to be.
      _Jean Ingelow_



FEBRUARY TWELFTH

    Thou who didst not erst deny
    The mother-joy to Mary mild,
    Blessed in the blessed child.
    Which hearkened in meek babyhood
    Her cradle hymn, albeit used
    To all that music interfused
    In breasts of angels high and good.
      _Mrs. Browning_



FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH

    So sits the while at home the mother well content.
      _Robert Louis Stevenson_



FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH

    What use to me the gold and silver hoard?
    What use to me the gems most rich and rare?
    Brighter by far—aye, bright beyond compare,
    The joys my children to my heart afford.
      _From the Japanese_



FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH

    Never to living ears came sweeter sounds
    Than when I heard thee, by our own fireside
    First uttering, without words, a natural tune
    While thou, a feeding babe, didst in thy joy
    Sing at thy mother’s breast.
      _Wordsworth_



FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH

      A woman lives
    Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good
    Through being a mother?
        _Mrs. Browning_



FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH

    One’s early life is certainly a great deal more
    amusing to look back to than it used to be while it was
    going on.
      _Anne Thackeray Ritchie_



FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH

    When thou hast taken thy repast,
    Repose my babe on me;
    So may thy mother and thy nurse
    Thy cradle also be.
      Sing lullaby, my little boy,
      Sing lullaby, mine only joy.
        _Anonymous_



FEBRUARY NINETEENTH

    Ere thy lips learn, too soon,
    Their soft, first human tune,
    Sweet, but less sweet than now,
    And thy raised eyes to read
    Glad and good things indeed,
    But none so sweet as thou.
      _Swinburne_



FEBRUARY TWENTIETH

    Beat upon mine, little heart! beat! beat!
    Beat upon mine!  You are mine, my sweet!
    All mine, from your pretty blue eyes to your feet.
      _Tennyson_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST

    What is the little one thinking about?
    Very wonderful things no doubt!
      Unwritten history!
      Unfathomed mystery!
        _J. G. Holland_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND

    The real education of children is to keep them at
    work and make them unselfish.
      _Ambrosias_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD

    Then be contented.
    Thou hast got
    The most of Heaven in thy young lot;
    There’s sky blue in thy cup.
      _Hood_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH

    Her infancy, a wonder-working charm,
    Laid hold upon his love.
      _Jean Ingelow_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH

    So for the mother’s sake the child was dear,
    And dearer was the mother for the child.
      _S. T. Coleridge_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH

    A kiss when the day is over,
    A kiss when the day begins,
    My mamma’s as full of kisses
    As a nurse is full of pins.
      _Selected_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH

    The child-heart is so strange a little thing,
    So mild, so timorously shy and small,
    When grown-up hearts throb, it goes scampering
    Behind the wall, nor dares peer out at all!
      It is the veriest mouse
      That hides in any house!
    So wild a thing is any child-heart!
        _James Whitcomb Riley_

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



FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH

    Out of the dark, sweet sleep
    Where no dreams laugh or weep,
    Borne through the bright gates of birth
    Into the dim sweet light
    Where day still dreams of night,
    While heaven takes form on earth.
      _Swinburne_



FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH

    For what are all our contrivings
    And the wisdom of all our books
    When compared with your caresses
    And the gladness of your looks.
      _Longfellow_




                                *MARCH*


MARCH FIRST

    I am one who holds a treasure
    And a gem of wondrous cost;
    But I mar my heart’s deep pleasure
    With the fear it may be lost.
    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
    Then spoke the Angel of mothers
    To me, in gentle tone,
    "Be kind to the children of others
    And thus deserve thine own."
      _Julia Ward Howe_



MARCH SECOND

    Here at the portals thou dost stand
    And, with thy little hand,
    Thou openest the mysterious gate
    Into the future’s undiscovered land.
      _Longfellow_



MARCH THIRD

    Like children with violets playing
    In the shade of the whispering trees.
      _Charles Kingsley_



MARCH FOURTH

    Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes
    into the arms of fallen men and pleads with them to
    return to Paradise
      _Emerson_



MARCH FIFTH

    Come to me O ye children!
    For I hear you at your play
    And the questions that perplexed me
    Have vanished quite away.
      _Longfellow_



MARCH SIXTH

    A solemn thing it is to me
    To look upon a babe that sleeps,
    Wearing in its spirit-deeps
    The undeveloped mystery
    Of our Adam’s taint and woe,
    Which, when they developed be,
    Will not let it slumber so.
      _Mrs. Browning_



MARCH SEVENTH

    Some one had left the gate ajar,
    Heaven’s gate, you know, my dear,
    And a baby angel winging by
    Peeped out on a scene most drear.

    "Oh me!" he murmured in dulcet tones,
    "The old Earth needs more light;
    I guess I ’ll fly a little way
    And carry a sunbeam bright."
      _Selected_



MARCH EIGHTH

    Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
    Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
    Fill up the interspersed vacancies
    And momentary pauses of the thought!
    My babe so beautiful!  It thrills my heart
    With tender gladness thus to look at thee.
      _S. T. Coleridge_



MARCH NINTH

    When I hustle home at evening,
    And the light shines from the door,
    An’ I see my little baby
    Rollin’ happy on the floor,
    An’ see Sister helpin’ Mother,
    I’m as tickled as can be
    An’ there aint no King a-livin’
    That has got the best o’ me.
      _Judd Mortimer Lewis_



