Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 54, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1920 — TWO MOTHERS; TWO BABIES; AND GOD [ARTICLE]

TWO MOTHERS; TWO BABIES; AND GOD

Eight months ago in a maternity hospital in Atlanta, Ga., two babies were born the same hour. One, Mary Elizabeth, blue-eyed, was not given her fair share of baby beauty. The wee bit of humanity was not pretty. The other, Louise Madeline, brown-eyed, was blessed with a superbundance of lovliness—‘the prettiest baby you ever saw,’ nurses exclaimed. And when the two mothers opened tbeir arms for their babies, nurses gave to Mrs. John C. Garner the blue-eyed baby, and to Mrs. Daniel L. Pitman, the brown-eyed baby. They, the nurses, said the babies had been tagged immediately after birth, and scrupulous care was taken to get the baby back to. the right metier. —— . But Mrs. Garner insisted the blueeyed baby—the one not so pretty—was not her baby. She claimed the prettier baby. - The other mother —Mrs. Pitman —was perfectly well satisfied with the pretty brown-eyed baby, and just as sure it was her own child. Neither mother wanted Mary Elizabeth. And they went to court about the matter. , . Here fate took a hand in the tangled claims. "Tha baby not so pretty—little Mary Elizabeth—died. Pneumonia, the doctors said. But it must have been God Himself, the Almighty, who doesn’t 'have in mind mere bodily formations, or complexions, or facial features, when He says: “For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The human court 'began considering the rival claims of the two mothers. Louis Madeline’s rival, Mary Elizabeth, no longer was in the land of living, and no longer did her pleading, blue eyes beg for mother love and mother-arms, for Mary Elizabeth had gone to a home where' Ugly babies are loved and cherished as are pretty babies. And now just the other day, the pretty baby, Louise Madeline, while Still the mother claims were pending in court,-tried in her baby way to help the human judge decide which was her mother. Louise Madeline fell into an open grate and burned her face terribly. Physicians say Louis Madeline may join Mary Elizabeth in Heaven. They are quite sure that, if Louise Madeline does live, she will never be pretty, as humans reckon prettiness. Her baby 'beauty is marred for all her earthly life. The hand of fate? The'hand of God? Who knows? Maybe a mother who* reads this may have something to say. The editor will be glad to print what she writes for him, but the editor himself is content to call it the story of two mothers, two 'babies and God.