d the bereavement itself becomes a memory. But now and then one
meets mothers whose griefs and deprivations seem without end. No
religion, no philosophy can bring them back into continuity with their
lives. They go about in a sorrowful dream, hugging their affliction,
resenting any effort to comfort or console; without interest in the
daily task or in those whom they should love. They offer the severest
problem in readjustment, in reenergization, for they actively resent
being helped. Sometimes one believes their grief is an effort to atone
for neglect real or fancied, a self-punishment which is not remitted
until full atonement has been made.

Aside from the physical difficulties in the bearing and rearing of
children, and in addition to the ordinary mental difficulties, such as
judging what discipline to use, there are especial problems of some
importance. Men vary in character from the saint to the villain, in
ability from the genius to the idiot. The children they once were vary
as much. There are children who go through the worst of homes, the
worst of environments, the worst of trainings,--and come out pure gold,
with characters all the better for the struggle. There are others whom
no amount of love, discipline, training, and benefits help; they are
despicable from the ordinary viewpoint from the first of life to the
last. Some children, adversely situated as to poverty and health, become
geniuses, and their reverse is in the poor child whom heredity, early
disease, or some freak of nature dooms to feeble-mindedness.

The heart of the mother is in her child; she glories in its progress,
and she refuses to see its defects until they glare too brightly to be
overlooked. Then she has a heartbreak all the more bitter for her
maternal love.

It is the incorrigibly bad child and the mentally deficient child who
evoke the severest, most neurasthenic reaction on the part of the
housewife. Not only is pride hurt, not only is the expanded self-love
injured, but such children are a physical care and burden of such a
nature as to outbalance that of three or four normal children.

The bad child, egoistic, undisciplinable, destructive, and quarrelsome,
or the child who cannot be taught honesty, or the one who continually
runs away, is an unending source of "nervousness" to his mother. As time
goes on and the difficulty is seen to be fundamental, a battle between
hostility and love springs up in the mother's breast that play