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Show Dorothy Dix 'Talksl ' MOTHERS OF MEN. hall Brooklyn, home of the Spar- ; "ryS the cartoonists and the ' rdts have mado merry over the Brook-jobber Brook-jobber trees and bahy carriages, hnt It appears that among tho woman ' ho tend tho rubber trees by the i Brooklyn front windows, and push the i Brooklyn perambulators there are I those ffbo were tho lineal descendants nf the mothers who, in sending forth ihcir eons to war, bade them come ' Sck -svith their shields, or on them, j A Brooklyn woman, of whom I have nsrsonal knowledge, had a son enlisted in the armv. Ho was a big, strapping i id but under age for the draft, and I rot finding army life all the beer and 1 skittles he had imagined it to be, he S wrote to his mother that he thought che could get him discharged on account ac-count of his ago and that, anyway, he believed that he was beginning to de-' de-' velop flat feet. To this his mother replied that she thought that what was the matter rith him was that he was beginning to develop a yellow streak, and that no son of hers would ever have feet flat enough to come back to her when he ran away from his duty to his coun- Kow comes the story of another Brooklvn mother who promptly tele-( tele-( phoned' the police and had her son ar-! ar-! rested as a deserter when he ran away from camp and came home. These arc the kind of women who, are the mothers of men, who turn the j weakness of their children into strength, and give to the world the ) heroes who do, and dare. A monu- ment should be built in their honor, j not only to commemorate their virtues, bat to stand as an inspiration to all ' other mothers. v For we have glorified 'mother's love, mother's tenderness, and mother's pity ' so long that we have lost sight of the 1 fact that motherhood has any other '.' unction than just being a soggy mass ol maudlin sympathy. Sometimes it is a mother's highest duty to her child t6 nail him to his cross and force him to carry jt on. Nobody will dispute that mother's sympathy is a salvo to our wounds, aid that it is a precious, and comfort' .ing thought that there is somebody Thorn we can go to when things go I wrong with us, and who will blame ev-' ev-' erybody, and everything else on earth , but us for our failures. But this very mother's sympathy, that is such a balm to us, Is a dan-' dan-' gerous and deadly narcotic that kills oar energy and- ambition, and par-1 par-1 alyzes effort, and makes weaklings and j failures of us. What we need when we come to the hard sledding in life, where we must . put every' ounce of grit that is' in us i into our work, is not a mother who ; sheds tears over us, or "poor dears" . us, and tells us how it breaks her heart , to see us having to put our back into things, but a mother who gives us a , bright and cheery smile, bids us go I 1 to it, and do a man's or a woman's part in the world, instead of being a j quitter and a slacker. Everything depends on the point of view. Work is a glorious adventure or It's the curse of Adam, according to the way you look at it. You can achieve everything, or the fates are against you just as you believe it. You believe that the world is a fine place ! in which a man takes what is his own by the strength of his good right hand, 1 or you despair, and whine about the unequal distribution of wealth, according accord-ing to the way you are brought up. It all depends on your mother's attitude at-titude towards life. If she begins sobbing sob-bing over you in the cradle telling you how it grieves her that you can't have the things that rich children have, and it she walls because you have to attend at-tend night school instead of going to college; and if she is drenched in woe ; because you have to go to work when ; you are a boy, instead of Joy riding around in an automobile, she inevitably inevit-ably engenders in you self pity, which " the most fatal mental affliction that anybody can have. It renders its victim morbid, pessl-, pessl-, jalstic, envious, and morally and physically phys-ically flabby, and kills every prospect of success. There's no pep and gin-i gin-i S" left In such a person. Nothing j?f , the spirit that makes him want to So over the top, and fight his way to 1 ti lY' nor is tnere ln nim one (lua1-ty (lua1-ty that draws him to another human mg, rind gives comradeship that ; ffiake3 anyone give him a hand up. Mother's sympathy has made more allures than any other one thing in toe world. On the other hand, the mother who I !e3 her children a brace instead of lif ?'hen they faco tno hard duties of "lo, breeds in them the qualities that oaues success. Do you think that r8t , 0 Brooklyn boys whose moth- r5? ! them steadv the ranks jnen they got wabbly, and wanted to y "TOP out, will make good soldiers? ,a doubt oC iL Tuev simply . ,j,"1Un t dare to come back and look rt ?0ther6 la the face If they wowed the white feather. Thev would know that their mothers wouldn't weep tears of sympathy over a coward. cow-ard. They would shrivel him up with their scorn. All life is a battle, and it's hard on the young and weak. Thoro come times of discouragement when every boy and girl feels like throwing down their weapons and surrendering, and whether they do or not depends absolutely abso-lutely on the kind of a mother they have. When Johnny's work gets to the place where It's a dull, monotonous grind of daily labor, with lots of unpleasant un-pleasant things In it; when he doesn't get very -well paid and things look discouraging, dis-couraging, mother can pity him until she makes him as. soft and spineless as a dishrag, so that he goes half heartedly and sullenly about his task, or leaves his place In tho vain hope that he will find that mythical job that has big pay and no work attached to it. And Johnny by means of mother's sympathy qualifies for the roaming ne'er do well class, who never get anywhere. any-where. Or mother can say to Johnny, "Of course your work is hard. All work is hard, but you are man enough to go through with it without a whimper. Of course you're not being well paid, but the way to change all that is to put every ounce of your strength and intelligence in-telligence into your work so that you will work out of the ill paid class. You have to pay for success in this world, my son, with your heart's blood, but it's worth it. I'm backing you to win, because I know you've got the stuff in you to enrry on, Instead of being one of the weak ones that fall by the wayside." way-side." That kind of a mother puts iron into the souls of her sons. She makes them unafraid of but one thing in the world, and that is that they won't come up to their mother's measure. And it's mother's pity that is first aid to the divorce court. A spoiled young girl who has not been taught that she has any duty to any human creature, or any responsibility, or that she's expected to do anything but amuse and indulge herself, gets married. mar-ried. She finds that matrimony is not a picnic; that it calls for self sacrifice sacri-fice and self denial, and she rebels against it, and runs home with her tale of woe to mother. And mother weeps over her, "poor Mary's" her, and regards re-gards her as a rnartyr. The end of it is a broken home and divorce. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred hun-dred Mary wouldn't run home to mother moth-er If she knew that mother would say: "Of course marriage brings care and responsibility. It's the serious business busi-ness of life. Go back and do your duty that you swore to at the altar. And there would be no divorce. What we need is not mother's sympathy. sym-pathy. It's mothers with nerve to hold their children up to doing the right thing. Cod send us more mothers of the Brooklyn type. oo |