ay before they had been apparently finished; but that morning Miss
Hosmer had, as she laughingly told us, "pulled it all to pieces again."

As she said this, she took up a large syringe and showered the statue
from head to foot with water, till it dripped and shone as if it had been
just plunged into a bath. Now it was in condition to be moulded. Many
times a day this process must be repeated, or the clay becomes so dry and
hard that it cannot be worked.

I had known this before; but never did I so realize the significant
symbolism of the act as when I looked at this lifeless yet lifelike thing,
to be made into the beauty of a woman, called by her name, and cherished
after her death,--and saw that only through this chrysalis of the clay, so
cared for, moistened, and moulded, could the marble obtain its soul.

And, as all things I see in life seem to me to have a voice either for or
of children, so did this instantly suggest to me that most of the failures
of mothers come from their not keeping the clay wet.

The slightest touch tells on the clay when it is soft and moist, and can
produce just the effect which is desired; but when the clay is too dry it
will not yield, and often it breaks and crumbles beneath the unskilful
hand. How perfect the analogy between these two results, and the two
atmospheres which one often sees in the space of one half-hour in the
management of the same child! One person can win from it instantly a
gentle obedience: that person's smile is a reward, that person's
displeasure is a grief it cannot bear, that person's opinions have utmost
weight with it, that person's presence is a controlling and subduing
influence. Another, alas! the mother, produces such an opposite effect
that it is hard to believe the child can be the same child. Her simplest
command is met by antagonism or sullen compliance; her pleasure and
displeasure are plainly of no account to the child, and its great desire
is to get out of her presence.

What shape will she make of that child's soul? She does not wet the clay.
She does not stop to consider before each command whether it be wholly
just, whether it be the best time to make it, and whether she can explain
its necessity. Oh! the sweet reasonableness of children when disagreeable
necessities are explained to them, instead of being enforced as arbitrary
tyrannies! She does not make them so feel that she shares all their
sorrows and pleasures that they cannot help being