hild is placed on a sort of pedestal
of care and tenderness, at least for a time. She resumes something of
the sacredness and dignity of the maiden. Coleridge ranks as the purest
of human emotions that of a husband towards a wife who has a baby at
her breast,--"a feeling how free from sensual desire, yet how different
from friendship!" And to the true mother however cultivated, or however
ignorant, this period of early parentage is happier than all else, in
spite of its exhausting cares. In that delightful book, the "Letters"
of Mrs. Richard Trench (mother of the well-known English writer), the
most agreeable passage is perhaps that in which, after looking back
upon a life spent in the most brilliant society of Europe, she gives
the palm of happiness to the time when she was a young mother. She
writes to her god-daughter: "I believe it is the happiest time of any
woman's life, who has affectionate feelings, and is blessed with
healthy and well-disposed children. I know at least that neither the
gayeties and boundless hopes of early life, nor the more grave pursuits
and deeper affections of later years, are by any means comparable in my
recollection with the serene, yet lively pleasure of seeing my children
playing on the grass, enjoying their little temperate supper, or
repeating 'with holy look' their simple prayers, and undressing for
bed, growing prettier for every part of their dress they took off, and
at last lying down, all freshness and love, in complete happiness, and
an amiable contest for mamma's last kiss."

That kiss welcomed the child into a world where joy predominates. The
vast multitude of human beings enjoy existence and wish to live. They
all have their earthly life under their own control. Some religions
sanction suicide; the Christian Scriptures nowhere explicitly forbid
it; and yet it is a rare thing. Many persons sigh for death when it
seems far off, but the desire vanishes when the boat upsets, or the
locomotive runs off the track, or the measles set in. A wise physician
once said to me: "I observe that every one wishes to go to heaven, but
I observe that most people are willing to take a great deal of very
disagreeable medicine first." The lives that one least envies--as of
the Digger Indian or the outcast boy in the city--are yet sweet to the
living. "They have only a pleasure like that of the brutes," we say
with scorn. But what a racy and substantial pleasure is that! The
flashing speed of the