ith her doll. She decks it in fine
clothes, prepares for it night linen, puts it into the cradle, rocks it,
takes it up, feeds it, scolds it, and tells it stories. When she grows
older she takes charge of her younger brothers and sisters. Nothing
possesses, in her estimation, greater charms than babies. When she has
grown to maturity and become herself a mother, with what sweet emotion
and gushing tenderness does she caress her little ones."

While the love of offspring is more or less strong in all, yet it does
not manifest itself if there are other tendencies predominant in the
character. Take a woman in whom the love of dress and society is most
active; she will not care for offspring, if her circumstances are such
that it would debar her from enjoying style or society; or if the
artistic inclination is the strongest in her character she would not
want offspring; or if great intellectual tastes are very strong and love
of children only moderate, she would not want offspring; or where
persons have consecrated themselves fully and unreservedly to a
spiritual life in order to become spiritual parents to many, to them
offspring would be a hindrance in their work. But where the domestic
faculties are the strongest, the home is lonesome without children. In
some the maternal instinct is exceedingly strong, for it manifests
itself to such an extent as to become the ruling passion; nothing else
but offspring can satisfy them. And this maternal passion is expressed
in matchless language by Mr. Stephen Phillips:[1] "Lucrezia's sudden
outburst of grief and rage against her lonely fate is, poetically
speaking, one of the finest passages in the play:"

[Footnote 1: Literary Digest, Dec., 1899.]

GIOVANNI.
Lucrezia! this is that old bitterness.

LUCREZIA.
Bitterness--am I bitter? strange, oh strange!
How else? My husband dead and childless left.
My thwarted woman--thoughts have inward turned,
And that vain milk like acid in me eats.
Have I not in my thought trained little feet
To venture, and taught little lips to move
Until they shaped the wonder of a word?
I am long practiced. Oh, those children, mine,
Mine, doubly mine; and yet I cannot touch them.
I cannot see them, hear them--Does great God
Expect I shall clasp air and kiss the wind
Forever, and the budding