The Little Kingdom of Home



This is a lovely blog post that I borrowed from a fellow blogger. I wanted to share this with each of you mothers in hopes that it blesses you as it did me.

Mothers--What you do in your home matters. Never think otherwise! Are you weary in well-doing? We can't call in a sub when it comes to what we do--we are irreplaceable. Be encouraged that your toiling is not in vain. All the runny noses you wipe, sippy cups you fill and boo boos you kiss matter.


From “The Little Kingdom of Home,” copyright 1904

“What the home asks from the mother, from the wife, is not money, but influence, not things, but herself. . .

The husband’s key is in the latch; he looks up expectant, and is not satisfied until he sees the brightening of his day in the dear face that makes the sunshine of his world. A weary wife meeting him on the train with a host of business interests, not unlike his own, the absorption of the office in her bearing, and the dust of travel on her skirts, cannot be to him the comforter, the refuge, the rest that his home-staying, home-keeping wife is. . .

What the home seeks of the wife and mother is leisure to listen to its problems, discretion to guide its counsels, and serenity to bless its atmosphere.

There are times in the life of every young girl when she needs her mother; not knowing which of two or three paths to choose, it is all-important that she shall turn to the woman nearest her on earth, and dearest, for advice and help.

Perhaps a boy, at the transitional period between early youth and opening manhood, even more than a girl, needs some one at home, to whom he may carry his perplexities, some one untroubled by the whirl and rush of the hurrying tide of humanity outside the door, some one who can be to a lad in his first hour of temptation, his earliest time of trial, just what a mother and only a mother can be.

The biographies of men who have been eminent and successful, and have advanced the world’s work, show with remarkable uniformity that they have had mothers who were the strong forces for good in the background; mothers who thought, and read, and wrought, and prayed, and who were not mere workers in the open mart for wages. The world wants good mothers. It can do without clever money-makers. . .

Plain little mothers with the instinct of the hovering wing, they brooded over their children and, little known beyond their doors, diffused heaven’s blessing within them. Thank God for pure, sweet, capable, gentle sympathizing, old-fashioned mothers!

Ruskin says: ‘The best women are indeed the most difficult to know. They are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and the nobleness of their children; they are only to be divined, not discerned by the stranger, and sometimes seem almost helpless except in their homes.’

For the prevalent temper of the household, for its aroma of fragrance, its sense of proportion of what is owed to God and to one’s fellow beings, we must look to the mother. Her communion with the unseen permeates the visible life of the household, and freshens its every-day air.

The ideal wife and mother has higher and finer things to do than to be a breadwinner, unless, in the tempest of life, her husband has been swept away, and she is compelled to leave her natural sphere and toil for her children. . .

When all is said, and whatever the circumstances, the best a woman can give her home and her children is herself. Any other thing is merely second best. And whoever so lives that a strong, steadfast, unwavering personality stamps its hallmark on her family, will be remembered by ‘what she has done,’ long after the money that looms so large in her view has become of no value in the world to which we go.

There the banker’s strong box, and the millionaire’s securities, and the gewgaws for which men and women barter their souls, will be but as rubbish for the dust heap. For in that land are enduring values, and a crown that shall never lose its luster, a crown of life.

Great men have had great mothers. Yet we are mistaken if we limit the influence of mothers by the few examples that have come to us from history. In a generation, here and there, one man or one woman is conspicuous, forced to the front by opportunity, or by a talent for leadership.

The mass of men do their work and fill their places in comparative obscurity, and worthily or unworthily, often, according to their early training. Mothers have their innings before the world’s chance comes. It cannot be too often repeated, and mothers should not be hampered by wage-earning, if it can be helped.”