Few things are more painful to look upon than the self-renunciation, the self-abnegation of mothers,—­painful both for its testimony and its prophecy.  Its testimony is of over-care, over-work, over-weariness, the abuse of capacities that were bestowed for most sacred uses, an utter waste of most pure and life-giving waters.  Its prophecy is of early decline and decadence, forfeiture of position and power, and worst, perhaps, of all, irreparable loss and grievous wrong to the children for whom all is sacrificed.

God gives to the mother supremacy in her family.  It belongs to her to maintain it.  This cannot be done without exertion.  The temptation to come down from her throne and become a mere hewer of wood, and drawer of water is very strong.  It is so much easier to work with the hands than with the head.  One can chop sticks all day serenely unperplexed.  But to administer a government demands observation and knowledge and judgment and resolution and inexhaustible patience.  Yet, however uneasy lies the head that wears the crown of womanhood, that crown cannot be bartered away for any baser wreath without infinite harm.  In both cases there must be sacrifice; but in the one case it is unto death, in the other unto life.  If the mother stands on high ground, she brings her children up to her own level; if she sinks, they sink with her.

To maintain her rank, no exertion is too great, no means too small.  Dress is one of the most obvious things to a child.  If the mother wears cheap or shabby or ill-assorted clothes, while the children’s are fine and harmonious, it is impossible that they should not receive the impression that they are of more consequence than their mother.  Therefore, for her children’s sake, if not for her own, the mother should always be well-dressed.  Her baby, so far as it is concerned in the matter, instead of being an excuse for a faded bonnet, should be an inducement for a fresh one.  It is not a question of riches or poverty; it is a thing of relations.  It is simply that the mother’s dress—­her morning and evening and street and church dress—­should be quite as good as, and if there is any difference, better than her child’s.  It is of no manner of consequence how a child is clad, provided only its health be not injured, its taste corrupted, or its self-respect wounded.  Children look prettier in the cheapest and simplest materials than in the richest and most elaborate.  But how common is it to see the children gayly caparisoned in silk and feathers and flounces, while the mother is enveloped in an atmosphere of cottony fadiness!  One would take the child to be mistress and the mother a servant.  “But,” the mother says, “I do not care for dress, and Caroline does.  She, poor child, would be mortified not to be dressed like the other children.”  Then do you teach her better.  Plant in her mind a higher standard of self-respect.  Don’t tell her you cannot afford to do for her thus and thus; that will scatter premature thorns along her path; but say that you do not approve of it; it is proper for her to dress in such and such a way.  And be so nobly and grandly a woman that she shall have faith in you.