es both parties to unjust judgment. Did each determine to see
all the good possible in the other, connections-by-marriage might
become kin-at-heart.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A TIMID WORD FOR THE STEP-MOTHER.

At a luncheon party of a dozen women which I attended last winter,
this very topic was introduced. Strangely enough, there were present
three women whose mothers had died while the children were still
infants, and whose fathers had married again, and two women who were
themselves step-mothers. Each of the three who could not remember her
own mother agreed that she who took her place had filled it so
conscientiously that the child hardly felt the lack. The two
step-mothers confessed that they loved their husbands' children as
dearly as their own. Said one woman:

"When people speak to me of my step-daughter I have to stop and think
which one of the children I did not bring into the world. She is as
dear to me as my own flesh and blood."

After we had gleaned all the evidence of truth from the chaff to which
we are sometimes treated, a lively member of the company remarked
ruefully:

"I declare, all that I have just heard makes me positively ashamed
that I did not have a step-mother, or that there is no prospect as far
as I can see into the dim future, of my ever becoming one."

There is something to be said on both sides, and we may as well face
the facts without prejudice. No woman, however tender, can really take
an own mother's place. Her step-children may think that she does, and
this is one of the instances where ignorance is such genuine bliss
that it would be cruel folly to enlighten it. It would not be natural
if actual mother-love could be felt by a woman toward any children
save those for whom she has braved the danger of death and the
mightiest pain mortal can know. With this suffering comes a love far
greater than the anguish, a passionate devotion which, we are certain,
must reach beyond the grave itself. That mother who, having young
children, still wishes to die, is an anomaly rarely met with. No
matter how much she may be forced to endure, she still prays to live
for her sons' and daughters' sakes. A poor sufferer once said:

"If I had no child I would beg the good Lord to let me die. But while
my baby lives, I beg Him to spare this life which is too valuable to
Him to be lost."

It is not possible that an outsider "whose own the sheep are not"
should know this heaven-given feeling. Still