“ Eugene Field
DECEMBER THIRTEENTH
The studying child has all the needs of a creating
artist. He must breathe pure air; his body must be
at ease; he must have things to look at and be able
to change his thoughts at will by enjoying form and
color.
George Sand
DECEMBER FOURTEENTH
At one dear knee we proffered vows,
One lesson from one book we learned,
Ere childhood's flaxen ringlets turned
To black and brown on kindred brows.
Tennyson
DECEMBER FIFTEENTH
Art thou not a sunbeam,
Child, whose life is glad,
With an inner radiance
Sunshine never had?
Lucy Larcom
DECEMBER SIXTEENTH ”

“ Lucy Larcom
MAY FIFTEENTH
God's hand had taken away the seal
That held the portals of her speech;
And oft she said a few strange words
Whose meaning lay beyond our reach
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
MAY SIXTEENTH
Happy the child who is suffered to be and content
to be what God meant it to be; a child while
childhood lasts.
Robertson
MAY SEVENTEENTH
When first thy infant littleness
I folded in my fond caress,
The greatest proof of happiness
Was this I wept.
Hood
MAY EIGHTEENTH
His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy. ”

“ Wordsworth
MARCH FIFTEENTH
The tree germ bears within itself the nature of
the whole tree; the human being bears within itself
the nature of all humanity, and is not, therefore,
humanity born anew in each child?
Froebel
MARCH SIXTEENTH
Thoughts of all fair and useful things,
The hopes of early years;
And childhood's purity and grace,
And joys that like a rainbow chase
The passing shower of tears.
Bryant Reprinted from Bryant's Complete Poetical Works by special permission, of D. Appleton & Co.
MARCH SEVENTEENTH
Sweet is the holiness of youth. ”

“ It seems to be true that the years of a woman's life that sink deepest into her heart and are fraught with her keenest joy and pain are the years when her little children are clinging about her skirts. Then it is that she is truly "wealthy with small cares, and small hands clinging to her knees." But then, too, she is often too busy with the passing of the full days and the long nights, so often punctuated by the restless clinging of rosy fingers and all the dear demands of babyhood, to realize fully how blest are the days through which she is living. ”

“ The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is
this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.
Olive Schreiner
APRIL SEVENTEENTH
Like happy children in their play,
Whose hearts run over into song.
Lowell
APRIL EIGHTEENTH
Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before. ”

“ Whittier
MAY THIRTY-FIRST
O, The days gone by! O, the days gone by!
The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye;
The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring—
The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in every thing.—
When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh,
In the golden, olden glory of the days gone by. ”

“ But, where the heart of childhood sings,
There all the months are full of cheer
And Christmas-tide lasts all the year.
Francis McKinnon Morton
DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well
not believe in Fairies! You might get your Papa
to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on
Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did
not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that
prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus but that is no sign
that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things
in the world are those that neither children nor men
can see. ”

“ And still to childhood's sweet appeal
The heart of genius turns,
And more than all the sages teach,
From lisping voices learns.
Whittier
NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH
The wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Out-valued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round.
Emerson
NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH
He saw his Mother's face, accepting it
In change for heaven itself, with such a smile
As might have well been learnt there.
Mrs. Browning
NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! ”

“ That while I wore the badge of Motherhood,
I did not kiss more oft and tenderly
The little child that brought me only good.
Mary Louise Riley Smith
JANUARY SIXTEENTH
Children are God's apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of Love and Hope and Peace.
Lowell
JANUARY SEVENTEENTH
She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the
child is born.
Kipling
JANUARY EIGHTEENTH
A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should Heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A Baby's feet. ”

“ Perpetual care and joy of our life, our despotic
flatterers, greedy for the very least pleasure, frankly
selfish, instinctively sure of their too legitimate
independence—children are our masters, no matter
how firm we may pretend to be with them. ”

“ It is especially for the busy mother that I have gathered this little collection of beautiful thoughts about childhood and motherhood, from some of the world's best thinkers.
I hope it may bring to some of them as much pleasure in the reading as it has to me in the preparation.
The selections from the writings of Lucy Larcom, Holmes, Whittier, Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Celia Thaxter, and Edith Thomas are used by the courteous permission of the authorized publishers of these writers, the Houghton Mifflin Company. ”

“ God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace, good-will toward men."
Luke ii. 11, 13, 14
DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH
A child is the greatest living revealer of the Eternal
in this world. You are nearer God when you have
your child in your arms than at any other time. ”

“ George MacDonald says, "He who drops a beautiful thought into the heart of a friend gives as the angels do"; and Emerson says that "Next to the originator of a beautiful thought is the one who first quotes it." So I do not think that any one who has said anything beautiful about childhood would wish to be left out of a Mother's Year Book even if the credit for his work was not given quite correctly.
FRANCIS MCKINNON MORTON.
JANUARY
JANUARY FIRST
Where did you come from, Baby Dear? ”