Dura mater

“ Her heart is in a great whirl of painful feelings. Her baby! She wants her baby! The unhealed wound in the mother-heart will not be satisfied thus. Lulu's motherhood has thrilled that aching chord afresh; the years that have passed are but a dream, and she longs to hold her rosy, laughing boy again to her tortured breast. Mother-love never grows cold nor dead, mother-grief never can be healed nor even seared. It "lives eternal" in the mother's breast, the most exquisite joy, the most exquisite searching pain the human heart can know. ”

“ Through the long centuries Nature has been the mother, nurse, and teacher of man.
Other Mother-Goddesses.
Among other "mother-goddesses" of ancient Italy we find Maia Mater, Flora Mater, both deities of growth and reproduction; Lua Mater, "the loosing mother," a goddess of death; Acca Larentia, the mother of the Lares (Acca perhaps = Atta, a child-word for mother, as Lippert suggests) ; Mater matuta, "mother of the dawn," a goddess of child-birth, worshipped especially by married women, and to whom there was erected a temple at Cære. ”

“ The mother has neither doctor nor midwife to assist her; and she is most frequently alone and extended on the sand at the time of her accouchement. She immediately lays down her infant, takes some milk to refresh herself, and then goes to bed for the night. The mother who gives birth to a son, in order to testify her joy, blackens her face for forty days. On the birth of a daughter, she only daubs it half over, and keeps it so no longer than twenty days. A woman so disguised is a horrid and disgusting spectacle.
It is difficult to form an idea of the pride and ignorance of the Moors ”

“ It will be a pleasant world, Meta; and God will love us.”
Meta was crying silently. “Let me go too, mamma.”
“In a little while, darling. If God calls me first, it is His will,” she continued, the sobs breaking from her aching heart. “I shall ask Him to take care of you after I am gone, and to bring you to me in time; I am asking Him always.”
“Who’ll be my mamma then?” cried Meta, lifting her head in a bustle, as the thought occurred to her.
More pain. Maria choked it down, and stroked the golden curls.
“You will have no mamma, then, in this world. Only papa.” ”

“ But they sat so quietly that but for their breathing and an occasional cough or low-toned word, mammy would have been unconscious of their presence.
And now Drusilla bent forward and cautiously touched the nurse, and whispered:
“Mammy, come and sit by me. I have something to say to you. Don’t answer me aloud, but do as I tell you.”
“Lor’, honey, is you waked up? It was that there man a-making of his noise, getting outn’t his seat. Some people can’t never keep quiet. But, honey, I’m afraid if I moves I might fall on you,” said mammy. ”

“ But the mother is yet too busy for my resignation. You Percival, are my hope; you see the partial hand of nature has endowed your sister Mary with a beauty, which all must acknowledge; I dread it, as her misfortune. You know her artless, unsuspecting nature, the cheerful gaiety of her temper, and her soft, compliant disposition. Guard her, as you wish for a mother's blessing! Your father's pursuits in life, his excessive fondness for his dear girl, and, I may say it to you, his want of mental attainments, must disqualify him for the guide of her youthful career. ”

“ Hun cried triumphantly.
"Couldn't it be bedtime?" said the mother. "All children cry in bed some time or other, some cry when the time comes, and all deny bedtime has come."
"Mamma can't guess it, either; mamma doesn't know," jubilated the little fellow, leaping about.
"It might be leave-taking," said the father. "Leave-taking makes everybody cry, taking some children away makes some cry and at Dora's leave-taking, everybody is sorry."
"Papa can't guess it either, papa can't guess it!" ”

“ Ah! that mystery of life, that mystery of motherhood, what are the accidents of social law, the big conventions of virtue and vice, of honor and disgrace, before the touch of the spreading fingers of a babe as they fasten on the mother's breast! Mercy thought no more of her shame.
She had her baby for it, at all events. The world was not utterly desolate. After all, God was very good!
Then came a great longing for sight. She only wished to see her child. That was all. Wasn't it hard that a mother had never seen her own baby? ”

