Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/156

THE MOTHERS OF ENGLAND. set; while the mother knows that in her own family centres all her duty, and if rightly discharged there, her reward will be sure. To the hired teacher, each particular child, even the only one in a family, and the pride of its mother's heart, constitutes but one article in the general business of life, to be treated like hundreds of others, turned over, and disposed of, as creditably as time and circumstances will allow. Even to a serious-minded and strictly conscientious teacher, deeply sensible of the responsibilities attendant upon the education of youth, such a child is but one among the many, perhaps neither attractive nor interesting in itself, and sometimes requiring the utmost stretch of patience and forbearance to exercise toward it common justice. Where such, then, is all the feeling this child is capable of inspiring toward itself, surely the mother's love, and the mother's care, must be needed to carry on its education to the best advantage, so that it shall neither be overlooked, despised, nor set aside as unworthy of the attention which it is often so much more pleasant to bestow upon others.

And here I would wish to whisper into the ear of partial mothers, if I could without offending them, that the child which they esteem both beautiful and attractive, is often neither the one nor the other to an impartial observer; that the raptures which are expressed by the company around the dinner-table, when the little darling is introduced with the dessert, are no sort of proof that the object of them is really charming in itself; and that one half of those apparently interested inquirers, who ask about its age, its teeth, its walking, and its peculiar habits, and who declare that in all these particulars it surpasses any other child they know, or at least all the children of their mutual friends, would say pretty much the same, if the heir of the house should appear toothless, bald, and shrivelled, and with every feature of his face distorted. I speak of only half the indiscriminate admirers of children, when I venture upon these remarks; and when we recollect that the other half do really admire them, from the impulse which nature has kindly given to so many human hearts, and without the slightest reference to individual charms — when we recollect that there are persons who can scarcely pass a baby in the street without an inclination to embrace it,