Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/52

Rh ideas in a family; and who is so capable of using this means as a mother? Who but a mother can love her children well enough to be always ready and willing to convert every incident that may occur in the nursery, or around the household hearth, into a medium for the enlargement of the sphere of thought, the correction of error, or the establishment of truth? It is a subject worthy of being taken into consideration, that childhood, unlike mature age, is possessed with an almost untiring relish for the repetition of the same facts which have afforded interest again and again; and thus a favorite old story is often called for by the listening group, in preference to anything new. We should wonder at this peculiarity in childhood, if we were not accustomed to see in all, even the most minute among the laws of nature, a beneficent design, by which preparation is made for a future state of being; and here, in the demand of the child for a narrative which has often been repeated, we recognise a provision for impressing the plastic nature of its mind and feelings, with facts which shall never be effaced. But who, I would ask again, except a mother, can bear to answer these demands? Who else will relate a story for the hundredth time, as freshly as when first it was told? Who else will patiently sit by the bedside of the child, repeating its favorite hymns? Who else will awake in the silent hours of the night, to converse about the unseen Being who protects the world, and keeps watch over the little infant on its couch of rest?

It is a commonly-acknowledged fact, that half the fears of grown-up people, and far more than half the fears of children, arise from their ignorance. Well-educated women, or at least such as are popularly called so, are often found in this respect too closely to resemble children; for their ignorance of machinery, of the habits of animals, and of natural philosophy in general, subjects them to innumerable misapprehensions, of which, it is humbling to observe, they are sometimes rather proud than ashamed. With children the case is very different, because it is no fault of theirs that they do not understand what they have never had an opportunity of hearing explained. In their walks with the nursemaid, they have probably been severely chidden when they have exhibited symptoms of fear, and told that the cow only ran