Atlantic Monthly | Page 2

does not, and it is intolerable.
It is of no use to say that this is their discipline and is all necessary to
their welfare. I maintain that that is a horrible condition of life in which
such degrading surveillance is necessary. You may affirm that an
absolute despotism is the only government fit for Dahomey, and I may
not disallow it; but when you go on and say that Dahomey is the
happiest country in the world, why, I refer you to Dogberry. Now the
parents of a child are, from the nature of the case, absolute despots.
They may be wise, and gentle, and doting despots, and the chain may
be satin-smooth and golden-strong; but if it be of rusty iron, parting
every now and then and letting the poor prisoner violently loose, and
again suddenly caught hold of, bringing him up with a jerk, galling his
tender limbs and irretrievably ruining his temper,--it is all the same;
there is no help for it. And really, to look around the world and see the
people that are its fathers and mothers is appalling,--the narrow-minded,
prejudiced, ignorant, ill-tempered, fretful, peevish, passionate,
careworn, harassed men and women. Even we grown people,
independent of them and capable of self-defence, have as much as we

can do to keep the peace. Where is there a city, or a town, or a village,
in which are no bickerings, no jealousies, no angers, no petty or
swollen spites? Then fancy yourself, instead of the neighbor and
occasional visitor of these poor human beings, their children, subject to
their absolute control, with no power of protest against their folly, no
refuge from their injustice, but living on through thick and thin right
under their guns.
"Oh!" but you say, "this is a very one-sided view. You leave out
entirely the natural tenderness that comes in to temper the matter.
Without that, a child's situation would of course be intolerable; but the
love that is born with him makes all things smooth."
No, it does not make all things smooth. It does wonders, to be sure, but
it does not make cross people pleasant, nor violent people calm, nor
fretful people easy, nor obstinate people reasonable, nor foolish people
wise,--that is, it may do so spasmodically, but it does not hold them to
it and keep them at it. A great deal of beautiful moonshine is written
about the sanctities of home and the sacraments of marriage and birth. I
do not mean to say that there is no sanctity and no sacrament.
Moonshine is not nothing. It is light,--real, honest light,--just as truly as
the sunshine. It is sunshine at second-hand. It illuminates, but
indistinctly. It beautifies, but it does not vivify or fructify. It comes
indeed from the sun, but in too roundabout a way to do the sun's work.
So, if a woman is pretty nearly sanctified before she is married,
wifehood and motherhood may finish the business; but there is not one
man in ten thousand of the writers aforesaid who would marry a vixen,
trusting to the sanctifying influences of marriage to tone her down to
sweetness. A thoughtful, gentle, pure, and elevated woman, who has
been accustomed to stand face to face with the eternities, will see in her
child a soul. If the circumstances of her life leave her leisure and
adequate repose, that soul will be to her a solemn trust, a sacred charge,
for which she will give her own soul's life in pledge. But, dear me! how
many such women do you suppose there are in your village? Heaven
forbid that I should even appear to be depreciating woman! Do I not
know too well their strength, and their virtue which is their strength?
But stepping out of idyls and novels, and stepping into American
kitchens, is it not true that the larger part of the mothers see in their
babies, or act as if they saw, only babies? And if there are three or four

or half a dozen of them, as there generally are, so much the more do
they see babies whose bodies monopolize the mother's time to the
disadvantage of their souls. She loves them, and she works for them
day and night; but when they are ranting and ramping and quarrelling,
and torturing her over-tense nerves, she forgets the infinite, and applies
herself energetically to the finite, by sending Harry with a round
scolding into one corner and Susy into another, with no light thrown
upon the point in dispute, no principle settled as a guide in future
difficulties, and little discrimination as to the relative guilt of the
offenders. But there is no court of appeal before which Harry and Susy
can lay their case in these charming "happiest days."
Then there