“ Why art thou so cold and pale? Mamma! Mamma!”
The silken lashes are not lifted from the marble cheek; the white lips make no answer.
“She is so weary, I will not disturb her. I will watch until she wakens.”
The morning creeps away, the noon, and the afternoon, and now the evening comes.
“Mamma! my dear mamma!”
Still the eyelids are not lifted, and the white lips are dumb.
The night goes by, and a day, and another night, and the morning dawns once more. And again the woman comes peering through the door.
“She is dead,” Julie hears her say.
Men enter and carry the mother away. ”

“ The schoolmistress waited for another minute, smoothing the curls.
"You're only right a little girl, Dora, but you're the only one. You must try to be good, and look after poor little Jack and Jim, and your father—and be a comfort."
"Yes, tacher." Dora took courage beneath the caressing hand: "I like to be a comfit to mother best," she vouchsafed, brightly daring.
"But your mother——" the governess said, then stopped and turned away her head; she could not bring herself to tell the child the news of the mother she had heard that morning, since school began. ”

“ I did not envy her tenderness for her grandchildren; but, oh! how I longed like them to call her mother!
Family ties, above all, brought distressing recollections over me. I! who was doomed never to be the sister, wife, or mother of any human being! Perhaps I fancied these ties more endearing than they really were; and because they were out of my reach, I foolishly neglected those that were not. But I had no friend, no confidant. My feeling for Madame de B. was that of worship rather than of affection; but I believe that I felt the utmost love of a sister for Charles. ”

“ I have further heard that the girls of the third form have each in turn acted as his school-mother.”
“Oh yes—oh yes!” said Ralph, coming forward now, and speaking with great eagerness: “I has got eight mothers, and I don’t want to lose one of them. My bestest mothers are my naughty one and my goodest one. Robina is my goodest one, and Harriet is my naughtiest one: I love them best, but I love all the others too.”
“You, I think, are Robina Starling,” said Mr Durrant, fixing his eyes on Robina’s face. ”

“ Our supposed blessings often prove to us a source of disappointment and sorrow. I have seen the mother clasp her lovely infant to her breast, and fondly and dotingly caress it, and press its little hands and feet, soft as velvet, with her lips. And I have seen that child, the rainbow of promise, and the cause of so much joy, bring down that mother's head, ere it was gray, with sorrow to the grave. ”

“ It isn't fair," said Rosemary, with a little difficulty. "Not only Dad and Bess and the maids, but you and I, too, we can't help idolizing mamma. And sometimes we never think of mother—our own mother!—except as tired and sick and struggling—that's all I remember, anyway. And mamma is all strength and sweetness and health." ”

“ The child said this, all the time clinging to her with both her hands, in an ecstasy of panic.
"There—there, my darling," said my poor wife, "don't be afraid; there's nothing but me—your own mamma—and little baby in the room; nothing, my darling; nothing indeed."
"Mamma, mamma, don't move; don't go near him"; the child continued wildly. "It's only his back now; don't make him turn again; he's untying his handkerchief. Oh! baby, baby; he'll kill baby! and he's lifting up those green things from his eyes; don't you see him doing it? Mamma, mamma, why does he come here? ”

“ You have two beautiful children—then give me one, and receive to your maternal care my poor, blighted Agatha.”
“And are you a father! and can you talk thus easily of severing the holy bond of parent and child!” interrupted Mrs. Oakly. “Have you not a wife—is there no mother to be consulted in your most unnatural scheme!”
“Yes—an unhappy mother; but she has already consented. Aware that in perfect retirement her poor child can alone know happiness, she is willing to yield her up to your gentle treatment, and will in return bestow her love and tenderness upon your own babe. ”

“ Ruth doesn't live near her people, you know. They're in Iowa. They must know about her, of course, but apparently she doesn't take Ruth to them. She just goes out there to see her, or takes her some place. And, mammie, that family that keep her, they love her; they want to adopt her; they do everything for her. Miss Curtis won't be jealous of them, but they have her nearly all the time. My God! Mammie, when I think of it! She can always come here, can't she, mammie? We can be friends to her, mammie!" And when Martha turned to her mother her eyes were swimming with tears. ”

“ At the sight of Doris, Miss Judy always ceased to be an old maid and became a young mother. For there is a motherhood of the spirit as well as the motherhood of the flesh, and the one may be truer than the other. ”

“ Is'nt mamma good?"
"Yes, Eddy," replied the nurse, "your mamma is very good; and you should love her so much, and do everything she tells you to do."
"I do love her," said the child. "Oh, I love her more than all the world; and I'm going to mind every thing she says."
Then the child went to his play, and was happy with his toys. But his thoughts were on the picture-book, and pleasantly his young imagination lingered amid its attractive pages.
"Is'nt it 'most time for mother to be home?" he asked, at the end of half an hour, coming to the side of his nurse, and gazing up into her face. ”

“ When this unfortunate state of affairs in our household first became public property, I cannot tell. I saw the servants, some grow dissatisfied and leave, some grow impertinent, while some kind of mysterious knowledge was shared by all.
"Miss Laura," said my good nurse, Emma, to me one day, "I want to talk to you very seriously. You are fifteen, and you are no longer a child. I want to impress this much upon your mind—never say anything to your mamma about Miss Reinhart, and if my lady asks any questions, try to say as little as possible—do you understand?" ”

“ And the lady scowls, and shakes her head, and half closes the forbidding door,—not thinking of that other mother's heart,—never dreaming that such a gaunt and pallid wight ever had a mother at all. For the idea that those long, lean hands, reaching far out of the short and split coat-sleeves, had been a baby's pure, soft hands once, and had pressed the white maternal breasts, and had played with the kisses of the fond maternal lips,—it was scarcely conceivable; and a delicate-minded matron, like Mrs. Gingerford, may well be excused for not entertaining any such distressing fancy. ”

“ Aunt Dora came last week to keep house for Mother. We are not going skating, for we are always afraid that Mother might get worse just when we are away. As soon as she is able to get up for long enough Father is going to take her to see a specialist in the diseases of women; so it must be true that Mother’s illness comes from that. ”

“ Rose was all unprepared for this. She almost screamed in a voice of agony, “O mamma! mamma! O God! kill me where I stand for making my mother weep!”
“My girl,” said the baroness in a broken voice, and with the most touching dignity, “may you never know what a mother feels who finds herself shut out from her daughters’ hearts. Sometimes I think it is my fault; I was born in a severer age. A mother nowadays seems to be a sort of elder sister. ”

“ I asked, "did your mother permit you to be out at such an hour?"
"My mother!" she repeated with a light laugh. "My mother is nothing but a baby. She neither cared nor knew where I was or what I did."
"What about your father?" I ventured. "I understand you and he were great friends."
If I had struck the girl, the effect could not have been more certain. She arose quickly, her face aquiver with pain; she threw her hands forward as if in appeal to some unseen figure; then she moaned, "Oh! Daddy!" and she was gone.
Like the stupid old meddler I was, I tore the wound afresh. ”

“ Every thing I see remains unchanged; it is only Clara and myself who were doomed to sink into death and wretchedness! My mother—cruel mother!—it is all my mother!" Oppressed with grief, Julia sank into silence, and she suffered herself to be carried into the rooms which once constituted the sleeping apartments and dressing-room of herself and Anna Maria. ”

“ Meta sobbed on. “I want mamma! I want mamma, who talked to me and nursed me. Mamma loved us.”
“Yes, she loved us,” he said, his heart wrung with the recollection of the past: “we shall never find any one else to love us as she loved. Meta, child, listen! Mamma lives still; she is looking down from heaven now, and sees and hears us; she loves us, and will love us for ever. ”

“ What makes that mother feel so towards her unborn babe? It is to her an unwelcome child. Maternity is thrust upon her before she is prepared for it. Her body shrinks from the suffering it brings to her; her soul sanctions not, but abhors, its existence. God, speaking through the body and soul of that mother, frowns on its conception, its development, and its birth. Its mother, and the God of its mother, are conspiring against the health, the happiness, the character and destiny, of the child, and of the future man or woman. ”

“ Mammy protested against this idolatry; but Drusilla answered her:
“It is not idolatry, nurse; because I do not place the gift before the Giver. There is not an instant in my life that I am not conscious of fervent gratitude to the Lord for giving me this child, a gift forever and ever; a gift for time and eternity; oh, nurse, a gift, of which nothing on earth or in Heaven can deprive me!”
“Don’t say that, ma’am; the Lord might take the child,” said mammy, solemnly.
“I know that, nurse. The Lord might take him to Heaven, to save him from the evil in this world ”