In the disposition of other people’s children, we can be governed by what we call rational considerations; but when called upon to part with our own helpless offspring, how differently do we estimate circumstances!  Every day we hear some one saying, “Why don’t she put out her children?”—­and, “Why don’t she put out her children?  They will be much better off.”  And perhaps these children are but eight, nine, and ten years old.  Mother! father! whoever you may be, imagine your own children, of that tender age, among strangers as servants (for that is the capacity of children who are thus put out) required to be, in all respects, as prudent, as industrious, as renouncing of little recreations and pleasures as men and women, and subject to severe punishments for all childish faults and weaknesses, such as you would have borne with and gently corrected.  Don’t draw parallels between your own and poor people’s children, as if they were to be less regarded than yours.  Even as your heart yearns over and loves with unspeakable tenderness your offspring, does the mother, no matter how poor her condition, yearn over and love her children—­and when they are removed from under her protecting wing, she feels as keen a sorrow as would rend your heart, were the children of your tenderest care and fondest love, taken from you and placed among strangers.

In due time, Emily was put out to Mrs. Tompkins, a woman who had wonderful fine notions about rearing up children so as to make men and women of them, (than her own, there were not a more graceless set in the whole city.) She had never been able to carry into full practice her admirable theories in regard to the education of children among her own hopefuls; because—­first:  Johnny was a very delicate boy, and to have governed him by strict rules, would have been to have ruined his constitution.  She had never dared to break him of screaming by conquering him, in a single instance, because the rupture of a blood-vessel would doubtless have been the consequence, or a fit in which he might have died.  Once indeed she did try to force him to give up his will, but he grew black in the face from passion, and she had hard work to recover him—­after this he was humoured in everything.  And Tommy was a high-spirited and generous fellow, and it would have been a pity to warp his fine disposition.  Years of discretion would make him a splendid specimen of perfect manhood.  Angelina, (a forward, pert little minx,) was, from her birth, so gentle, so amiable, so affectionate, that no government was necessary—­and Victorine was so naturally high-tempered, that her mother guarded against the developement of anger by never allowing her to be crossed in anything.