No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 323 



"And if I feel so, perhaps Mamma does too for the same reason, I'll 

 see." Here i saw the ready willingness to give up the "chum" for 

 the "mother," if so desired. 



liut 1 know all girls Lave not this close companionship, and 1 

 pity them. Some may have been deprived early in life of their 

 mothers, never knowing in their own experiences the possibilities 

 of a mother as friend and conlidant. Others there are who do not 

 live so close to the mother in sympathy and love; perhaps it's the 

 mother's fault, perhaps the daughter's. 



1 like the word "chum" in this connection, it means much. Per- 

 haps it embraces more than any other could possible do in portray- 

 ing certain phases of relationship — sister, friend, confidant, all in 

 (me — a nearness that, dear as the word mother is, could not be 

 covered by that alone. 



8ome days ago while coming into Philadelphia on the train from 

 my home in the country, 1 chanced to overhear the conversation of 

 two mothers seated behind me, and each gave due credit to the 

 lovableness of the other's child — a thing not too frequently done. 

 And as one mother spoke of her daughter in her social relations 

 with her young friends, and told of the little merry-makings and 

 parties, she dropped this remark: "I try to keep very close to Ruth 

 and am with her in her pleasures ; I do not feel it detracts at all for 

 her friends look uxjon me as a sort of sister of Ruth rather than in 

 the relation of mother; we're very chummy, Ruth and I." 0! how 

 I rejoiced for Ruth. Having ahvays been surrounded by this love 

 of her "mother-chum," she cannot realize what many of her friends 

 lack — cannot see the emptiness of other lives where the mother does 

 not fill the place as in her own. 



Here w^e have the attitude of the mother who is "chum" to her 

 daughter from the mother's point of view as we had it previously 

 from the daughter's. And the little glimpse into the home-life 

 vouchsafed opens to us the beauty of comradeship, is it not beauti- 

 ful? Can we not picture the heart talks of that mother with her 

 girl? 



-Just here let me speak of a little story I read some years ago, 

 a part of which has remained with me ever since. I do not 

 remember the author or the name of the story, but the point is this. 

 A girl surrounded by the loving atmosphere of a good home, where 

 she was watched carefully by the right sort of mother, went to visit 

 an aunt and there met a boy just reaching young manhood, w^ho, 

 an- a baby had been left on the poorhouse steps, and growing older 

 had found refuge with this kind lady. He seemed to have within 

 him beautiful thoughts which he wove into stories, and had one he 

 was reading to this young girl for her to pass her opinion. He 

 had reached a point where he spoke of the mother in the story when 

 she interrupted him with: "why, you have not made that mother 

 half good enough, my mother is far better than that." John replied, 

 "That is quite likely, T have never known a mother, this is only 

 my ideal of what a mother should be, while your mother is God's 

 ideal of a mother made real". Can we not learn a lesson from this? 

 Are we not too apt to feel when discouraged that our ideals can 

 never be reached, that they are too high, forgetful that our ideals 

 are never too high to become God's reality. 



