fference. The presence of a
baby equalizes all social conditions. On the floor of some Southern
hut, scarcely so comfortable as a dog-kennel, I have seen a dusky woman
look down upon her infant with such an expression of delight as painter
never drew. No social culture can make a mother's face more than a
mother's, as no wealth can make a nursery more than a place where
children dwell. Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby-clothes, and
after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That
becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the
poorest home.

I know not what triumph or despair may have come and gone through that
wayside house since then, what jubilant guests may have entered, what
lifeless form passed out. What anguish or what sin may have come
between that woman and that child; through what worlds they now wander,
and whether separate or in each other's arms,--this is all unknown.
Fancy can picture other joys to which the first happiness was but the
prelude, and, on the other hand, how easy to imagine some special
heritage of human woe and call it theirs!

"I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality;
And Grief, uneasy lover, might not rest
Save when he sat within the touch of thee."

Nay, the foretaste of that changed fortune may have been present, even
in the kiss. Who knows what absorbing emotion, besides love's immediate
impulse, may have been uttered in that shadowy embrace? There may have
been some contrition for ill-temper or neglect, or some triumph over
ruinous temptation, or some pledge of immortal patience, or some
heart-breaking prophecy of bereavement. It may have been simply an act
of habitual tenderness, or it may have been the wild reaction toward a
neglected duty; the renewed self-consecration of the saint, or the joy
of the sinner that repenteth. No matter. She kissed the baby. The
feeling of its soft flesh, the busy struggle of its little arms between
her hands, the impatient pressure of its little feet against her
knees,--these were the same, whatever the mood or circumstance beside.
They did something to equalize joy and sorrow, honor and shame.
Maternal love is love, whether a woman be a wife or only a mother. Only
a mother!

The happiness beneath that roof may, perhaps, have never reached so
high a point as at that precise moment of my passing. In the coarsest
household, the mother of a young c