her of body or mind. They know too much at
fifteen, and will know a great deal too little at forty.

The girl of twelve--which is about the age you are thinking of--has a
great deal more assurance than some of our church members at fifty. Baby
boys and girls haven't gone quite out of fashion, but they are getting
scarcer every year, people tell me; and regular-built, wholesome
children are as hard to find here as green gooseberries in October. I've
seen plenty of little men and women, that couldn't speak plain to save
their lives, dressed out like soldiers on a training day, with short
frocks or tunics, and legs as bare as bare could be; but such boys and
girls as we remember are not to be found anywhere nowadays, I tell you.

What does all this mean? Just this: Mothers don't trust their young ones
out of fashion long enough to grow. Besides, there isn't, only now and
then, one who gets acquainted with her own child well enough to know
what is good for it. Why, these city women would go crazy to see a
little girl, six years old, swing upon a gate or riding horseback on a
rusty old farm-horse, gripping the mane with both hands, and sending up
shouts of fun if she happened to tumble off. Children, in the natural
state, love water, like ducks and goslings. It used to be a sight to
watch them, knee-deep in the brooks, with their tenty-tointy feet
shining through the ripples, as they hunted for water-cresses and sweet
flag-root; but catch one of your new-fangled young ones at anything with
so much human nature in it. All the water they see is in the bottom of a
bath-tub, rubbed on their skimpy limbs by an Irish girl's hands. Not the
mother's. Oh, no! Care of one's own children is too much for a healthy
young woman nowadays. Being a professor and member of a church, I want
to speak accordingly, and just drop the mothers here. Christian language
isn't up to the occasion.

Well, as I was saying, the meanness of these mothers in hiving up their
young ones and cheating 'em out of the very best years of life, is
enough to make a saint mad. The rough-and-tumble season, which gives a
child sound lungs, strong limbs, and a brain that thinks of nothing but
high play, is just knocked out of their lives. It's an awful swindle on
the poor little things, and I'm not afraid to say it openly and
above-board here in my very first report.

If I haven't a right to speak on this subject, I should like to know who
has. That's all. I never had