Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1882 — FROM KING TO PATRIARCH. [ARTICLE]

FROM KING TO PATRIARCH.

BY BILL ABP.

When a man begins to get along in years he gradually changes fiom being a king in his family to a patriarch. He is more tender and kind to his offspring, and instead of ruling them, the first thing he knows they are ruling him. My youngest children and my grandchildren just run over me now, and it takes more than half of my time to keep up with ’em, and find eut where they are and what they are doing. Sometimes I get mad and rip up and around like I was going to do something desperate, but Mrs. Arp oomes slipping along and begins to tell how they didn’t mean any harm, and they are just like all other boys, and wanted to know if I didn’t do them sort of things when I was a boy. Well, that’s a fact—l did —and I got a lickin’ for it, too. You see, I was one of the oldest boys, and they always catch it, but the youngest one never gets a lickin’, for by the time he comes along the old man has mellowed down and wants a pet. The older children have married and gone, and the old folks feel sorter like they have been thrown off for somebody no kin to ’em, and so they twine around those that are left all the closer; but by-and-by they grow up, too, and leave them and it’s pitiful to see the goed old couple bereft of their children and living alone in their glory. Then is the time that grandchildren find a welcome in the old family homestead, for as Solomon saith, the glory of the old man is his children’s children. Then is the time that the chaps of the second and third generation love to escape from their wellruled home and for a while find refuge and freedom and frolic at grandpa's. A. child without a grandpa and grandma can never have its share of happiness. I’m sorry for ’em. Blessings on the good old people, the venerable grandparents of the land, the people with good old honest ways and simple habits and limited desires, who indulge in ne folly, who hanker after no big thing, but live along serene, and covet nothing but the happiness of their children and their children’s children. I said to a good old mother not long ago: “Well, I hear that Anna is to be married.”

“Yeg, sir,** said she, smiling sorrflwfnlly, “I don’t know what I will do. The last daughter I’ve got is going to leave me. I’ve nursed her and petted her all her life, and I kinder thought •she was mine and would always be mine, but she’s run off arter a feller she’s no kin to in the world, one whe never did a thing for her but give her a ring and a book or two and a little French candy now and then, and it does look so Btrange and unreasonable. I couldn’t understand it all if—if I hadn’t done the same thing a long time ago,” and she kept knitting away with a smile and a tear her motherly face. \ But I’m not going to slander these little chaps that keep us so busy looking after them, for their is no meanness in their mischief, and if they take liberties it is because we let ’em. Mrs. Arp says they are just too sweet to live, and is always narrating some of their smart sayings. Well, they are mighty smart, for they know exactly how to get everything and do everything they want, or they know how to manage her, and they know that she manages me and that settles it. A man is the head of a house about some things, . and about some other things he is only next to the head, if he ain’t a fool. A man can punish his children, but it’s always advisable to make an explanation in due timg and let his wife knew what he did it for, because, you see, they are her children, sure enough, and she knows it and feels it. The pain and trouble, the nursing and night watching have all been hers. The washing and dressing, and mending and patching—tieing up fingers and toes, and sympathizing with ’em in all their great big little troubles all falls to her while the father is tending to his farm, or his store, or his office, or his friends, or may be his billiard table. When a woman says “This is my child,” it carries more weight and more meaning than when a man says it, and I’ve not got much respect for a law that will give a man a preferenc.e of ownership just because he is a man.