“Oh!” but you say, “this is a very one-sided view.  You leave out entirely the natural tenderness that comes in to temper the matter.  Without that, a child’s situation would of course be intolerable; but the love that is born with him makes all things smooth.”

No, it does not make all things smooth.  It does wonders, to be sure, but it does not make cross people pleasant, nor violent people calm, nor fretful people easy, nor obstinate people reasonable, nor foolish people wise,—­that is, it may do so spasmodically, but it does not hold them to it and keep them at it.  A great deal of beautiful moonshine is written about the sanctities of home and the sacraments of marriage and birth.  I do not mean to say that there is no sanctity and no sacrament.  Moonshine is not nothing.  It is light,—­real, honest light,—­just as truly as the sunshine.  It is sunshine at second-hand.  It illuminates, but indistinctly.  It beautifies, but it does not vivify or fructify.  It comes indeed from the sun, but in too roundabout a way to do the sun’s work.  So, if a woman is pretty nearly sanctified before she is married, wifehood and motherhood may finish the business; but there is not one man in ten thousand of the writers aforesaid who would marry a vixen, trusting to the sanctifying influences of marriage to tone her down to sweetness.  A thoughtful, gentle, pure, and elevated woman, who has been accustomed to stand face to face with the eternities, will see in her child a soul.  If the circumstances of her life leave her leisure and adequate repose, that soul will be to her a solemn trust, a sacred charge, for which she will give her own soul’s life in pledge.  But, dear me! how many such women do you suppose there are in your village?  Heaven forbid that I should even appear to be depreciating woman!  Do I not know too well their strength, and their virtue which is their strength?  But stepping out of idyls and novels, and stepping into American kitchens, is it not true that the larger part of the mothers see in their babies, or act as if they saw, only babies?  And if there are three or four or half a dozen of them, as there generally are, so much the more do they see babies whose bodies monopolize the mother’s time to the disadvantage of their souls.  She loves them, and she works for them day and night; but when they are ranting and ramping and quarrelling, and torturing her over-tense nerves, she forgets the infinite, and applies herself energetically to the finite, by sending Harry with a round scolding into one corner and Susy into another, with no light thrown upon the point in dispute, no principle settled as a guide in future difficulties, and little discrimination as to the relative guilt of the offenders.  But there is no court of appeal before which Harry and Susy can lay their case in these charming “happiest days.”