229. Treatment of Parents

Treatment of Parents

Pro_10:1 : ’93A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.’94

All parents want their children to turn out well. However poorly father and mother may have done themselves, they want their sons and daughters to do splendidly. Up to forty years of age parents may have ambitions for themselves, after that their chief ambition is for their children. Some of the old-time names indicate this. The name of Abner means ’93his father’92s lamp.’94 The name Abigail means ’93her father’92s joy.’94 And what a parental delight was Solomon to David and Samuel to Hannah and Joseph to Jacob! And the best earthly staff that a father has to lean on is a good son, and the strongest arm a mother has to help her down the steps of years is that of a grateful child.

But it is not a rare thing to find people unfilial, and often the parents are themselves to blame. Aged persons sometimes become querulous and snappy, and the children have their hands full with the old folks. Before entering my profession I was for three months what is called a colporteur. One day in the country districts I stopped at the house of a good, intelligent, genial farmer. The hospitality of such a country house is especially pleasing to me, for I was born in the country. This farmer and his wife were hard-working people, but tried to make their home agreeable and attractive. The farmer’92s father, about sixty-five years of age, and his grandfather, about ninety, were yet alive and with him. Indeed, there were four generations in the house, for the farmer had some little children playing about the room. We gathered at the dining-table. After the blessing was asked, the farmer put some of the meat upon his plate and courteously passed it to me, when his father of sixty-five years of age cried out to his son, who was at least thirty years of age: ’93Why do you not pass the meat as you always do, and let us take it off the plate ourselves? You are trying to show off because we have company.’94 Meanwhile his grandfather of ninety sat with his hat on at the table, his face unclean and his apparel untidy. Still the farmer kept his patience and equipoise, and I never think of him without admiration. He must have had more grace than I ever had.

Because people are old they have no right to be either ungentlemanly or uncouth. There are old people so disagreeable that they have nearly broken up some homes. The young married man with whom the aged one lives stands it because he has been used to it all his life, but the young wife, coming in from another household, can hardly endure it, and sometimes almost cries her eyes out. And when little children gather in the house, they are afraid of the venerable patriarch, who has forgotten that he ever was a child himself, and cannot understand why children should ever want to play ’93hide and seek’94 or roll hoop or fly kite, and he becomes impatient at the sound from the nursery, and shouts with an expenditure of voice that keeps him coughing fifteen minutes afterwards, ’93Boys! stop that racket!’94 as though any boy that ever amounted to anything in the world did not begin life by making a racket!

Indeed, there are children who owe nothing to their parents, for those parents have been profligates. My lamented friend, good and Christian and lovely Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United States, in early life changed his name. Henry Wilson was not his original name. He dropped his father’92s name because that father was a drunkard and a disgrace, and the son did not feel called upon to carry such a stigma all his life. While children must always be dutiful, I sympathize with all young people who have disagreeable or unprincipled old folks around the house. Some of us, drawing out our memories, know that it is possible, after sixty or seventy or eighty or ninety years of age, for the old to be kind and genial; and the grandest adornment of a home is an aged father and an aged mother, if the process of years has mellowed them. Besides that, if your old parents are hard to get along with now, you must remember there was a time when they had hard work to get along with you. When you were about five or seven or ten or twelve years of age what a time they had with you! If they had kept a written account of your early pranks and misdoings, it would make a whole volume. That time when you gave your little sister a clip; that time when you explored the depth of a jar of sweet things for which you had no permission; that havoc you one day made with your jack-knife; that plucking from the orchard of unripe fruit; that day when, instead of being at school, as your parents supposed, you went a-fishing; and many a time did you imperil your young life in places where you had no business to climb or swim or venture. To get you through your first fifteen years with your life and your good morals was a fearful draft upon parental fidelity and endurance. Indeed, it may be that much of this present physical and mental weakness in your parents may have been a result of your early waywardness. You made such large and sudden drafts upon the bank of their patience that you broke the bank. They were injured in being thrown while trying to break the colt. It is a matter of only common honesty that you pay back to them some of the long-suffering which they paid to you. A father said to his son, ’93Surely no father ever had as bad a boy as I have.’94 ’93Yes,’94 said the son, ’93my grandfather had.’94 It is about the same from generation to generation, and parents need to be patient with children, and children dutiful to their parents. Taking it for granted that those who hear me today have had a good parentage, I want to urge upon all the young the fact that the happiness and longevity of parents much depend upon the right behavior of their children, and I can do this no more effectually than by demonstrating the truth of my text, ’93A foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.’94

