Manhood and womanhood have their infancy entirely distinct from
the infancy of childhood. The child is born into the world a
simple, animal life--less helpful than a lamb, or a calf, or a
kitten. There is no power in it, and but little of instinct. There
is no form of life, bursting caul or shell, that awakes in vital
air to such stupid, vacant helplessness, as a baby. It is out of
this lump of clay, with its bones only half hardened, and its
muscles little more than pulp, and its brain no more intelligent
than an uncooked dumpling, that childhood is to be made. And this
childhood consists of little more than a well-developed animal
organism. Nature keeps the child playing--makes it play in the
open air--impels it to bring into free and joyous use all the
powers of its little frame--and when that is done, and the
procreative faculty has crowned all, the child is born again, and
comes into a new infancy--the infancy of manhood and womanhood.
Here a new life opens. That which gave satisfaction before, gives
satisfaction no longer. Love takes new and deeper channels.
Ambition fixes its eye upon other and higher objects. Fresh
motives address the soul, and urge it into new enterprises. Great
cares and responsibilities settle slowly down upon its shoulders,
and it braces itself up to endure them. It apprehends God and its
relations to Him, and to its fellows; it confronts destiny; it
arms itself for the conflicts of life; it prepares for the
struggle which it knows will issue in a grateful success or a sad
disappointment; in short, it grows from man's infancy into man's
full estate.

Now the reason why a mother looks with a sigh upon her children,
and says that they are seeing the happiest days of their life, is
that she has never become a true woman. She has never grown out of