Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/166

 Amongst the marvelous wonders of God's universe to me one of the greatest mysteries is this, how a good God, a just, pitiful God, should send into such hands as He duz such little white souls.

Some frivolous young girl, whose highest thought and ambition has never soared above her hair ribbon, some brainless boy, whose deepest desire and highest aim has been to wear as small a boot as he could, and contract hopeless debts for hair oil and cheap cigars and whiskey. In some unhappy season, when circuses were not possible, and wishing for a kindred excitement, they rush into matrimony. And into these hands, joined by lowest links, these hands defiled by sin, and weak with the utter weakness of unreasonin' selfishness and folly, is sent a little pure soul out of Paradise.

And this little child must grope in the dark shadows caused by the denseness of their ignorance. Suffer forever physically, morally, mentally from the evil, the total depravity of their hereditary and teachings. Suffer herself and grow up in the black shadow to transmit its hopeless darkness and guilt down to other generations. Strange, strange, most marvelous of mysteries, why this should be so. But I can't bear to even look on this dretful picture even in hours of eppisodin', it is bad enough and strange enough to look in Christian homes, amongst meetin' house brothers and sisters, and see how the little ones are maltreated.

It looks dretful disagreeable to me, to see a young child whipped for what we do ourselves. Now, I wuz at one of our neighbors' the other day (one of them that complains the most of our treatment of little Delight), and she has got a young child of her own, some four, or half-past four years of age. And when I went in she