Page:The Mothers of England.djvu/70

Rh desired that her children should be made happy for the time being, without any idea of their future welfare, will punish and deny herself to almost any extent, for the purpose of procuring them a momentary gratification; and then perhaps she will feel hurt at their want of gratitude and esteem toward herself.

This, as well as other strange anomalies in the characters of what are called amiable women, have done much to convince me, that sound principle and common sense, with unquestionably a due proportion of warm-heartedness, are in the long-run more conducive to individual, as well as social happiness, than those ungoverned springs of tenderness and love, which burst forth and exhaust themselves, without calculation or restraint.

A merely amiable woman, who has never submitted her feelings to the government of common sense, will reject the idea of its being a duty to make her own comfort and convenience objects of primary consideration among her children. She will reject this idea, under the impression that it is too selfish for her to act upon. Her principle is one of disinterested love, and therefore she never places herself in the way of her children's gratification, never requires anything of them toward her own comfort, allows them to eat all their good things without asking her to partake, and to seize every means of gratification which may fall in their way, without the slightest reference to her. That such children will naturally grow up greedy, selfish, and regardless of their mother, it is scarcely necessary to say. Yet what is to be done where the mother is so amiable, so meek, and so disinterested, that she absolutely can not consent to make herself an object of consideration?

It would certainly be a very interesting and charming alternative in this difficult case, if, while the sweet mother should purposely shrink into nothing in comparison with her children, the father would draw her merits forth to view, and place her first on every occasion in the attention and regard of his family. Such a picture of domestic life might indeed embellish the pages of a novel; but unfortunately the real world in which we live is so constituted that fathers of families have little time for adorning their wives