Either a bad thing is happening, or too much of a good
thing, which counts up just the same. The parents begin to repair
the evil by a greater one. They attempt to patch their own rents by
dilapidating their children. They recruit their own exhausted energies
by laying hold of the young energies around them, and older children are
bored, and fretted, and deformed in figure and temper by the care
of younger children. This is horrible. Some care and task and
responsibility are good for a child's own development; but every care,
every toil, every atom of labor that is laid upon children beyond
what is solely the best for their own character is intolerable and
inexcusable oppression. Parents have no right to lighten their own
burdens by imposing them upon the children. The poor things had nothing
to do with being born. They came into the world without any volition of
their own. Their existence began only to serve the pleasure or the pride
of others. It was a culpable cruelty, in the first place, to introduce
them into a sphere where no adequate provision could be made for their
comfort and culture; but to shoulder them, after they get here, with
the load which belongs to their parents is outrageous. Earth is not a
paradise at best, and at worst it is very near the other place. The
least we can do is to make the way as smooth as possible for the
new-comers. There is not the least danger that it will be too smooth.
If you stagger under the weight which you have imprudently assumed,
stagger. But don't be such an unutterable coward and brute as to
illumine your own life by darkening the young lives which sprang from
yours. I often wonder that children do not open their mouths and curse
the father that begat and the mother that bore them. I often wonder that
parents do not tremble lest the cry of the children whom they oppress go
up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and bring down wrath upon
their guilty heads. It was well that God planted filial affection and
reverence as an instinct in the human breast. If it depended upon
reason, it would have but a precarious existence.

I wish women would have the sense and courage--I will not say, to
say what they think, for that is not always desirable--but to think
according to the facts. They have a strong desire to please men, which
is quite right and natural; but in their eagerness to do this, they
sometimes forget what is due to themselves. To think namby-pambyism for
the sake o