in respect to all their harmless fancies, and patient and forbearing
with their childish faults and foolishness, she also exercises in cases
requiring it an authority over them which, though just and gentle, is yet
absolute and supreme, she rises to a very exalted position in their view.
Their affection for her has infused into it an element which greatly
aggrandizes and ennobles it--an element somewhat analogous to that
sentiment of lofty devotion which a loyal subject feels for his queen.

_Effect of the Want of Authority._

On the other hand, if she is inconsiderate enough to attempt to win a
place in her children's hearts by the sacrifice of her maternal authority,
she will never succeed in securing a place there that is worth possessing.
The children will all, girls and boys alike, see and understand her
weakness, and they will soon learn to look down upon her, instead of
looking up to her, as they ought. As they grow older they will all become
more and more unmanageable. The insubordination of the girls must generally
be endured, but that of the boys will in time grow to be intolerable, and
it will become necessary to send them away to school, or to adopt some
other plan for ridding the house of their turbulence, and relieving the
poor mother's heart of the insupportable burden she has to bear in finding
herself contemned and trampled upon by her own children. In the earlier
years of life the feeling entertained for their mother in such a case by
the children is simply that of contempt; for the sentiment of gratitude
which will modify it in time is very late to be developed, and has not yet
begun to act. In later years, however, when the boys have become young men,
this sentiment of gratitude begins to come in, but it only changes the
contempt into pity. And when years have passed away, and the mother is
perhaps in her grave, her sons think of her with a mingled feeling excited
by the conjoined remembrance of her helpless imbecility and of her true