ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the ills that must be borne
should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery.
Christian character is never formed by acquiescence in or apotheosis of
wrong.

The principle that underlies these extracts, and makes them ministrative
of evil, is the principle that a woman can benefit her children by
sacrificing herself. It teaches, that pale, thin faces and feeble steps
are excellent things in young mothers,--provided they are gained by
maternal duties. We infer that it is meet, right, and the bounden
duty of such to give up society, reading, riding, music, and become
indifferent to dress, cultivation, recreation, to everything, in short,
except taking care of the children. It is all just as wrong as it can
be. It is wrong morally; it is wrong socially; wrong in principle, wrong
in practice. It is a blunder as well as a crime, for it works woe. It is
a wrong means to accomplish an end; and it does not accomplish the end,
after all, but demolishes it.

On the contrary, the duty and dignity of a mother require that she
should never subordinate herself to her children. When she does so, she
does it to their manifest injury and her own. Of course, if illness or
accident demand unusual care, she does well to grow thin and pale in
bestowing unusual care. But when a mother in the ordinary routine of
life grows thin and pale, gives up riding, reading, and the amusements
and occupations of life, there is a wrong somewhere, and her children
shall reap the fruits of it. The father and mother are the head of the
family, the most comely and the most honorable part. They cannot benefit
their children by descending from their Heaven-appointed places, and
becoming perpetual and exclusive feet and hands. This is the great
fault of American mothers. They swamp themselves in a slough of