MARCH TENTH

    O blossom boy!  So calm in thy repose!
    So sweet a compromise of life and death,
    ’Tis pity those fair buds shall e’er unclose
    For memory to stain their inward leaf,
    Tinging thy dreams with unacquainted grief.
      _Hood_



MARCH ELEVENTH

    O let thy children lean aslant
    Against the tender mother’s knee,
    And gaze into her face, and want
    To know what magic there can be
    In words that urge some eyes to dance
    While others, as in holy trance,
    Look up to Heaven, be such my praise.
      _Walter Savage Landor_



MARCH TWELFTH

    Oh, ’tis a touching thing, to make one weep!
    A tender infant with its curtained eye
    Breathing as it would neither live nor die
    With that unchanging countenance of sleep!
      _Hood_



MARCH THIRTEENTH

    Two faces o’er a cradle bent;
    Two hands above the head were locked,
    These pressed each other while they rocked,
    Those watched a life that love had sent.
      O solemn hour!
      O hidden power!
        _George Eliot_



MARCH FOURTEENTH

    To see a child so very fair
    It was a pure delight.
      _Wordsworth_



MARCH FIFTEENTH

    The tree germ bears within itself the nature of
    the whole tree; the human being bears within itself
    the nature of all humanity, and is not, therefore,
    humanity born anew in each child?
      _Froebel_



MARCH SIXTEENTH

    Thoughts of all fair and useful things,
    The hopes of early years;
    And childhood’s purity and grace,
    And joys that like a rainbow chase
    The passing shower of tears.
      _Bryant_

_Reprinted from Bryant’s Complete Poetical Works by special permission,
of D. Appleton & Co._



MARCH SEVENTEENTH

    Sweet is the holiness of youth.
      _Wordsworth_



MARCH EIGHTEENTH

    All its dainty body, honey sweet,
    Clenched hands and curled up feet
    That on the roses of the dawn have trod
    As they came down from God.
      _Swinburne_



MARCH NINETEENTH

    Within my tender mother’s arms I sported,
    I played at horse upon my grandsire’s knee;
    Sorrow and care and anger, ill-reported,
    As little known as gold or Greek to me.
      _Baggesen_



MARCH TWENTIETH

    How do you like to go up in a swing
      Up in the air so blue?
    Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
      Ever a child can do!
        _Robert Louis Stevenson_



MARCH TWENTY-FIRST

    Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling!
    Mother sits beside thee smiling!
    Sleep my darling, tenderly!
    If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,
    Singing as her wheel she turneth;
    Come soft slumber, balmily.
      _S. T. Coleridge_



MARCH TWENTY-SECOND

    O sweet sleep-angel, throned now
    On the round glory of his brow!
    Wave thy wing and waft my vow
      Breathed over Baby Charley.

    I vow that my heart, when death is nigh,
    Shall never shiver with a sigh
    For act of hand or tongue or eye
      That wronged my Baby Charley.
        _Sidney Lanier_



MARCH TWENTY-THIRD

        She seemed a thing
    Of Heaven’s prime uncorrupted work, a child
      Of early nature undefiled,
    A daughter of the years of innocence,
      And, therefore, all things loved her.
          _Southey_



MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH

    Bairns and their bairns make sure a firmer tie
    Than aught in love the like of us can spy.
      _Allan Ramsay_



MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH

    Slumber little friend so wee,
    Joy thy joy is bringing.
      _Bellman_



MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH

    Thou straggler into loving arms,
    Young climber up of knees,
    When I forget thy thousand ways
    Then life and all shall cease.
      _Charles Lamb_



MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH

    Where children are not, heaven is not, and heaven,
      If they come not again, shall be never!
    But the face and the voice of a child are assurances
      of heaven and its promises forever.
        _Swinburne_



MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH

    O blessed vision!  Happy child!
    Thou art so exquisitely wild,
    I think of thee with many fears
    For what may be thy lot in future years.
      _Wordsworth_



MARCH TWENTY-NINTH

    And with heaven in their hearts and their faces,
    Up rose the children all.
      _Longfellow_



MARCH THIRTIETH

    No baby in the house, I know,
    ’T is far too nice and clean;
    No toys, by careless fingers strown,
    Upon the floors are seen.
      _Clara G. Dolliver_



MARCH THIRTY-FIRST

    The simple lessons which the nursery taught
    Fell soft and stainless on the buds of thought,
    And the full blossom owes its fairest hue
    To those sweet tear drops of affection’s dew.
      _Holmes_




                                *APRIL*


APRIL FIRST

    But Jesus said, Suffer the little children to
    come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of
    Heaven.
      _Matt. xix. 14_



APRIL SECOND

    Sweet and low, sweet and low,
    Wind of the western sea,
    Low, low, breathe and blow,
    Wind of the western sea!
    Over the rolling waters go,
    Come from the dying moon and blow,
    Blow him again to me;
    While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps
      _Tennyson_



APRIL THIRD

    My mother she’s so good to me,
    If I was good as I could be,
    I couldn’t be as good—no, sir!—
    Can’t any boy be as good as her!

