Page:Letters to Mothers (1839).djvu/88

 Does she attach value to the gems of intellect? Let her see that the casket which contains them, be not lightly endangered, or causelessly broken. Does she pray for the welfare of the soul? Let her seek the good of its companion, who walks with it to the gate of the grave, and rushes again to its embrace, on the morning of the resurrection.

Mothers ought to be ever awake to the evils of compression, in the region of the heart and lungs. A slight ligature there, in the earlier stages life, is fraught with danger. To disturb or impede those labourers, who turn the wheels of life, both night and day, how absurd and ungrateful. Samson was bound in fetters, and ground in the prison-house, for awhile, but at length he crushed the pillars of the temple, and the lords of the Philistines perished with him. Nature, though she may be long in resenting a wrong, never forgets it. Against those who violate her laws, she often rises as a giant in his might, and when the least expect it, inflicts a fearful punishment.