Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/12

Rh Why should the mother not rejoice? Have we so learned the doctrine of our Lord and Savior, that we can not trust to him the keeping of our earthly treasure? Surely there is infidelity of the most ungrateful kind, in that spirit which believes, and yet knows not how to trust. But there is both hope and trust in the mother's heart at that glad moment when she folds her infant to her bosom; for though she may herself have failed in judgment and in will ten thousand times, and fallen short in acts of duty almost beyond the hope of pardon, she looks into the guileless countenance of her child, and while the tears of true repentance fall upon its brow, she dedicates its young life, with all its growing energies, to a holier and more faithful service than she, with her weakness and waywardness, has been able to pursue.

Granting then that there is joy in the event of a child being ushered into life, and that such joy is founded chiefly upon a kind of indefinite hope, which fills the mother's breast; granting, also, as one of our first poets has beautifully said, that

the most natural inquiry—nay, that which must necessarily follow in the mind of a rational woman, is—For what shall I prepare my child?

Pending the solution of this most important question, it is more than probable that the mother's thoughts will go back to her own childhood. By the many retrospective glances she has at different times thrown back upon the course of her own life, she will no doubt have been able to perceive many defects in the management and training by which she was herself conducted from infancy to youth, and now, if ever, she looks seriously upon this picture, with a fervent desire to ascertain the truth; to make out, as in a faithful chart, the rocks and shoals upon which her own bark may at different times have nearly suffered shipwreck; as well as the safer channels through which she has at other times been enabled to pass unharmed.

There are quiet hours permitted almost to all, before a mother enters again upon the active duties of life, during