Never fail to remember the great and irreparable loss which these children have suffered in the death of the only person in the wide world who could thoroughly understand them.  If you had a mother to help you in your childhood, you will know what they miss, or, if you, too, were a lonely little being, let the memory of that loneliness make you lovingly pitiful towards the children who suffer in the same way.  Such pity soon leads to an unconquerable love.

Bear in mind in justification of what may seem like unreasonable prejudice, that all children have heard many stories, some of which are true, of the cruelties of step-parents.  Doubtless, you in your own life, have known of more than one second wife who was jealous of her husband’s love for the first wife’s children.  When women are heartless they are desperately cruel, and do not hesitate to vent their hatred upon the little ones whose look, Mrs. Browning tells us,—­

                        “is dread to see,
For they mind you of their angels in high places,
        With eyes turned on Deity.”

She also reminds those whose consciences are so hardened by selfishness that they dare be cruel to the mere babies in their care that—­

“The child’s sob in the darkness curses deeper
  Than the strong man in his wrath.”

We have not to do in this Talk with this type of woman, but with beings of the mother-sex who would, if they were allowed, make life brighter for the bereaved little ones.

One way to keep step-children’s affection is to talk to them often and reverently of their own mother.  This is due to them and to her who bare them.  Do not allow them to forget her, and guard against the entrance of any jealous feeling into this sacred duty of keeping her memory fresh.  The children were hers, and in the eternal home will be hers again.  They are only lent to you as a sacred trust.  It is not sacrilegious to believe that their mother knows of your efforts to make them good men and women, and that she, as their guardian angel, will not forget to bless her who gives her life to the children who were once “the sweetest flowers” her own “bosom ever bore.”

CHAPTER XIX.

CHILDREN AS HELPERS.

A correspondent inquires whether or not children ought to be trained to do housework and to make themselves useful in the numerous ways in which the young hands and feet can save the older ones.

Unless you expect to be a millionaire many times over, and in perpetuity—­emphatically Yes!

It is not necessary that your little daughter should become a drudge; that she should have imposed upon her tasks beyond her strength, or which interfere with out-door exercise and merry in-door play.  But through all her childhood must be borne in mind the fact that she is now in training for womanhood, that should she ever marry and have a home of her own, the weight of unaccustomed household tasks will bend and bruise the shoulders totally unaccustomed to burdens of any kind.