gorgeous saloon and brilliant assemblage give place to the nursery and
the baby. Was she devoted to literary pursuits? Now the library is
seldom visited, the cherished studies are neglected, the rattle and the
doll are substituted for the pen. Her piano is silent, while she chants
softly and sweetly the soothing lullaby. Her dress can last another
season now, and the hat--oh, she does not care, if it is not in the
latest mode, for she has a baby to look after, and has no time for
herself. Even the ride and the walk are given up, perhaps too often,
with the excuse, 'Baby-tending is exercise enough for me.' Her whole
life is reversed."

The assumption is that all this is just as it should be. The thoughtless
person may fancy that it is a pity; but it is not a pity. This is
a model mother and a model state of things. It is not simply to be
submitted to, not simply to be patiently borne; it is to be aspired to
as the noblest and holiest state.

That is the strychnine. You may counsel people to take joyfully the
spoiling of their goods, and comfort, encourage, and strengthen them by
so doing; but when you tell them that to be robbed and plundered is of
itself a priceless blessing, the highest stage of human development,
you do them harm; because, in general, falsehood is always harmful, and
because, in particular, so far as you influence them at all, you prevent
them from taking measures to stop the wrong-doing. You ought to counsel
them to bear with Christian resignation what they cannot help; but you
ought with equal fervor to counsel them to look around and see if there
are not many things which they can help, and if there are, by all means
to help them. What is inevitable comes to us from God, no matter how
many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is
cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer