ut employing a _hireling breast_. I am aware of the too frequent
practice of the contrary; I am well aware of the offence which I shall
here give to many; but it is for me to do my duty, and to set, with
regard to myself, consequences at defiance.

228. In the first place, no food is so congenial to the child as the
milk of its own mother; its quality is made by nature to suit the age of
the child; it comes with the child, and is calculated precisely for its
stomach. And, then, what sort of a mother must that be who can endure
the thought of seeing her child at another breast! The suckling may be
attended with great pain, and it is so attended in many cases; but this
pain is a necessary consequence of pleasures foregone; and, besides, it
has its accompanying pleasures too. No mother ever suffered more than my
wife did from suckling her children. How many times have I seen her,
when the child was beginning to draw, bite her lips while the tears ran
down her cheeks! Yet, having endured this, the smiles came and dried up
the tears; and the little thing that had caused the pain received
abundant kisses as its punishment.

229. Why, now, did I not love her _the more_ for this? Did not this tend
to rivet her to my heart? She was enduring this _for me_; and would not
this endearing thought have been wanting, if I had seen the baby at a
breast that I had hired and _paid for_; if I had had _two women_, one to
bear the child and another to give it milk? Of all the sights that this
world affords, the most delightful in my eyes, even to an unconcerned
spectator, is, a mother with her clean and fat baby lugging at her
breast, leaving off now-and-then and smiling, and she, occasionally,
half smothering it with kisses. What must that sight be, then, to the
_father_ of the child?

230. Besides, are we to overlook the great and wonderful effect that
this has on the minds of children? As they succeed each other, they see
with their own eyes, the pain, the care, the caresses, which their
mother has endured for, or bestowed, on them; and nature bids them love
her accordingly. To love her ardently becomes part of their very nature;
and when the time comes that her advice to them is necessary as a guide
for their conduct, this deep and early impression has all its natural
weight, which must be wholly wanting if the child be banished to a
hireling breast, and only brought at times into the presence of the
mother, who is, in fact, no mother,