    She loves me when I’m glad er sad;
    She loves me when I’m good er bad,
    An’, what’s a funniest thing, she says
    She loves me when she punishes.
      _James Whitcomb Riley_

_From "Poems here at Home."  Copyright, 1893-1898. Used by permission of
the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company._



APRIL FOURTH

    The first train leaves at six P.M.
    For the land where the poppy blows,
    The mother dear is the engineer,
    And the passenger laughs and crows;
    The palace car is the mother’s arms,
    The whistle a low sweet strain,
    And the passenger winks and nods and blinks
    And goes to sleep on the train.
      _Edgar Wade Abbott_



APRIL FIFTH

    In the house of too-much-trouble
    Lived a lonely little boy;
    He was eager for a playmate,
    He was hungry for a toy.
    But ’twas always too much bother,
    Too much dirt and too much noise:
    For the house of too-much-trouble
    Wasn’t meant for little boys.
      _Albert Bigelow Paine_



APRIL SIXTH

    I long for every childish, loving word;
    And for thy little footsteps, fairy light,
    That hither, thither moved and ever stirred
    My heart with them to gladness infinite.
      _Carmen Sylva_



APRIL SEVENTH

    A laugh of innocence and joy
    Resounds like music of the fairest grace,
    And gladly turning from the world’s annoy,
    I gaze upon a little radiant face
    And bless internally the merry boy
    Who makes a "son-shine in a shady place."
      _Hood_



APRIL EIGHTH

    I had a little daughter
    And she was given to me
    To lead me gently backward
    To the Heavenly Father’s knee.
      _Lowell_



APRIL NINTH

    Did any one ever tell you
    To "stop makin’ such a noise,"
    When you wuz a-playin’ Injun,
    An’ war-whoopin’ with the boys?
    Did any one never tell you
    Your manners wuz loud and bold?
    Then I guess you are one of the grown-ups
    And not a boy nine years old.
      _Exchange_



APRIL TENTH

    Let us call to mind the years before our little
    daughter was born.  We are now in the same condition
    as then, except that the time she was with us
    is to be counted as an added blessing.  Let us not
    ungratefully accuse fortune for what was given us
    because we could not also have all that was desired.
    We should not be like misers who never enjoy what
    they have but only bewail what they lose.
      _Plutarch_



APRIL ELEVENTH

    And I, for one, would much rather;
    If I could merit so sweet a thing,
    Be the poet of little children
    Than the laureate of a King.
      _Lucy Larcom_



APRIL TWELFTH

    Ah!  Child, what are we, that our ears
    Should hear you singing on your way,
    Should have this happiness?
      _Swinburne_



APRIL THIRTEENTH

    Speak gently to the young,
    For they will have enough to bear;
    Pass through life as best they may,
    ’T is full of anxious care.
      _David Bates_



APRIL FOURTEENTH

    My Mother’s voice! how often creeps
    Its cadence on my lonely hours!
    Like healing sent on wings of sleep,
    Or dew to the unconscious flowers.
    I can forget her melting prayer
    While leaping pulses madly fly,
    But in the still unbroken air
    Her gentle tone comes stealing by,
    And years and sin and manhood flee
    And leave me at my mother’s knee.
      _N. P. Willis_



APRIL FIFTEENTH

    And then her heart would warm with hope, perhaps,
    of what might be to come, of the overwhelming
    possibilities—how many of them, to her, lay in
    the warm clasp of the child’s hand that came pushing
    into hers!
      _Anne Thackeray Ritchie_



APRIL SIXTEENTH

    The barb in the arrow of childhood’s suffering is
    this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.
      _Olive Schreiner_



APRIL SEVENTEENTH

    Like happy children in their play,
    Whose hearts run over into song.
      _Lowell_



APRIL EIGHTEENTH

    Ah! what would the world be to us
      If the children were no more?
    We should dread the desert behind us
      Worse than the dark before.
        _Longfellow_



APRIL NINETEENTH

    Who can tell what a baby thinks?
    Who can follow the gossamer links
    By which the manikin feels his way
    Out from the shore of the great unknown,
    Blind and wailing and alone,
      Into the light of day?
        _J. G. Holland_



APRIL TWENTIETH

    Dear little face, that lies in calm content
    Within the gracious hollow that God made
    In every human shoulder, where he meant
    Some tired head for comfort should be laid.
      _Celia Thaxter_



APRIL TWENTY-FIRST

    This three-fold heaven, which you also bear within
    you, shines out on you through your child’s eyes.
      _Froebel_



APRIL TWENTY-SECOND

    Dance little child, oh dance!
    While sweet the wild birds sing,
    And flowers bloom fair, and every glance
    Of sunshine tells of Spring.
    Oh! bloom and sing and smile
    Child, bird and flower and make
    The sad old world forget awhile,
    Its sorrow for your sake.
      _Celia Thaxter_



APRIL TWENTY-THIRD

    If the golden-crested wren
    Were a nightingale, why, then
    Something seen and heard of men
    Might be half as sweet as when
      Laughs a child of seven.
        _Swinburne_



APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH

    O little ones whom I have found
    Among earth’s green paths playing,
    Though listening far behind, around,
    There comes to me no sweeter sound
    Than words I hear you saying.
      _Lucy Larcom_



APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH

    A child sees what we are, behind what we wish
    to be.
      _Amiel_



APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH

    Dear Child! how radiant on thy Mother’s knee,
    With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
    Thou gazest at the painted tiles.
      _Longfellow_



APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH

    Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
    The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
      Hath had elsewhere its setting,
      And cometh from afar;
    Not in entire forgetfulness
    And not in utter nakedness,
    But trailing clouds of glory do we come
    From God, who is our home.
        _Wordsworth_



APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH

    Happy hearts and happy faces,
    Happy play in grassy places,
    That was how, in ancient ages,
    Children grew to kings and sages.
      _Robert Louis Stevenson_



APRIL TWENTY-NINTH

    That wide-gazing calm which makes us older human
    beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain
    awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel
    before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky.
      _George Eliot_



