Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1911 — Father Now Has His Day [ARTICLE]

Father Now Has His Day

FATHER. Upon his shoulders weigh the sters demands Of men and nations; but erect he stands. Firm and unfaltering. A sovereign he, and to no royal handi Doth servile tribute bring. You see him how, on threshold passing o’er, While ail his pride's apparel falls before Young eyes, that greet “Father” at the door Where love Is king. A great many years ago father appeared in only one song: , “Father, Dear Father, Come Home with Me Now," a song that represented the head of the family hanging over a bar drinking himself to death, and little children sang It at temperance meetings to arouse the world to the evil of drink, and to show what it does to father. .

A half century later, and only a few years ago, some song writer who knew how to appeal to public sentiment to enrich his purse composed “Everybody Works but Father,” and when father went home tired at night his children, urged on by their mother, pounded on the piano he had bought, in the parlor he had furnished, in the home he had built for his family, a song that was so slanderous it was enough to make him behave in a fashion to revive the first song: written in hi’s honor “Father, Dear Father, etc.” These were the sum total of the songß that mentioned Father, and as for poetry, it fairly ran over at the top with sentiments about Mother and the Children, but never a word .for Father. ... But Father is long-suffering and patient, and he struggled along without poems in his honor without moan, and was libelled in song without protest If he got his three meals a day. and his change of underwear was laid out for him he was content if the tyres and harps were tuned for Mother. The injustice extended along othei lines, but Father was too accustomed to the cold potatoes of life to rebel, and a woman has rebelled for him. He hasn’t a Day! Of course, sometimes he had a night, but that has nothing to do with this story. . What Father lacked to make his life one grand sweet song was a Day. Had you thought that Father hadn't a Day? Yet, undoubtedly, you once had a father, or perhaps are one yourself. ‘ He hadn’t a Day, and it remained for a woman to lift him out of an unsung, un-rhymed, Day-less existence, and give him one. It’s a Year Old, at That. And that woman is Mrs. John Bruce Dodd, of Spokane, Washington. Take off your hats to her! Half a century ago some one set aside the second Sunday in June as Children’s Day, and on that day the little children are taken to church and special services are held to make them forget the seats are hard and the breezes are shaking the blossoms outside.

Five years ago Miss Anna Jarvis, ol Philadelphia, punched an unsentimental world awake, and inaugurated Mothers’ Day, the second Sunday iD May, when Mother goes to church to hear sermons and songs telling how good she is, and every one wears white carnations in her honor, and in homes where she is properly honored father gets the dinner. But there was no Father’s Day, and Mrs .John Bruce Dodd, of Spokane, saw the injustice and hastened to put a red ring around the third Sunday in June. Hereafter that is to be Fathers’ Day and thiß year will behold its second celebration. _ The emblem for Father’s Day is not a sprig of old man; neither is it boy’s love, father being more than a tooju and, of course, it couldn’t be bachelor’s button, so Mrs. Dodd made it a rose, and that is the flower you must wear the third Sunday in June for father. If he is living, wear a colored rose, and if he has been gathered to his fathers, wear a white one. What color is appropriate in the event that he has been divorced from your mother? Mrs. Dodd doesn’t say. Those delicate little family affairs require special colors, badges and rules, and will be attended to after Father’s Day becomes an established institution. Mrs. Dodd will also have to decide if Father’s Day is a feast or a fast. Does he come on the calendar as a penance or a joyful occasion? It is planned by the originator ol Father's Day that on the third Sunday in June Father be helped into his holiday clothes and escorted to church, where the preacher will devote a sermon to him and the choir will give the tenor and basso a turn in his honor. Every woman present will wear a rose, and after church Father will be escorted home and a dinner will be served that he neither had to plan or cook, only to pay for. That is the program if Father is living. If he is dead the women will go to the cemetery and decorate his grave, and fathers who were good will be wept for and so will the fathers who were not, so filled with sentiment is the heart of woman. In the afternoon Father will sit on a pedestal with his halo on and a special attention will toe paid to him — special attention being to refrain from calling attention to the need of new hats and new furniture, and to let-hlm forget plumbers’ and dressmakers bills.

The program may not please Father, but the hero who is sung has nothing to do with the making ot the song, and if Father would rather have a day without sermon or rose that only indicates his lack of Higher Feeling, and the greater the need of woman’s management is to.be a woman's way of doing homage, Nmd if it contains sermon instead of fishing rod. Father most sit on his perch, instead of trying to catch them, and be grateful Odes Instead of Hash. If he rebels at the program and refuses to go to church, sentlmet will sanction any woman who binds him and drees him tw* hIW «uui M

upiirted and exalted. It ia not enough that he be told 344 days in the year by his women folks that he is the greatest man in the world; he must get the news once a year from his preachsr. He may tire of his pedestal and wish to mingle with common folks, but thlgis not to be Father’s day off; it is to be his 'day on. It will be difficult to find a day's length supply of poetry to read in his honor, but the poets are gradually making up the deficiency. When Father’s Day was first suggested by Mrs Dodd a search failed to reveal one poem praising Father. Now, after a whple year, there are two! Father Is doing better.