an't see 'em, sir; but, bless the darlin', she
can. And she smiles in her sleep when she sees 'em."

[Illustration: "An' it's a blessin' they brings wid 'em, sir."]

Rose and Grace came often to this bower with kisses and gifts and
offerings, like a pair of nice fairy godmothers. They hung over the
pretty little waxen miracle as she opened her great blue eyes with a
silent, mysterious wonder; but, alas! all these delicious moments,
this artless love of the new baby life, was not for the mother. She
was not strong enough to enjoy it. Its cries made her nervous; and so
she kept the uncheered solitude of her room without the blessing of
the little angel.

People may mourn in lugubrious phrase about the Irish blood in our
country. For our own part, we think the rich, tender, motherly nature
of the Irish girl an element a thousand times more hopeful in our
population than the faded, washed-out indifferentism of fashionable
women, who have danced and flirted away all their womanly attributes,
till there is neither warmth nor richness nor maternal fulness left
in them,--mere paper-dolls, without milk in their bosoms or blood
in their veins. Give us rich, tender, warm-hearted Bridgets and
Kathleens, whose instincts teach them the real poetry of motherhood;
who can love unto death, and bear trials and pains cheerfully for the
joy that is set before them. We are not afraid for the republican
citizens that such mothers will bear to us. They are the ones that
will come to high places in our land, and that will possess the earth
by right of the strongest.

Motherhood, to the woman who has lived only to be petted, and to be
herself the centre of all things, is a virtual dethronement. Something
weaker, fairer, more delicate than herself comes,--something for her
to serve and to care for more than herself.

It would sometimes seem as if motherhood were a lovely artifice of the
great Father, to wean the heart from selfishness by a peaceful and
gradual process. The babe is self in another form. It is so interwoven
and identified with the mother's life, that she passes by almost
insensible gradations from herself to it; and day by day the
distinctive love of self wanes as the child-love waxes, filling the
heart with a thousand new springs of tenderness.

But that this benignant transformation of nature may be perfected, it
must be wrought out in Nature's own way. Any artificial arrangement
that takes the child away from the mother