g that you have done
only that which was your duty, then you know what the false, pretentious
labor of men performed for glory really is, and that true labor is
fulfilling the will of God, whose command you feel in your heart. You
know that if you are a true mother it makes no difference that no one has
seen your toil, that no one has praised you for it, but that it has only
been looked upon as what must needs be so, and that even those for whom
your have labored not only do not thank you, but often torture and
reproach you. And with the next child you do the same: again you suffer,
again you undergo the fearful, invisible labor; and again you expect no
reward from any one, and yet you feel the sane satisfaction.

If you are like this, you will not say after two children, or after
twenty, that you have done enough, just as the laboring man fifty years
of age will not say that he has worked enough, while he still continues
to eat and to sleep, and while his muscles still demand work; if you are
like this, your will not cast the task of nursing and care-taking upon
some other mother, just as a laboring man will not give another man the
work which he has begun, and almost completed, to finish: because into
this work you will throw your life. And therefore the more there is of
this work, the fuller and the happier is your life.

And when you are like this, for the good fortune of men, you will apply
that law of fulfilling God's will, by which you guide your life, to the
lives of your husband, of your children, and of those most nearly
connected with you. If your are like this, and know from your own
experience, that only self-sacrificing, unseen, unrewarded labor,
accompanied with danger to life and to the extreme bounds of endurance,
for the lives of others, is the appointed lot of man, which affords him
satisfaction, then you will announce these demands to others; you will
urge your husband to the same toil; and you will measure and value the
dignity of men acceding to this toil; and for this toil you will also
prepare your children.

Only that mother who looks upon children as a disagreeable accident, and
upon love, the comforts of life, costume, and society, as the object of
life, will rear her children in such a manner that they shall have as
much enjoyment as possible out of life, and that they shall make the
greatest possible use of it; only she will feed them luxuriously, deck
them out, amuse them artificially