APRIL THIRTIETH

    Her, by her smile, how soon the stranger knows,
    How soon by his the glad discovery shows,
    As to her lips she lifts the lovely boy,
    What answering looks of sympathy and joy!
    He walks, he speaks.  In many a broken word
    His wants, his wishes and his griefs are heard.
    And ever, ever to her lap he flies,
    When rosy sleep comes on with sweet surprise.
      _Samuel Rogers_




                                 *MAY*


MAY FIRST

    The child whose face illumes our way,
    Whose voice lifts up the heart that hears,
    Whose hand is as the hand of May.
      _Swinburne_



MAY SECOND

    Baby’s skies are mother’s eyes,
    Mother’s eyes and smiles together
    Make the Baby’s pleasant weather.
      _Selected_



MAY THIRD

    Oh, when I was a tiny boy
    My days and nights were full of joy
      _Hood_



MAY FOURTH

    Sweet babe, in thy face
    Soft desires I can trace,
    Secret joys and secret smiles,
    Little pretty infant wiles.
      _William Blake_



MAY FIFTH

    For Childhood, is a tender thing, easily wrought
    into any shape.
      _Plutarch_



MAY SIXTH

    The gilded evenings calm and late
    When weary children homeward run.
      _William Allingham_



MAY SEVENTH

    Make your children happy in their youth; let
    distinction come to them, if it will, after well-spent
    years but let them now break and eat the bread of
    Heaven with gladness and singleness of heart and
    send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared;
    and so Heaven send you its grace before meat
    and after it.
      _Ruskin_



MAY EIGHTH

    The babe by its mother
    Lies bathed in joy,
    Glide its hours uncounted,
    The sun is its toy;
    Shines the peace of all its being,
    Without cloud, in its eyes,
    And the sun of the world
    In soft miniature lies.
      _Emerson_



MAY NINTH

    In those days life was a simple matter to the
    children; their days and their legs lengthened together.
      _Anne Thackeray Ritchie_



MAY TENTH

    Timely blossom, infant fair,
    Fondling of a happy pair,
    Every morn and every night
    Their solicitous delight,
    Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
    Pleasing without skill to please.
      _Ambrose Phillips_



MAY ELEVENTH

    Then the face of a mother looks back, through the mist
    Of the tears that are welling; and, lucent with light,
    I see the dear smile of the lips I have kissed
    As she knelt by my cradle at morning and night;
    And my arms are outheld with a yearning too wild
    For any but God in His love to inspire,
    As she pleads at the foot of His throne for her child—
    As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
      _James Whitcomb Riley_

_From "Rhymes of Childhood."  Copyright, 1890-1898. Used by special
permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merritt Company._



MAY TWELFTH

    A child’s kiss set on thy sighing lips shall make
    thee glad.
      _Mrs. Browning_



MAY THIRTEENTH

    I can not say, and I will not say
    That he is dead.—He is just away!
    With a cheery smile and a wave of the hand,
    He has wandered into an unknown land,
    And left us dreaming how very fair
    It must be since he lingers there.
      _James Whitcomb Riley_

_From "Afterwhiles."  Copyright, 1903. Used by permission of the
publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company._



MAY FOURTEENTH

    "Rock-a-bye, baby, up in the tree top!"
    Mother his blanket is spinning;
    And a light little rustle that never will stop
    Breezes and boughs are beginning,
    Rock-a-bye, baby, swinging so high!
      Rock-a-bye.
        _Lucy Larcom_



MAY FIFTEENTH

    God’s hand had taken away the seal
    That held the portals of her speech;
    And oft she said a few strange words
    Whose meaning lay beyond our reach
      _Thomas Bailey Aldrich_



MAY SIXTEENTH

    Happy the child who is suffered to be and content
    to be what God meant it to be; a child while
    childhood lasts.
      _Robertson_



MAY SEVENTEENTH

    When first thy infant littleness
    I folded in my fond caress,
    The greatest proof of happiness
    Was this I wept.
      _Hood_



MAY EIGHTEENTH

    His mother’s conscious heart o’erflows with joy.
      _Homer’s Iliad_



MAY NINETEENTH

    For the pure clean wit of a sweet young babe is
    like the newest wax, most able to receive the best
    and fairest printing.
      _Roger Ascham_



MAY TWENTIETH

    At eve the babes with angels converse hold.
      _Victor Hugo_



MAY TWENTY-FIRST

    Ilka body smiled that met her,
    Nane were glad that said farewell;
    Never was a blither, better,
    Bonnier bairn frae croon to heel!
      _MacLeod_



MAY TWENTY-SECOND

    His father’s counterfeit,
    And his face the index be
    Of his mother’s chastity.
      _Catullus_



MAY TWENTY-THIRD

    And, rosy from the noonday sleep,
    Would bear thee to admiring kin,
    And all thy pretty looks would keep
      My heart within.
        _Jean Ingelow_



MAY TWENTY-FOURTH

    I long to feel thy little arms embrace,
    Thy silver-sounding voice to hear,
    I long for thy warm kisses on my face,
    And for thy birdlike carol, blythe and clear.
      _Carmen Sylva_



MAY TWENTY-FIFTH

    All holy influences dwell within
    The breast of childhood; instincts fresh from God
    Inspire it, ere the heart beneath the rod
    Of grief hath bled, or caught the plague of sin.
      _Sir Aubrey de Vere_



MAY TWENTY-SIXTH

    The mother represents goodness, providence, law,
    that is to say, the divinity, under that form of it
    which is accessible to childhood.
      _Amiel_