Perhaps some young man astray may be brought back by a thought of how they feel about him at home. A French soldier lay wounded and dying in the hospital at Geneva, Switzerland. His father, at home, seventy years of age, heard of his son’92s suffering, and started, and took the long journey, and found the hospital; and as he entered the son cried: ’93O father, I am so glad you have come to see me die.’94 ’93No,’94 said the father; ’93you are not going to die; your mother is waiting for you, and I am going to take you home; I have brought you money and everything you need.’94 ’93No,’94 said the soldier, ’93they give me here everything that is nice to eat, but I have no appetite, and I must die.’94 Then the father took from his knapsack a loaf of rye-bread, such as the plain people of his country ate, and said, ’93Here is a loaf of bread your mother made, and I am sure you can eat this; she sent it to you.’94 Then the soldier brightened up, and took the bread and ate it, and said ’93It is so good, the bread from home, the bread that my mother made!’94 No wonder that in a few days he had recovered. O young man, wounded in the battle of life, and discouraged, given up by yourself, and given up by others, the old folks at the country fireside have not given you up. I bring you bread from home. It may be plain bread, but it is that bread of which if a man eat he never again shall hunger. Bread from home!

Carrying out the idea of my text, I remark that a reckless or dissipated son makes a heavy-hearted parent because it hurts the family pride. It is not the given name, or the name which you received at the christening, that is injured by your prodigality. You cannot hurt your name of John or George or Henry or Mary or Frances or Rachel, because there have been thousands of people, good and bad, having those names, and you cannot improve or depreciate the respectability of those given names. But it is your last name, your family name, that is at your mercy. All who bear that name are bound, before God and man, not to damage its happy significance. You are charged, by all the generations of the past and all the generations to come, to do your share for the protection and the honor and the integrity of that name. You have no right, my young friend, by a bad life to blot the old family Bible containing the story of the marriage and births and deaths of the years gone by, or to cast a blot upon the family Bibles whose records are yet to be opened. There are in our American city-directories names that always suggest commercial dishonesty or libertinism or cruelty or meanness, just because one man or woman bearing that name cursed it forever by miscreancy. Look out how you stab the family name! It is especially dear to your mother. She was not born under that name. She was born under another name, but the years passed on and she came to young womanhood, and she saw some one with whom she could trust her happiness, her life, and her immortal destiny; and she took his name, took it while the orange blossoms Were filling the air with fragrance, took it with joined hands, took it while the heavens witnessed. She chose it out of all the family names since the world stood, for better or worse, through sickness and through health, by cradles and by graves. Yea, she put off her old family name to take the family name you now wear, and she has done her part to make it an honorable name. How heavy a trouble you put upon her when, by misdeeds, you wrench that name from its high significance! To haul it down from your mother’92s forehead and trample it in the dust would be criminal. Your father’92s name may not be a distinguished name, but I hope it stands for something good. It may not be famous like that of Homer, the father of epic poetry, or Izaak Walton, the father of angling, or ‘c6schylus, the father of tragedy, or Ethelwold, the father of monks, or Herodotus, the father of history, or Thomas Aquinas, the father of moral philosophy, or Abraham, the father of the faithful, but your father has a name in a small circle as precious to him as theirs in a larger circle. Look out how you tarnish it!

