here and there, it is quickly plucked up, and never suffered to
obstruct or weaken the growth of esculent plants. A mole may enter
stealthily, marring the beauty of a flower-bed, and disturbing the
roots of some garden-favorite, but through the careful husbandman's
well set enclosure, no beasts find an entrance. So it will be with
the watchful, conscientious mother. She will so fence around her
children from external dangers and allurements, that destructive
beasts will be kept out; and she will, at the same time cultivate
the garden of their good affections, and extirpate the weeds, that
her children may grow up in moral health and beauty.

All this can be done. But the right path must be seen before we can
walk in it. Every mother feels as the one I have alluded to; but
some, while they feel as deeply, have not the clear perceptions of
what is right that others have. Much has been written on the subject
of guiding and governing children--much that is good, and much that
is of doubtful utility. I will here present, from the pen of an
English lady, whose work has not, we believe, been re-printed in
this country, a most excellent series of precepts. They deserve to
be written in letters of gold, and hung up in every nursery. She
says--

"The moment a child is born into the world, a mother's duties
commence; and of all those which God has allotted to mortals, there
are none so important as those which devolve upon a mother.

More feeble and helpless than any thing else of living creatures is
an infant in the first days of its existence--unable to minister to
its own wants, unable even to make those wants known: a feeble cry
which indicates suffering, but not what or where the pain is, is all
it can utter. But to meet this weakness and incapacity on the part
of the infant, God has implanted in the heart of the mother a
yearning affection to her offspring, so that she feels this almost
inanimate being to be a part of herself, and every cry of pain acts
as a dagger to her own heart.

And to humanity alone, of all the tribes of animated beings, has a
power been given to nullify this feeling. Beast, bird, and insect,
attend to the wants of their offspring, accordingly as those wants
require much or little assiduity. But woman, if she will, can drug
and stupefy this feeling. She can commit the charge of her child to
dependants and servants, and need only to take care that enough is
provided to meet that child's wants, bu