MAY TWENTY-SEVENTH

    Earth’s creeds may be seventy times seven
    And blood have defiled each creed;
    If, of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,
    It must be Heaven indeed.
      _Swinburne_



MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH

    No song quite worth a young child’s ears
    Broke ever even from birds in May.
      _Swinburne_



MAY TWENTY-NINTH

    And remain through all bewildering,
    Innocent and honest children.
      _Robert Louis Stevenson_



MAY THIRTIETH

    Before life’s sweetest mystery still
    The heart in reverence kneels;
    The wonder of the primal birth
    The latest mother feels.
      _Whittier_



MAY THIRTY-FIRST

    O, The days gone by!  O, the days gone by!
    The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye;
    The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin’s magic ring—
    The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in every thing.—
    When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh,
      In the golden, olden glory of the days gone by.
        _James Whitcomb Riley_

_"Rhymes of Childhood."  Copyright, 1890-1898. Used by permission of the
publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company._




                                 *JUNE*


JUNE FIRST

    Would ye learn the way to Laughtertown,
    Oh, ye who have lost the way?
    Would ye have young hearts, though your hair be gray?
    Go learn from a little child each day;
    Go serve his wants and play his play,
    And catch the lilt of his laughter gay,
    And follow his dancing feet as they stray,
    For he knows the road to Laughtertown
    Oh, ye who have lost the way!
      _Katherine D. Blake_



JUNE SECOND

    What school of learning or of moral endeavor
    depends on its teacher more than the home upon the
    mother.
      _Donald G. Mitchell_



JUNE THIRD

    What price could pay with earth’s whole weight of gold,
    One least flushed roseleaf’s fold
    Of all this dimpling store of smiles that shine
    From each warm curve and line?
      _Swinburne_



JUNE FOURTH

    Sometimes when I bin bad
    An’ Pa "correcks" me, nen
    An’ Uncle Sidney he comes here
    I’m allus good again;
    Cause Uncle Sidney says,
    An’ takes me up an’ smiles,
    The goodest mens they is ain’t good
    As baddest little childs.
      _James Whitcomb Riley_

_"Rhymes of Childhood."  Copyright, 1890-1898. Used by special
permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company._



JUNE FIFTH

    Since then God has willed that children should be
    to us in the place of preceptors, we judge that we
    owe to them the most diligent attention.
      _Comenius_



JUNE SIXTH

    He was so sweet, that oft his mother said,
    O, child, how was it that I dwelt content
    Before thou camest?
      _Jean Ingelow_



JUNE SEVENTH

    Thrice happy state again to be
    The trusting infant on the knee!
    Who lets his rosy fingers play
    About his Mother’s neck, and knows
    Nothing beyond his Mother’s eyes;
    They comfort him by night and day,
    They light his little life alway.
      _Tennyson_



JUNE EIGHTH

    I see in every child the possibility of a perfect man.
      _Froebel_



JUNE NINTH

    Where indeed can the modest and earnest virtue
    of a woman tell a stronger story of its worth than
    upon the dawning habit of a child?
      _Donald G. Mitchell_



JUNE TENTH

    The expectant wee-things, toddlin’ stacher through
    To meet their Dad, wi’ flichterin’ noise an’ glee,
    His wee-bit Ingle blinkin’ bonnily,
    His clean hearth-stone, his thrifty wifie’s smile,
    The lispin’ infant prattling on his knee,
    Does a’ his weary carking cares beguile,
    An’ makes him quite forget his labor and his toil.
      _Robert Burns_



JUNE ELEVENTH

    To feel sudden, at a wink,
    Some dear child we used to scold,
    Praise, love both ways, kiss and tease,
    Teach and tumble as our own,
    All its curls about our knees,
    Rise up suddenly full-grown.
      _Mrs. Browning_



JUNE TWELFTH

    I thought a child was given to sanctify a woman.
      _Mrs. Browning_



JUNE THIRTEENTH

    Under the roof-tree of his home the boy feels safe;
    and where, in the whole realm of life, with its bitter
    toils and bitter temptations, will he feel safe again?
      _Donald G. Mitchell_



JUNE FOURTEENTH

    The heart which plays in life its part,
    With love elate, with loss forlorn,
    Is still, through all, the child’s pure heart
    My Mother gave when I was born.
      _Sully-Prudhomme_



JUNE FIFTEENTH

    The hyacinthine boy, for whom
    Morn well might break and April bloom.
      _Emerson_



JUNE SIXTEENTH

    And the mother spoils all her scolding with a
    perfect shower of kisses.
      _Donald G. Mitchell_



JUNE SEVENTEENTH

    But not a child to kiss his lips,
    Well-a-day!
    And that’s a difference sad to see
    Betwixt my lord the king and me.
      _Charles Mackay_



JUNE EIGHTEENTH

    There falls not from the height of day,
    When sunlight speaks and silence hears,
    So sweet a psalm as children play
    And sing each hour of all their years,
    Each moment of their lovely way,
    And know not how it thrills our ears.
      _Swinburne_



JUNE NINETEENTH

    But all of the things that belong to the day
    Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
    And flowers and children close their eyes
    Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.
      _Robert Louis Stevenson_



JUNE TWENTIETH

    O prayer of childhood!  Simple, innocent;
    O infant slumbers!  Peaceful, pure and light;
    O happy worship!  Ever gay with smiles,
    Meet prelude to the harmonies of night;
    As birds beneath the wing enfold their head,
    Nestled in prayer, the infant seeks its bed.
      _Victor Hugo_



