pposed to own them can do nothing? and yet how
much may be done, is done, by the brain and heart of one human being in
contact with another! We are answerable for incalculable opportunities of
good and evil in our daily intercourse with every soul with whom we have
to deal; every meeting, every parting, every chance greeting, and every
appointed encounter, are occasions open to us for which we are to account.
To our children, our servants, our friends, our acquaintances,--to each
and all every day, and all day long, we are distributing that which is
best or worst in existence,--influence: with every word, with every look,
with every gesture, something is given or withheld of great importance it
may be to the receiver, of inestimable importance to the giver.

Certainly the laws and enacted statutes on which this detestable system is
built up are potent enough; the social prejudice that buttresses it is
almost more potent still; and yet a few hearts and brains well bent to do
the work, would bring within this almost impenetrable dungeon of
ignorance, misery, and degradation, in which so many millions of human
souls lie buried, that freedom of God which would presently conquer for
them their earthly liberty. With some such thoughts I commended the
slaves on the plantation to the little overseer's wife; I did not tell my
thoughts to her, they would have scared the poor little woman half out of
her senses. To begin with, her bread, her husband's occupation, has its
root in slavery; it would be difficult for her to think as I do of it. I
am afraid her care, even of the bodily habits and sicknesses of the people
left in Mrs. G----'s charge, will not be worth much, for nobody treats
others better than they do themselves; and she is certainly doing her best
to injure herself and her own poor baby, who is two and a-half years old,
and whom she is still suckling.

This is, I think, the worst case of this extraordinary delusion so
prevalent among your women that I have ever met with yet; but they all
nurse their children much longer than is good for either baby or mother.
The summer heat, particularly when a young baby is cutting teeth, is, I
know, considered by young American mothers an exceedingly critical time,
and therefore I always hear of babies being nursed till after the second
summer; so that a child born in January would be suckled till it was
eighteen or nineteen months old, in order that it might not be weaned till
its