oung men are still going backwards and forwards to their business; or
the whole family going out and no older woman being left in charge of
the young domestics. What can one expect but that, having sown moral
carelessness, we shall reap corruption?

But even with no such culpable neglect of our responsibilities, I do
wish we would cultivate more human relations with our servants, and so
get them to work more consciously with us in maintaining a high
Christian tone in our homes. If we would but take a more individual
interest in them and their belongings, as we should do with those we
count our friends; getting a good situation for the younger sister who
is just coming on, possibly giving her a few weeks of good training in
our own household; giving the delicate child of the family change of air
and good food, even taking in a baby to enable a sick mother to go for a
short time into a hospital. All these things I have found possible in my
own household. And surely such thought and care for those they hold dear
would form a living bond between mistress and servant. If we would take
the same thought and care for pleasant breaks in the monotony of our
young servants' lives as we do for our own girls, would the servant
difficulty press upon us to the same degree? Nay, if we could set going
a weekly or fortnightly working party with our own servants in some
cause which would interest us both, reading out some interesting
narrative in connection with it, could we not even in this small way
establish a bond of common service and make us feel that we were all
working together for the same Master, so that our servants might become
our helpers, and not, as they sometimes are, our hinderers, in bringing
up our children in a high and pure moral atmosphere?

But when all things are said and done, I know that with every mother
worthy the name there must be moments of deep discouragement and sense
of failure--a sense of mistakes made with some difficult nature to
which her own gives her but little clue; a sense of difficulties in
vain grappled with, of shortcomings in vain striven against. Which of us
have not had such moments of despondency in the face of a great task? In
such moments I have often called to mind one of those parables of Nature
which are everywhere around us, unseen and unheeded, like those
exquisite fresco angels of the old masters, in dim corners of ancient
churches, blowing silent trumpets of praise and adoration an