JUNE TWENTY-FIRST

    In the little childish heart below
    All the sweetness seemed to grow and grow,
    And shine out in happy overflow
    From her blue, bright eyes.
      _Westwood_



JUNE TWENTY-SECOND

    And when she saw her tender little babe,
    She felt how much the happy days of life
    Outweigh the sorrowful.
      _Jean Ingelow_



JUNE TWENTY-THIRD

    Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child,
    struggles into warmth and life.
      _Donald G. Mitchell_



JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH

    The months that touch, with added grace,
    This little prattler at my knee,
    In whose arch eye and speaking face
    New meaning every hour I see.
      _Bryant_

_Reprinted from Bryant’s Complete Poetical Works by permission of D.
Appleton & Co._



JUNE TWENTY-FIFTH

    Come to me, O ye children!
    And whisper in my ear
    What the birds and the winds are singing
    In your sunny atmosphere.
      _Longfellow_



JUNE TWENTY-SIXTH

    The adorable, sweet, living, marvellous,
    Strange light that lightens us
    Who gaze, desertless of such grace,
    Full in a babe’s warm face.
      _Swinburne_



JUNE TWENTY-SEVENTH

    Do not think the youth has no force because he
    can not speak to you and me.
      _Emerson_



JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTH

    Birds in the night, that softly call,
    Winds in the night, that strangely sigh,
    Come to me, help me, one and all,
    And murmur baby’s lullaby.
      _Lionel H. Lewin_



JUNE TWENTY-NINTH

    ’Tis grand to be six years old, dear,
    With pence in a money box,
    To ride on a wooden horse, dear,
    And leave off baby socks.
      _F. E. Weatherly_



JUNE THIRTIETH

    Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it,
    so that one babe commonly makes four or five out
    of the adults who prattle and play to it.
      _Emerson_




                                 *JULY*


JULY FIRST

    A little child, a limber elf,
    Singing, dancing to itself,
    A fairy thing with rosy cheeks,
    That always finds and never seeks,
    Makes such a vision to my sight
    As fills a father’s eye with light.
      _S. T. Coleridge_



JULY SECOND

    Bright-featured as the July sun
    Her little face still played in,
    And splendors, with her birth begun,
    Had had no time for fading.
      _Mrs. Browning_



JULY THIRD

    The evening star doth o’er thee peep,
    To watch thy slumber bright;
    My little child, now go to sleep
    Safe in God’s loving sight.
      _George Cooper_



JULY FOURTH

    God promises the children heavenly play,
    And blooms in meadows queenly.
      _Ingemann_



JULY FIFTH

    But still I feel that His embrace
    Slides down by thrills through all things made,
    Through sight and sound of every place;
    As if my tender mother laid,
    On my shut lids her kisses pressure:
    Half waking me at night; and said:
    "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?"
      _Mrs. Browning_



JULY SIXTH

    Even happier than the young wife who feels for
    the first time consciousness of her motherhood.
      _Chateaubriand_



JULY SEVENTH

    And the least of us all that love him
    May take, for a moment, part
    With Angels around and above him,
    And I find place in his heart.
      _Swinburne_



JULY EIGHTH

    The streamlet murmurs on its way;
    Dew falls at set of sun;
    The birds grow still at hush of day,
    So sleep, my little one.
      _George Cooper_



JULY NINTH

    The child was happy;
    Like a spirit of the air she moved,
    Wayward, yet, by all who knew her,
    For her tender heart beloved.
      _Wordsworth_



JULY TENTH

    My mother’s voice, so forgotten yet so familiar,
    so unutterably dear!
      _George Du Maurier_



JULY ELEVENTH

    But were another childhood-world my share,
    I would be born a little sister there.
      _George Eliot_



JULY TWELFTH

    With what a look of proud command
      Thou shakest, in thy little hand,
    The coral rattle, with its silver bells,
      Making a merry tune.
        _Longfellow_



JULY THIRTEENTH

    Let childhood’s radiant mist the free child yet
    enfold.
      _Hemans_



JULY FOURTEENTH

    Be it, therefore, O mother, your sacred duty to
    make your darling early feel the working of both
    the outer and the inner light.
      _Froebel_



JULY FIFTEENTH

      We do not know
    How he may soften at the sight of the child:
    The silence often of pure innocence
    Persuades when speaking fails.
        _Shakespeare_



JULY SIXTEENTH

    Yet nothing is so radiant and so fair
    As ——
    To see the light of babes about the house.
      _Euripides_



JULY SEVENTEENTH

    Through the gladness of little children
    Are the frostiest lives kept warm.
      _Lucy Larcom_



JULY EIGHTEENTH

    As on the father’s care-worn cheek
    The ringlets of his child;
    The golden mingling with the gray,
    And stealing half its snows away.
      _Holmes_



JULY NINETEENTH

    There’s one angel belongs to you on earth and
    that’s your mother.
      _Auerbach_



JULY TWENTIETH

    Love that lives and stands up recreated,
    Then when life has ebbed and anguish fled,
    Love more strong than death or all things fated,
    Child’s and mother’s, lit by love and led.
      _Swinburne_



JULY TWENTY-FIRST

    Let us live with our children; so shall their lives
    bring peace and joy to us; so shall we begin to be
    and to become wise.
      _Froebel_



JULY TWENTY-SECOND

    And thou, my boy, that silent at my knee,
    Dost lift to mine thy soft, dark, earnest eyes,
    Filled with the love of childhood, which I see,
    Pure through its depths, a thing without disguise.
      _Hemans_



