without pangs. Oh!
my sweet jealous soul, how you will relish a delight which exists only
for ourselves, the child, and God! For this tiny creature all knowledge
is summed up in its mother's breast. This is the one bright spot in its
world, towards which its puny strength goes forth. Its thoughts cluster
round this spring of life, which it leaves only to sleep, and whither
it returns on waking. Its lips have a sweetness beyond words, and their
pressure is at once a pain and a delight, a delight which by every
excess becomes pain, or a pain which culminates in delight. The
sensation which rises from it, and which penetrates to the very core
of my life, baffles all description. It seems a sort of centre whence a
myriad joy-bearing rays gladden the heart and soul. To bear a child is
nothing; to nourish it is birth renewed every hour.

Oh! Louise, there is no caress of lover with half the power of those
little pink hands, as they stray about, seeking whereby to lay hold on
life. And the infant glances, now turned upon the breast, now raised to
meet our own! What dreams come to us as we watch the clinging nursling!
All our powers, whether of mind or body, are at its service; for it we
breathe and think, in it our longings are more than satisfied! The
sweet sensation of warmth at the heart, which the sound of his first cry
brought to me--like the first ray of sunshine on the earth--came again
as I felt the milk flow into his mouth, again as his eyes met mine, and
at this moment I have felt it once more as his first smile gave token of
a mind working within--for he has laughed, my dear! A laugh, a glance,
a bite, a cry--four miracles of gladness which go straight to the heart
and strike chords that respond to no other touch. A child is tied to
our heart-strings, as the spheres are linked to their creator; we cannot
think of God except as a mother's heart writ large.

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood
in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment. The
milk becomes flesh before our eyes; it blossoms into the tips of those
delicate flower-like fingers; it expands in tender, transparent nails;
it spins the silky tresses; it kicks in the little feet. Oh! those baby
feet, how plainly they talk to us! In them the child finds its first
language.

Yes, Louise, nursing is a miracle of transformation going on before
one's bewildered eyes. Those cries, they go to your heart and not you