Further, the recklessness and dissipation of a young man are a cause of parental distress at a time when the parent is least able to bear it. The vicissitudes of life have left their impression upon those parents. The eye is not as clear as once, nor the hearing as acute, nor the nerves as steady, nor the step as strong, and with the tide of incoming years comes the weight of unfilial behavior. You take your parents at a great disadvantage, for they cannot stand as much as they once could. They have not the elasticity of feeling with which once they could throw off trouble. That shoulder, now somewhat bent, cannot bear as heavy a burden as once it could. At the time when the machinery is getting worn out you put upon it the most terrific strain. At sixty and seventy years the vitality is not so strong as at thirty or forty. Surely they are descending the down grade of life swiftly enough without any need of your increasing the momentum. They will be gone soon enough without your pushing them away. Call in all the doctors who ever lived since Hippocrates raised medicine from a superstition to a science, and they could not cure the heartbreak of a mother over her ruined boy. There may be, as some suppose, enough herbs on earth, if discovered, to cure all the ailments of the body; but nothing save a leaf from the tree of heavenly Paradise can cure a wound made by a foolish son who is the heaviness of his mother.

Perhaps it is a good thing that cruel treatment by a child abbreviates a parent’92s life; for what is there desirable in a father’92s life or a mother’92s life if its peace be gone? Do you not think death is something beneficent if it stops the mother’92s heart from aching and her eyes from weeping, and says: ’93You need not bear the excruciation any longer. Go and sleep. I will put the defense of a marble slab between you and that boy’92s outrages. Go now where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest?’94 At the departure of such mothers let the music be an anthem instead of a dirge. While you and I hear no sound, yet there are at this moment tens of thousands of parental hearts breaking. All care was taken with the boy’92s schooling, all good counsels given, and the equipment for a sober and earnest and useful life was provided, but it has all gone, and the foolish son has become the heaviness of his mother.

Much of the poignancy of the parental grief arises from the ingratitude of such behavior. What an undertaking it is to conduct a family through the ailments and exposures of early life! Talk about the skill demanded of a sea-captain commanding a ship across the ocean! That requires less skill than to navigate a young soul in safety across the infantile and boyhood years. The sicknesses that assault, the temptations that entrap, the anxieties that are excited! Young man, you will never know what your mother has suffered for you. You will never know how your father has toiled for you. You have been in all their thoughts, in all their plans, in all their prayers, from the time your first breath was drawn to this moment’92s respiration. What they could do for your health, what they could do for your happiness, what they could do for your mind, what they could do for your soul, have been absorbing questions. To earn a livelihood for you has not always been an easy thing for your father. By what fatigues of body and what disturbances of mind and long years of struggle, in which sometimes the losses were greater than the gains, he got bread for you, paying for it in the sweat of his own brow and the red drops of his own heart’92s blood! He looks older than he ought to look at his years, for it has been work, work, work. Many a time he felt like giving up the battle, but when he looked at your helplessness and the helplessness of the household, then he nerved himself up anew and said: ’93By the help of God I will not stop; my children must have home and education and advantages and a comfortable starting in the world, and I must get a little something ahead, so that if I am taken away these helpless ones will not be turned out on the cold charities of the world.’94 Yes, your father has been a good friend to you. He has never told any one, and he never will tell any one of the sacrifices he has made for you. And he is ready to keep right on until unto that hand that has been toiling for you all these years shall come the very numbness of death. You cannot afford to break his heart. But you are doing it. Yes, you are. You have driven the dagger clear in up to the hilt.

And your mother’97I warrant she has never told you much about the nights when you were down with scarlet fever, or diphtheria, and she slept not a wink, or falling into drowsiness, your first cry awakened her, and brought the words, ’93What is it, my dear?’94 Oh, if the old rocking-chair could speak! Oh, if the cradle could only tell its story of years! And when you got better, and were fretful and hard to please, as is usual in convalescence, she kept her patience so well, and was as kind as you were unreasonable and cross. Oh, the midnights of motherly watching, how can you keep silence? Speak out and tell that wandering young man the story that he so much needs to hear.