JULY TWENTY-THIRD

    Turning to mirth all things of earth,
    As only boyhood can.
      _Hood_



JULY TWENTY-FOURTH

      A tiny thing,
    Whom, when it slept, the lovely mother nursed
    With reverent love; whom, when it woke she fed
    And wondered at, and lost herself in long
    Rapture of watching and contentment deep.
        _Jean Ingelow_



JULY TWENTY-FIFTH

      But more sweet
    Shone lower the loveliest lamp for earthly feet,
    The light of little children and their love.
        _Swinburne_



JULY TWENTY-SIXTH

    Full often it falls out, by fortune from God,
    That a man and a maid may marry in this world,
    Find cheer in the child whom they nourish and care for
    Tenderly tend it until the time comes,
    Beyond the first years, when, the young limbs increasing,
    Grown firm with life’s fulness, are formed for their work;
    Fond father and mother so guide it and feed it,
    Give gifts to it, clothe it: God only can know
    What lot to its latter days life has to bring.
      _Anglo-Saxon Poem_



JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH

    But children holds he dearest of the dear.
      _Ingemann_



JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH

    Brightest and hardiest of roses anear and afar,
    Glitters the blithe little face of you, round as a star;
    Liberty bless you and keep you to be as you are.
      _Swinburne_



JULY TWENTY-NINTH

    We could not wish her whiter—her
    Who perfumed with pure blossom
    The house—a lovely thing to wear
    Upon a mother’s bosom.
      _Mrs. Browning_



JULY THIRTIETH

    The gracious boy, who did adorn
    The world whereunto he was born,
    And by his countenance repay
    The favor of the loving day.
      _Emerson_



JULY THIRTY-FIRST

    Yet the hearts must childlike be,
    Where such heavenly guests abide;
    Unto children in their glee,
    All the year is Christmas-tide.
      _Lewis Carroll_




                                *AUGUST*


AUGUST FIRST

    Weave him a beautiful dream, little breeze!
    Little leaves, nestle around him!
    He will remember the song of the trees,
    When age with silver has crowned him.
    Rock-a-bye baby, wake by and by,
      Rock-a-bye.
        _Lucy Larcom_



AUGUST SECOND

    Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee
    Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
      _Shakespeare_



AUGUST THIRD

    But surely, the just sky will never wink
    At men who take delight in childish throe,
    And stripe the nether urchin like a pink.
      _Hood_



AUGUST FOURTH

        Happy he!
    With such a mother, faith in womankind
    Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
      Comes easy to him.
          _Tennyson_



AUGUST FIFTH

    I have not so far left the coasts of life
    To travel inland, that I cannot hear
    That murmur of the outer Infinite
    Which unweaned babies smile at in their sleep,
    When wondered at for smiling.
      _Mrs. Browning_



AUGUST SIXTH

    In rearing a child think of its old age.
      _Joubert_



AUGUST SEVENTH

    Whither went the lovely hoyden?
    Disappeared in blessed wife,
    Servant to a wooden cradle,
    Living in a baby’s life.
      _Emerson_



AUGUST EIGHTH

    And yet methinks she looks so calm and good,
    God must be with her in her solitude.
      _Hartley Coleridge_



AUGUST NINTH

    Childish unconsciousness is rest in God.
      _Froebel_



AUGUST TENTH

    The seasons of the year did swiftly whirl,
    They measured time by one small life alone.
      _Jean Ingelow_



AUGUST ELEVENTH

    Oh, my own baby on my knee,
    My leaping, dimpled treasure.
      _Mrs. Browning_



AUGUST TWELFTH

    Crazy with laughter and babble and earth’s new wine,
    Now that the flower of a year and a half are thine,
    O, little blossom, O mine and of mine!
    Glorious poet who never has written a line!
      _Tennyson_



AUGUST THIRTEENTH

      On the lap
    Of his mother, as he stands
    Stretching out his tiny hands,
    And his little lips the while,
    Half-open, on his father smile.
        _Catullus_



AUGUST FOURTEENTH

    But the breezes of childish laughter,
    And the light in a baby’s eye,
    To the homeliest road bring a freshness
    As free as the blue of the sky.
      _Lucy Larcom_



AUGUST FIFTEENTH

    My little ones kissed me a thousand times o’er.
      _Campbell_



AUGUST SIXTEENTH

    For all its warm, sweet body seems one smile
    And mere men’s love too vile to meet it.
      _Swinburne_



AUGUST SEVENTEENTH

    A child of light, a radiant lass,
    And gamesome as the morning air.
      _Jean Ingelow_



AUGUST EIGHTEENTH

    Shall we never cease to stamp human nature, even
    in childhood, like coins.
      _Froebel_



AUGUST NINETEENTH

    My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling
    The cradle clothes about me all day long,
    Or, half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing,
    And to be washt in water clean and warm,
    And husht and kist and kept secure from harm.
      _Shelley_



AUGUST TWENTIETH

    Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
    Smiles awake you when you rise:
    Sleep pretty wantons, do not cry,
    And I will sing a lullaby.
    Rock them, rock them, lullaby.
      _Thomas Dekker_



AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST

    As the moon on the lake’s face flashes,
    So, happy may gleam, at whiles,
    A dream through the dear deep lashes
    Whereunder a child’s eye smiles.
      _Swinburne_



AUGUST TWENTY-SECOND

    Childhood was the bough, where slumbered
    Birds and blossoms many-numbered.
      _Longfellow_



AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD

    To the royal soul of a baby
    One fairy realm is the earth.
      _Lucy Larcom_



