welfare of their sons. "How infinitely valuable," say their
children, "would I have found a mother who could have kept
quiet, who would have been patient with me, who would have
given me rest, keeping the outer world at a distance from me,
with kindly soothing hands. Oh, would that I had had a mother
on whose breast I could have laid my head, to be quiet and
dream."

A distinguished woman writer is surprised that all of her
well-thought-out plans for her children fail--those children in
whom she saw the material for her passion for governing, the
clay that she desired to mould.

The writer just cited says very justly that maternal
unselfishness alone can perform the task of protecting a young
being with wisdom and kindliness, by allowing him to grow
according to his own laws. The unselfish mother, she says, will
joyfully give the best of her life energy, powers of soul and
spirit to a growing being and then open all doors to him,
leaving him in the broad world to follow his own paths, and ask
for nothing, neither thanks, nor praise, nor remembrance. But
to most mothers may be applied the bitter exclamation of a son
in the book just mentioned, "even a mother must know how she
tortures another; if she has not this capacity by nature, why
in the world should I recognise her as my mother at all."

Certain mothers spend the whole day in keeping their children's
nervous system in a state of irritation. They make work hard
and play joyless, whenever they take a part in it. At the
present time, too, the school gets control of the child, the