why, I refer you to
Dogberry. Now the parents of a child are, from the nature of the case,
absolute despots. They may be wise, and gentle, and doting despots, and
the chain may be satin-smooth and golden-strong; but if it be of rusty
iron, parting every now and then and letting the poor prisoner violently
loose, and again suddenly caught hold of, bringing him up with a jerk,
galling his tender limbs and irretrievably ruining his temper,--it is
all the same; there is no help for it. And really, to look around
the world and see the people that are its fathers and mothers is
appalling,--the narrow-minded, prejudiced, ignorant, ill-tempered,
fretful, peevish, passionate, careworn, harassed men and women. Even we
grown people, independent of them and capable of self-defence, have as
much as we can do to keep the peace. Where is there a city, or a town,
or a village, in which are no bickerings, no jealousies, no angers, no
petty or swollen spites? Then fancy yourself, instead of the neighbor
and occasional visitor of these poor human beings, their children,
subject to their absolute control, with no power of protest against
their folly, no refuge from their injustice, but living on through thick
and thin right under their guns.

"Oh!" but you say, "this is a very one-sided view. You leave out
entirely the natural tenderness that comes in to temper the matter.
Without that, a child's situation would of course be intolerable; but
the love that is born with him makes all things smooth."

No, it does not make all things smooth. It does wonders, to be sure, but
it does not make cross people pleasant, nor violent people calm, nor
fretful people easy, nor obstinate people reasonable, nor foolish people
wise,--that is, it may do so spasmodically, but it does not hold them to
it and keep them at it. A great deal of beautiful moonshine is written
about the sanctities of home and the sacraments of marriage and birth. I
do not mean to say that there is no sanctity and no sacrament. Moonshine
is not nothing. It is light,--real, honest light,--just as truly as
the sunshine. It is sunshine at second-hand. It illuminates, but
indistinctly. It beautifies, but it does not vivify or fructify. It
comes indeed from the sun, but in too roundabout a way to do the sun's
work. So, if a woman is pretty nearly sanctified before she is married,
wifehood and motherhood may finish the business; but there is not one
man in ten thousand of the writers afo