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Show 84 children's concert; a day at Mother Shipp's which ends with singing and brings Ellis a flood of delighted nostalgia; having Brigham Young as dinner guest in Milford's household (Milford will later trot the fact out like a trophy when his self-image needs enhancement); and a visit to a local Catholic Church, which makes Ellis further appreciate the "blessed privileges of the true Gospel." Sunday, April 20, 1873 ends in this fashion: Milford and Lizzie have gone to her mother's to supper. Maggie has gone home with Mother Shipp, Mary is sick upstairs- her mother is with her. Blessed girl, her mother is with her. I feel discouraged. I am at a loss to know what to do with my children, they are so wild, so ungovernable. I desire to be a good mother but it seems I lack the government and judgment. What a sad thought! How it pains me as I write it, to think I have not power to govern my little ones. Oh, could they but realize the love, the all absorbing feelings of a mother's heart, they could at least repay her with obedience, but I know the deficiency must lie in the training and government of the child-but when one is weakened with sickness and pain what can she do.17 The pointed references to mothers of the other wives tend to underscore the deprivation Ellis felt in having lost her own mother in her youth. She memorialized the effect of this loss in one of her poems, the kernel of which is in these lines: My mother left me very young, Which over all my life hath flung A sense of insufficiency...18 To add to her mood of discouragement, earlier the same day she was chastised by Mother Shipp for not better defending her daughter Flora in a conversation with Brigham Young. Her reaction is here included, for it is the only instance among her many references to her benefactor where he is characterized as anything but a very benevolent man. |