and alone, for nearly twenty years, and
made of her two sons "lovers and friends." I have always felt that she
owed it to the world to impart to other mothers all that she could of her
divine secret; to write out, even in detail, all the processes by which
her boys have grown to be so strong, upright, loving, and manly.

But one of her first principles has so direct a bearing on the subject
that I wish to speak of here that I venture to attempt an explanation of
it. She has told me that she never once, even in their childish days, took
the ground that she had right to require any thing from them simply
_because_ she was their mother. This is a position very startling to the
average parent. It is exactly counter to traditions.

"Why must I?" or "Why cannot I?" says the child. "Because I say so, and I
am your father," has been the stern, authoritative reply ever since we can
any of us remember; and, I presume, ever since the Christian era, since
that good Apostle Paul saw enough in the Ephesian families where he
visited to lead him to write to them from Rome, "Fathers, provoke not your
children to wrath."

It seems to me that there are few questions of practical moment in
every-day living on which a foregone and erroneous conclusion has been
adopted so generally and so undoubtingly. How it first came about it is
hard to see. Or, rather, it is easy to see, when one reflects; and the
very clearness of the surface explanation of it only makes its injustice
more odious. It came about because the parent was strong and the child
weak. Helplessness in the hands of power,--that is the whole story.
Suppose for an instant (and, absurd as the supposition is practically, it
is not logically absurd), that the child at six were strong enough to whip
his father; let him have the intellect of an infant, the mistakes and the
faults of an infant,--which the father would feel himself bound and _would
be_ bound to correct,--but the body of a man; and then see in how
different fashion the father would set himself to work to insure good
behavior. I never see the heavy, impatient hand of a grown man or woman
laid with its brute force, even for the smallest purpose, on a little
child, without longing for a sudden miracle to give the baby an equal
strength to resist.

When we realize what it is for us to dare, for our own pleasure, even with
solemnest purpose of the holiest of pleasures, parenthood, to bring into
existence a soul, which must t