By the by, I wonder what has become of our old cradle in which all of us children were rocked! I must ask my sister when I see her next time. We were a large family, and that old cradle was going a good many years. I remember just how it looked. It was old-fashioned and had no tapestry. Its two sides and canopy all of plain wood, but there was a great deal of sound sleeping in that cradle, and many aches and pains were soothed by it as it moved to and fro by day and night. Most vividly I remember that the rockers, which came out from under the cradle, were on the top and side very smooth, so smooth that they actually glistened. They must have been worn smooth by a foot that long ago ceased its journey. How tired the foot that pressed it must sometimes have become! But it did not stop for that. It went right on and rocked for Ph’9cbe the first, and for DeWitt the last. And it was a cradle like that, or perhaps of modern make and richly upholstered, in which your mother rocked you. Can it be that for all that care and devotion you are paying her back with harsh words or neglects or a wicked life? Then I must tell you that you are the ’93foolish son which is the heaviness of his mother.’94 Better go home and kiss her, and ask her forgiveness. Kiss her on the lips that have so often prayed for you. Kiss her on the forehead that so often ached for you. Kiss her on the eyes that have so often wept over you. Better go right away, for she will be dead before long. And how will you feel then after you realize it is your waywardness that killed her? Romulus made no law against parricide, or the slaying of a father, matricide, or the slaying of a mother, because he considered such crimes impossible, and for six hundred years there was not a crime of that sort in Rome. But then came Lucius Ostius, and slew his father, proving the crime possible. Now, do you not think that the child who by wrong behavior sends his father to a premature grave is a parricide, or who by misconduct hastens a mother into the tomb is a matricide?

The heaviness of parents over a son’92s depravity is all the greater because it means spiritual disaster and overthrow. That is the worst thing about it. In the pension regulations a soldier receives for loss of both hands or feet seventy-two dollars a month. For loss of one hand and one foot thirty-six dollars. For loss of a hand or foot thirty dollars. For loss of both eyes seventy-two dollars. But who can calculate the value of a whole man ruined body, mind and soul? How can parents have any happiness about your future destiny, O young man gone astray? Can such opposite lives as you and they are living come out at the same place? Can holiness and dissipation enter the same gate? Where is the little prayer that was taught you at your mother’92s knee? Is the God they loved and worshiped your God? It is your soul about which they are most anxious, your soul that shall live after the earth itself shall be girdled with flames, and the flames, dying down, will leave the planet only a live coal, and the live coal shall have become ashes, and then the ashes shall be scattered by the whirlwinds of the Almighty.

’93But,’94 says some young man, ’93my mother is gone; my behavior will not trouble her any more.’94

Oh that these lips had language! Life has passed

With me but roughly since I heard thee last.

What! Is she dead? How you startle me! Is she dead? Then, perhaps, you have her picture. Hang it up in your room in the place where you oftenest sit. Go and study her features, and while you are looking the past will come back, and you may hear her voice, which is now so still, speak again, saying: ’93From my heavenly home, my dear boy, I solicit your reformation and salvation. Go to the Christ who pardoned me, and he will pardon you. My heaven will not be complete till I hear of your changing. But I will hear of it right away, for there is joy up here when one sinner repenteth; and would that the next news of that kind that comes up here might come up regarding you, O my child of many tears and anxieties and prayers! Come, my boy, do you not hear your mother’92s voice? O my son, my son, would God that I could die for thee! O my son, my son!’94 Young man! what news for heaven would be your conversion. Swifter than telegraphic wire ever carried congratulations to a wedding or a coronation would fly heavenward the news of your deliverance; and whether the one most interested in your salvation were on river-bank or in the temple or on the battlements or in the great tower, the message would be instantly received, and before this service is closed angel would cry to angel: ’93Have you heard the news? Out yonder is a mother who has just heard of her wayward boy’92s redemption. Another prodigal has got home. The dead is alive again, and the lost is found. Hallelujah! Amen!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage