Fatherless

“ Well, child, having so many fatherless children of my own, it came natural to me to try to make a motherless girl comfortable; for, as I often says to myself, suppose my children had been motherless, for though it is bad enough to be fatherless, it is ten thousand times worse to be motherless, as every orphan child knows. So now, my dear, I think, as you are determined to finish your book before you go to bed, the sooner I go and leave you to do it the better. ”

“ All I can say at the present moment is this: that you are very young, and you are motherless, and—you are about, little Annie, to be fatherless. You are on the very eve of losing the noblest and best father that girl ever possessed. Your uncle has stood in the place of a father to you. ”

“ I cannot tell else how the wretched mother can take, lovingly and patiently, to her heart another little one, when her failing strength is already tasked to the utmost to care for little brothers and sisters, who, having a father, are yet fatherless. ”

“ They judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, and the right of the needy. The fatherless are often needy, always need assistance and advice, and advantage is taken of their helpless condition to do them an injury. ”

“ If my relatives do not show the interest in you which your fatherless state should inspire, renounce this world soon, where, separated from your father, there exists for you but danger and misfortune. ”

“ The mother was a Christian, and putting her arm around the neck of Willy, and with the other hand clasping her daughter, she calmly said to them, "Weep not, dear children, you will find friends; God is the father of the fatherless. ”

“ It is urged, then, that in the Swan-Maid group the father is either unmentioned or subordinate, the wife or mother is supreme, the family and not the father consent to or refuse the marriage, the hero is, as a rule, a fatherless child. ”

“ To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction - Works of charity and mercy are the proper fruits of religion; and none are more especially the objects of charity and mercy than the orphans and widows. False religion may perform acts of mercy and charity; but its motives not being pure, and its principle being defiled, the flesh, self, and hypocrisy, spot the man, and spot his acts. True religion does not merely give something for the relief of the distressed, but it visits them, it takes the oversight of them, it takes them under its care ”

“ Presents and gratuities will blind their eyes at any time, and make them pervert judgment. These they love and are eager in the pursuit of. [2.] The duty of their places is none of their care. They ought to protect those that are injured, and take cognizance of the appeals made to them; why else were they preferred? But they judge not the fatherless, take no care to guard the orphans, nor does the cause of the widow come unto them, because the poor widow has no bribe to give, with which to make way for her and to bring her cause on. ”

“ But now, what do we see, when the name of father is so dishonored,—made a wreck, as it were? Why, the order of nature is reversed, and these children take on the protective. They are father and mother, and he is the weak, sinning child. ”

“ Nevertheless, cruelly forsaken in my last misfortunes, I have found in a stranger only, the compassion assistance, and tenderness of a father Without renouncing him who has rejected me. I have thought myself at liberty to adopt him whose virtue and beneficence render him worthy of such a sacred title. The father I have chosen is in obscure and needy circumstances; he is neither distinguished by family nor fortune, but he is virtuous and sensible. ”

“ See to it that your husband gives up those silly notions, and do you buy a shop or a stall—and may the merits of the fathers on your side and on his be your help and stay!
Further, I advise you to throw off the melancholy with which your letter is penetrated, so that it is heart-breaking to read. A human being without faith is worse than a beast. He goes about the world like an orphan without a father. ”

“ Let the father look upon the dawning intelligence of the boy that prattles around his knee, the pride of his fond heart, and the hope and stay of his honest name; and then, if he can, let him picture him in distant bondage, the fountain of his affections dried up, the light of knowledge extinguished in his mind, his manly and upright spirit broken by oppression, and his free person and just proportions marred and lacerated by the incessant scourge. ”

“ First, my foster mother, then Vitalis, then another... Was it to be always so? Should I never find anyone that I could love and stay with always? Little by little I had grown attached to Vitalis. He seemed almost what I thought a father would be. Should I never have a father, have a family? Always alone in this great world! Nobody's boy! ”

“ Without father or mother, without friends, without the sense of belonging to anybody in the world, of ever being loved or pitied by a single human soul. Even the idea of a kind and loving Father in heaven had no meaning for him. ”

“ Yet to each parent comes an hour (Though fain he would the same delay) When other and resistless power Will steal the youthful heart away. And when a father here inquires For daughter lost; then, let him learn That daughters, though they love their sires, To other loves some day will turn; Nor convent rules nor home’s own charms, Will keep them from a lover’s arms. ”

“ Then another woman said:
"'Tis my own son that from me you wring,
I deceived not the King.
[Pg 154] But slay me, even me,
And let my boy be.
A mother most hapless,
My bosom is sapless,
Mine eyes one tearful river,
My frame one fearful, shiver,
My husband sonless ever,
And I a sonless wife
To live a death in life.
O my son! O God of Truth!
O my unrewarded youth,
O my birthless sicknesses
Until doom without redress.
O my bosom's silent nest,
O the heart broke in my breast." ”

“ If mother cannot go out in the automobile; if mother cannot play the piano; if mother cannot read to him, or tell him stories; if mother cannot come to the table for her meals;—the sight of this and the knowledge that he is the cause of it, will put a terrible tug on the heart-strings and the conscience. And in extreme cases, [Pg 269] if father has to be included in the punishment, and deprived of his pleasures, too, that makes the boy's feeling of guilty responsibility even more pronounced. ”

“ Sir, there are fathers—indeed, I believe, most fathers living—who would rather see any child of theirs stretched and shrouded up in the grave than know them to be guilty of such a base and deliberate violation of all the sacred principles of truth as this. ”

“ It is what I have not yet made any experiment of or thought of, and should be very glad if you would dispense with my undertaking it, and let me enjoy the happiness of loving and being beloved with all the disinterestedness I proposed to myself. But the demand of a father is a command upon every child who, like me, thinks it his duty to obey him in everything. ”

“ One is called upon to take care of him, to give way to him in all things, to submit when he reviles or strikes you. "But he is a bad father." Did nature, then, bring you into relationship with a good father? ”

“ Where is the father so inhuman that he will demand of the stripling, the infirm, the feminine members of his family to procure the means of support, before he has exhausted every other effort that can be made by himself and his stalwart sons? ”

“ As all things in this world and the next were pre-ordained, the father must remain the father in spite of everything, just as the chosen remained chosen, and the evil evil; the heart might bleed, but Divine Providence must have its way. ”

“ Is not the possession of one thing better than the expectation of two? (11) Thou art my son as well as thy father's; and I am present, while he is absent. I conclude, therefore, that you ought by no means to forsake me though to redeem your father." The son very properly answered, "Although I am thy son yet he is my father. He is abroad and surrounded by the merciless; but thou art at home, protected and cherished by loving friends. ”

“ Where is the father that does not long to shelter his child's sweet innocence forever within the pavilion of his heart's loving tenderness? And yet, where is the father who would be free from torture, were he assured that his soul's yearning would be satisfied, and that no high claim of unrelated love would ever rival or dispute his own? ”

“ And the hopeless part of my predicament is that now I’m the father of a child in turn—although somehow I can’t feel like a father!—and if I don’t play out my hand, the day’s coming when my child is going to turn around and execrate me as cordially as I feel like execrating my own folks to-night! ”

“ Therefore I say to son or daughter who has no pleasure in the name Father, 'You must interpret the word by all that you have missed in life. Every time a man might have been to you a refuge from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, that was a time when a father might have been a father indeed. Happy you are yet, if you have found man or woman such a refuge ”

“ But on the other hand, the father, from his distance, supports, protects, nourishes his child, and it is ultimately on the remote but powerful father-love that the infant rests, in a rest which is beyond mother-love. ”

“ Is it not the sweetest music ear of maker can hear?—except the word of perfect son, 'Lo, I come to do thy will, O God!' We, imperfect sons, shall learn to say the same words too: that we may grow capable and say them, and so enter into our birthright, yea, become partakers of the divine nature in its divinest element, that Son came to us—died for the slaying of our selfishness, the destruction of our mean hollow pride, the waking of our childhood. We are his father's debtors for our needs, our rights, our claims, and he will have us pay the uttermost farthing. ”

“ That is a father—and that is a mother—whose gray hairs are coming with sorrow to the grave. That is a sister, weeping over evils which she cannot arrest; and there is the broken-hearted wife; and there are the children, hapless innocents, for whom their father has provided the inheritance only of dishonor, and nakedness and woe. ”

“ I know that if my father were living and I should send any one to intercede for me he would feel hurt and ask, ‘Am I such a father that my own son cannot come to me instead of sending some one else?’ Why should we make out God to be such an unnatural Father that He will not admit His own children to His presence without being paid for it or through some one else as an intercessor? ”

“ Would that father be called good, reasonable, just and kind, who put a sharp-edged and dangerous knife into the hand of a playful, and imprudent child, whom he before knew to be imprudent, and punished him during the remainder of his life for cutting himself with it? ”

“ His mother, worn out and dispirited, died in giving him birth, and his father, bitter, lonely and filled with the irony that comes from a long and unprofitable hand-to-hand fight with mother-earth, let him bring himself up. ”

“ A father punished, hereafter, by his Redeemer and Judge, a father banished from the company of heaven, knowing that his family are there, and that if his influence had had its full effect, they would all have perished with him,—or a father with a part of his children with him in perdition, the wife and mother with one or more of the children in heaven,—is a picture of woe which nothing but timely repentance and faith in Christ may prevent from being a reality in the experience of some who read these lines. ”

“ All fathers are hypocrites and are never willing to confess that their own flesh and blood is very troublesome when it walks about on two legs, lays its dare-devil hands on everything, and is everywhere at once like a frisky pollywog. Your son barks, mews, and sings; he breaks, smashes and soils the furniture, and furniture is dear; he makes toys of everything, he scatters your papers, and he cuts paper dolls out of the morning’s newspaper before you have read it. ”

“ Not only may the two above-mentioned attributes of the parent, fatherliness and tyranny, be split off so as to give rise to the creation of separate figures, but others also. For instance, the power and authority of the parent may be invested in the person of a king or other distinguished man, who may be contrasted with the lowly-born father. ”

“ I have no parents to love me, as other children have!" Thick tears coursed their rapid way over the rosy cheeks of the deserted foundling.
"Be still, and do not weep, my poor child! [151] You have a Father above,—one who is a Father to us all,—who loves you, and will take care of you." ”

“ If you will tell me that I am to hold my father born in more than common sin, to have committed a crime in marrying my mother, and that I am to hold myself as one who ought never to have been born, then I will accept what you have said about that stone. ”

“ Do not expect me to describe what is indescribable—my bitter experience, my pain and anger, my remorse, forlornness. His father—no, he is not worthy of he name of father; my husband, yet not my husband; a man, and not a man ”

“ Is it not the duty of a father to preserve his only son from imbibing these dangerous and debasing errors, which will render him only one of a vile herd who are content to suffer, provided that they live? ”

“ How would you like to become the father—and a mere glance around you will show you that the chances are enormously in favour of such a thing happening—of a boy with spectacles and protruding front teeth who asks questions all the time? ”