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Show Kathleen Norris Says: About a Draft of Mothers , Bell Syndicate. WNU Feature. "After the telegram, she took to being downtown once or twice a week, lata in the afternoon, and walking home with dad." By KATHLEEN NORRIS THERE is a woman in my neighborhood who is a saint. The making of a saint is a simple matter. It consists of ordinary human material upon up-on which spiritual graces are interposed. Saints can be poor, old, illiterate, humble or saints can be royal. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was a queen. Saint Francis one of. the greatest was a penniless beggar. Thousands of saints are never called saints at all, except in the hearts of their children, of the neighbors neigh-bors who remember them for years, wondering perhaps where that effect of goodness, light, help, faith came from. This neighbor of mine has no idea that she is a saint. She lives so completely for other persons that I doubt if she ever thinks of herself at all. She is a big, broadly built woman, wom-an, standing up to her tall sons almost al-most at their level, catching up grandchildren as if they were feathers. feath-ers. She has had five children four now, since the telegram came about Tom. Martha Howe took that blow quietly; nobody in the family felt any extra agony of grief because of mother's grief. Almost immediately imme-diately she could talk quietly of Tom, of his dearness, his fun, his athletic achievements, his passionate passion-ate longing to get into air service in which he died. Comforting Dad. Also, after the telegram, she took to being downtown once or twice a week, late in the afternoon, drifting into the shoe store, and walking home with dad. Always there was the same loving care with his meals; gravy the way he liked it, little hard crisp doughnuts always on tap. Always there was cheerful gossip; indulgent laughter for Sarah's school interests, tender amusement over Julia's love affairs, deep concern for Frank's nursery and the grandchildren. For the 40 years since she was 16 Martha Howe has followed the simple path of saintliness with no idea of its importance. To her it meant patient, self-sacrificing care of an adored invalid father; early happy marriage and work and economies with a man she loved; tireless devotion to babies in the slow years of wet little shoes, lost little rubbers, croup, spilled milk, long wet afternoons. It meant motherly moth-erly inclusion of many other small derelicts; "his mother's in the hospital," hos-pital," or "they're having sickness over at Blakes," Martha would explain ex-plain when small strangers swelled the circle. It meant the heaven of mother-love mother-love for five growing boys and girls, mA (im "Mother and father love, gardens, babies . . ." PEACE AT HOME Sound, wholesome family life depends upon the mothers. moth-ers. World peace will be possible pos-sible only if there are harmonious, harmo-nious, happy families everywhere. every-where. The grave issues of the distract postwar world will be solved, if at all, by love and sacrifice, courage and charity. These virtues begin at home. In this issue Miss Norris relates re-lates the life story of one of these excellent women who spread happiness everywhere. picnics and birthdays, sympathy in trouble, care in illness, endless trips upstairs and downstairs. It meant darning and, mending late into the night; loyal defense in crises, pride in schbol triumphs, prayer always all day, every day, prayer. It meant baking cookies; smoothing beds, mending skates and dolls; wet weather, dry weather, cold days and hot, year out and in. Martha Howe, one of a million wives and mothers who are doing the same thing, never to be put into the litany of the saints, but a saint just the same. And how we are going to need them, in these days to come! For it is only the children of such fathers and mothers, children raised in simple, loving homes, with strong principles of honor, with a code and a rule behind them, who are going to save the world now. It must be these young hands that are raised against the fearful conditions con-ditions that will follow these wars, these young hearts that take up the burden. Same Simple Cure. All the peace conferences in the world, with their inevitable delays, de-lays, misunderstandings, evasions, omissions, will not accomplish what these domestic saints accomplish. The cure for the weary, poisoned, shattered world now is the same cure that was described for us 2,000 years ago; the leaven that a woman wom-an hid in two measures of meal, until un-til the whole was leavened. No, peace conferences will not get us anywhere. It will be years before reliable authority is established anywhere any-where in Europe, years before any man's word will be worth the taking. But in the simple homes of America there does lie a cure. In the upholding and rebuilding of what made us what we are, and will keep us safe in our own fine traditions. tradi-tions. Home life, mother-and-father love, gardens and babies; spare bedrooms being made ready for company; com-pany; Sunday dinners; dad at the head of the table, mother coming in flushed and triumphant with the turkey. These family saints to absorb the terrible afterwash of these years of hate and destruction, must only extend ex-tend their mothering to take In a broken soldier or a sailor, to include in-clude a desolate little widow or a child orphaned by war. They must only do what they have always done, reaching out toward loneliness and suffering and comforting it. If a hundred hun-dred of them do it, hundreds of lives will be that much brighter and safer. If a thousand, the whole world will feel the effects of it. If a million mil-lion women will reach out their strong, experienced, loving hands toward the individual needs of our postwar ex-sailors, ex-soldiers, ex-service ex-service people generally, America's peacetime problem will be solved with no governmental action at all. ! There is no other way. |