--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Madsen, Harry W. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 32 number: 8 published: 1929-06 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Harry W. Madsen, “Tribute to Father, or Maybe ’Tis to Mother,” *Improvement Era* 32, no. 8 (June 1929): 658–659." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3208unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera3208unse start_page: 658 end_page: 659 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1929-06) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3208unse publication_year: 1929 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1929, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Tribute to Father, or Maybe ’Tis to Mother M Tribute to Father, or Maybe 'Tis to Mother By Harry W. Madsen UCH is made of "Mother's Day" each year. None but a craven could find fault with any such proceeding, be it ever so extravagant and sentimental — for anyone, but a bachelor of soured years, will admit that the family yoke falls heaviest on the woman of the house. Marriage for the woman is a life's sentence, making mandatory upon her the surrender of much that she has previously enjoyed. Girlish notions must be locked in memory's vault, to be peeped at occasionally; and who but a woman can interpret the emotion that accompanies their recall? Let us pray that the hopes of girlhood are not recalled with too much regret. The other member of the marriage yoke goes blundering on, adding numbers to his name, if not much glory. Ignorant, too often, of his wife's finer sensibilities, he is scant comfort to her. His job, as he assumes it, is to look after the stomach of the household as the demand increases. The heart and head are left largely to the mother's discretion. Under such an arrangement it is small wonder man's calling in the home is counted for little except in times of famine and very cold weather. No doubt it is this arrangement which dictated the policy of celebrating our greatest festival, Christmas, in the dead of winter, when we have most need of our Heavenly Father's bounty. Tn April we are cocky enough to think we can take care of ourselves. I don't know the attending circumstances which led to the observance of a Father's Day; but am strongly of the opinion it was agitated by some tactful women in order to appease their jealous husbands. What won't women do in the interest of harmony in the home? The white carnation is the accepted flower for Mother's Day. Sometimes it is a funeral tribute to all the fine things a woman has to bury, for the privilege of being the mother of children of uncertain propensities. The Father's Day flower should be the bachelor button, con- spicuously displayed to keep the wearers reminded of what they are not. Wives sometimes serve this same purpose, but they are not always available in sufficient numbers on this occasion. The ob- servance of this day is still too new to count for much, and it is even contended that married men never have a day. It has been recorded that one man whose wife was stricken with lockjaw was three days a«. "29 TRIBUTE TO FATHER 659 getting the doctor. He afterward affirmed that these three days were the most peaceful of all his married life. Father in the home is stern justice; mother tempers justice with mercy. Father is the ten commandments; mother, the Sermon on the Mount. Father looks pleased when a son distinguishes himself; mother tells him how pleased she is. Mother scolds and cries when you disgrace yourself; father looks dejected and sternly blows his nose. When father does anything, all the world knows about it; mother is so used to doing things she considers it not worth while to mention them. When father undertakes a domestic task the whole house shakes; mother works all day without even waking the baby. Father throws things right and left and then pours out vials of wrath because things never are where they can be found; mother quietly picks up everything, and knows where to find them when needed. When father has to give up a proposed trip or game he loudly heralds himself to be the most unselfish of mortals; mother, all her days, knows nothing but sacrifice for others. When father is stricken with a cold, he just knows he is going to die and the mothering he expects would make a baby blush. But when mother is too sick even to crawl she is still expected to walk about and smile. Father means to do all right and sometimes he does. His heart isn't all stomach where his family is concerned and when a little fellow who looks like him, who is flesh of his flesh and heart of his heart, reaches up and calls him Dad, I tell you he experiences a feel- ing that not even a woman can understand. With all his weaknesses, father is a handy thing to have about the place to keep things in repair and pay the bills. He blusters and says a lot of things he does not mean and then on certain occasions he means a lot he just can't say, and has to leave mother and the children to guess what his feelings are. Though he becomes all puffed up at a little praise from mother, he is usually too stupid to try the praise tonic on her. Man and wife are a great combination, provided they are prop- erly mixed and each of them learns right early the importance of both of them doing exactly as SHE pleases. Someone has said it is a "give and take" proposition, but until something more definite is established I won't venture to say who is to do the giving and who the taking. Statistics show that some men have been known to buy candy and flowers for their own wives. When this becomes a habit, Mother's Day and Father's Day can be a weekly affair with good prospects of instituting a daily edition a little later on.