espected, and where no one is permitted to talk of indecent subjects
or to read indecent books,--these are the duties of a good mother; and
her position, if so filled, is one of dignity and grave importance.
For it is on the hearthstone she gives the fine healthy initial touch
to her sons and daughters that is not effaced through life, and that
makes them blessed in their generation.

There is another duty, a very sacred one, which some mothers, however
good in all other respects, either thoughtlessly or with mistaken
ideas, delegate to others, the religious training of their children.
No Sunday-school and no church can do it for them. The child that
learns "Our Father" at its mother's knee, that hears from mother's
lips the heroic and tender stories of the Bible, has a wellspring of
religious faith in his soul that no after life, however hard and fast
and destructive, can dry up. It is inconceivable, then, how a mother
can permit any other woman to deprive her of an influence over her
children nothing can destroy; of a memory in their lives so sweet that
when every other memory is withered and approaching decay, it will
still be fresh and green,--yes, even to the grave's mouth. Family!
Country! Humanity! these three, but the greatest of the three is
Family; and the heart of the family is the good mother. Happy the
children who have one! With them

"faith in womankind
Beats with their blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to them."

But if the grand essential to a good mother be self-denying,
self-effacing love, this is a bad era for its development. Selfishness
and self-seeking is the spirit of the time, and its chilling poison
has infected womanhood, and touched even the sacred principle of
maternity. In some women it assumes the form of a duty. They feel
their own mental culture to be of supreme importance; they wish to
attend lectures, and take lessons, and give themselves to some special
study. Or the enslaved condition of their own sex troubles them;
they bear on their minds the oppressed shop-girls of America, or
the secluded odalisques in some Eastern seraglio, or they have
ecclesiastic proclivities and take the chair at church meetings,
or political ones, and deliver lectures before their special club on
women's disabilities. In these and many other ways they put the
natural mission of womanhood aside as an animal instinct, not
conducive to their mental development.

N