AUGUST TWENTY-FOURTH

    So rounds he to a separate mind
    From which clear memory may begin.
      _Tennyson_



AUGUST TWENTY-FIFTH

    I dream of those two little ones at play,
    Making the threshold vocal with their cries,
    Half tears, half laughter, mingled sport and strife,
    Like two flowers blown together by the wind.
      _Victor Hugo_



AUGUST TWENTY-SIXTH

    That woman’s toy,
      A baby!
        _Mrs. Browning_



AUGUST TWENTY-SEVENTH

    Perpetual care and joy of our life, our despotic
    flatterers, greedy for the very least pleasure, frankly
    selfish, instinctively sure of their too legitimate
    independence—children are our masters, no matter
    how firm we may pretend to be with them.
      _George Sand_



AUGUST TWENTY-EIGHTH

    And now, the rosy children come to play,
    And romp and struggle with the new-mown hay;
    Their clear high voices sound from far away.
      _Edmund Gosse_



AUGUST TWENTY-NINTH

    For the house that was childless awhile, and the
      light of it darkened, and the pulse of it dwindled,
    Rings radiant again with a child’s bright feet,
      with the light of his face is rekindled.
        _Swinburne_



AUGUST THIRTIETH

    My teachers are the children themselves, with
    all their purity, their innocence, their
    unconsciousness and their irresistible charms.
      _Froebel_



AUGUST THIRTY-FIRST

    Women-folks said she was like her father—men-folks
    said she was like her mother—but the wisest
    people always said she was like us both.
      _From "The Finest Baby in the World"_




                              *SEPTEMBER*


SEPTEMBER FIRST

    Preserve him from the bad teacher, for
    the unfortunate and road-lost one will make
    him as himself.
      _Sa’di_



SEPTEMBER SECOND

    All unkissed by innocent beauty,
    All unloved by guileless heart,
    All uncheered by sweetest duty,
    Childless man how poor thou art!
      _Tupper_



SEPTEMBER THIRD

    We cannot measure the need
    Of even the tiniest flower,
    Nor check the flow of the golden sands
    That run through a single hour.
    But the morning dew must fall
    And the sun and the summer rain
    Must do their part, and perform it all
    Over and over again.
      _Josephine Pollard_



SEPTEMBER FOURTH

    When you stood up in the house
    With your little childish feet,
    And, in touching life’s first shows,
    First the touch of love did meet.
      _Mrs. Browning_



SEPTEMBER FIFTH

    Even as a child that after pining
    For the sweet absent mother, hears
    Her voice, and round her neck, entwining
    Young arms, vents all its soul in tears.
      _Schiller_



SEPTEMBER SIXTH

    Who takes the children on his knee,
    And winds their curls about his hand.
      _Tennyson_



SEPTEMBER SEVENTH

    He’s such a kicking, crowing, wakeful rogue,
    He almost wears our lives out with his noise,
    Just at day-dawning when we wish to sleep.
      _Jean Ingelow_



SEPTEMBER EIGHTH

    Happy little children, skies are bright above you,
    Trees bend down to kiss you, breeze and blossom love you.
      _Lucy Larcom_



SEPTEMBER NINTH

    A baby’s eyes ere speech begins;
    Ere lips learn words or sighs,
    Bless all things bright enough to win
      A baby’s eyes.
        _Swinburne_



SEPTEMBER TENTH

    Some day you’ll know
    How closely to one’s heart a son can cling.
      _Racine_



SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH

    Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
    Were ever in the sylvan wild,
    And all the beauty of the place
    Is in thy heart and on thy face.
      _Bryant_

_Reprinted from Bryant’s Complete Poetical Works by permission of D.
Appleton & Co._



SEPTEMBER TWELFTH

    It was a childish ignorance,
    But now ’t is little joy
    To know I’m farther off from heaven
    Than when I was a boy.
      _Hood_



SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH

    Sweet babe!  True portrait of thy father’s face,
    Sleep on the bosom that thy lips have pressed!
    Sleep little one; and closely, gently place
    Thy drowsy eyelids on thy mother’s breast.
      _Longfellow_



SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH

    That land of glorious mystery
    Whither we all are wending,
    A lonely sort of heaven will be,
    If there no baby-family
    Await my love and tending.
      _Lucy Larcom_



SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH

    What note of song have we
    Fit for the birds and thee
    Fair nestling couched beneath the mother-dove?
      _Swinburne_



SEPTEMBER SIXTEENTH

    Thou closely clingest to thy mother’s arms,
    Nestling thy little face in that fond breast
    Whose anxious heavings lull thee to thy rest!
    Man’s breathing miniature.
      _S. T. Coleridge_



SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH

    A lisping voice and glancing eyes are near,
    And ever restless feet of one, who now
    Gathers the blossoms of her fourth bright year.
      _Bryant_

_Reprinted from Bryant’s Complete Poetical Works by permission of D.
Appleton & Co._



SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH

    Once was she wealthy, with small cares,
    And small hands clinging to her knees.
      _Lizette Woodworth Reese_



SEPTEMBER NINETEENTH

    I, a woman, wife and mother,
    What have I to do with art?
    Are ye not my noblest pictures,
    Portraits painted from my heart?
      _Margaret J. Preston_



SEPTEMBER TWENTIETH

    It was a little Child who swung
    Wide back that city’s portals
    Where hearts remain forever young;
    And all things good and pure among,
    Shall childhood be immortal.
      _Lucy Larcom_



SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIRST

    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_