-built church he and King Arthur and Queen Guinevere all
mouldered away to dust; a mother who knew no more than sufficed to
wield crayon and brush indifferently, and to love what she loves with
her whole heart?

And I'm writing her life, her little life, with all its tiny
unfoldings--a story of her being and doings, illustrated profusely with
sketches and photographs--writing it for the Mabel of by and by. Will
she forget the tenderness that's in every line and stroke when she
comes upon such a sinful juxtaposition as this which Ronayne laughed at
the other day. "Flanel peticoat?" Yes, "flanel peticoat"; it _does_
look rather queer, but that's only because we're used to the wicked
lavishness of the common fashion--and double consonants are only so
much crinoline. When I worry sometimes as to what baby'll think of her
mother being such a goose, Ronayne says the spelling and all the other
stupidities are only piquant, and that he asks of heaven nothing better
than a daughter only half as much to his taste as his wife is, which
would be very dear of him to think and tell me if he had not rather
upset it by admitting that if he had a son who persisted in spelling
warm after his mother's eccentric fashion--wharm--he, my husband, would
certainly "wharm" that boy--my boy.

And I'd sooner Mabel should laugh even unkindly at her mother's
ignorance than ever see her turning over the leaves of a set of books
wherein her mother's hand had carefully cut away every allusion to
Christian belief, every repetition of God's name--such a set as I saw
Mrs. Malise scissoring when I called upon her last.

"These are books that are accumulating for Mill," she
explained--"presents from one and another--and I'm cutting out every
word that can suggest to him the idea of any life or any world than the
only one of which he can gain a certainty through his senses; childish
impressions are so tenacious, and I mean him to be utterly free from
influence or superstition; open to believe or disbelieve in immortality
when his faculties are trained, and he can judge evidence fairly. The
Christian scheme seems to me to rest on a mass of unworthy fables; but
he is not to be taught in the sense of my conclusion. I shall guard him
from my atheism as carefully as from accepted forms of faith. Surely no
more can be exacted from a mother than to rear a child unbiassed, and
let him make his own experiences, shape his own belief. I believe there
are text-books