You know that if you are a true mother it makes no difference that no
one has seen your toil, that no one has praised you for it, but that
it has only been looked upon as what must needs be so, and that even
those for whom your have labored not only do not thank you, but often
torture and reproach you. And with the next child you do the same:
again you suffer, again you undergo the fearful, invisible labor; and
again you expect no reward from any one, and yet you feel the sane
satisfaction.

If you are like this, you will not say after two children, or after
twenty, that you have done enough, just as the laboring man fifty
years of age will not say that he has worked enough, while he still
continues to eat and to sleep, and while his muscles still demand
work; if you are like this, your will not cast the task of nursing
and care-taking upon some other mother, just as a laboring man will
not give another man the work which he has begun, and almost
completed, to finish: because into this work you will throw your
life. And therefore the more there is of this work, the fuller and
the happier is your life.

And when you are like this, for the good fortune of men, you will
apply that law of fulfilling God's will, by which you guide your
life, to the lives of your husband, of your children, and of those
most nearly connected with you. If your are like this, and know from
your own experience, that only self-sacrificing, unseen, unrewarded
labor, accompanied with danger to life and to the extreme bounds of
endurance, for the lives of others, is the appointed lot of man,
which affords him satisfaction, then you will announce these demands
to others; you will urge your husband to the same toil; and you will
measure and value the dignity of men acceding to this toil; and for