The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1904-07-16
CHILDREN.

A little true story of some workmen
and bird has struck the fancy of a
great many people, and is going the
rounds of the papers and periodicals
from Maine to California. The masons
and carpenters engaged in the eree-
ton of building in one Of New York's
suburban villages had raised the walls
to the second story when it appeared
that some large trees, with overhang-
ing branches, must come down in order
that the work might proceed with less
inconvenience. Just as they We're
about to cut down the trees one of the
men discovered that robin had built
a nest in one of the branches. The
Workmen all took al look at Madam
Robin, who was sitting on her eggs, and
they decided that they would go on
with the work and subject themselves
to a good deal Of inconvenience from
the branches, which got in their faces,
rather than break up a promising FAM
| lily, These were rather rough kind of
men, no doubt, little given to extreme
sentimentality, and not at all devoted
TO the fantastic notions current in mod
ern nature books about bird and beast;
but they paid tribute to motherhood,
and so does the whole healthy world.
A very severe moralist has laid down
the maxim, in opposition to those who
contend that it is the first duty of a
family to raise children, that 1T is a
deep and grave moral offsnse, first, to
bring children into the world unless
there is sound reason to believe that
they will be without Intellectual and
physical blemish; and, second, that it
| is almost equally wrong to bring child
rem into this sphere of woe with no
prospect of being able to provide for
them. These great questions may be
passed by, but there is one question
which will not be seriously debated,
which is that those people who dislike
children, and the state of society, be it
never SO refined on the surface, which
rather frowns on children and regards
them as a nuisance and a bother, and.
at best, as eneumbrances to be tolera-
ted, are in an unnatural, and therefore
lunsound and unhealthy, condemnation,
no greater indictment. than the child
less rich. descriptive of class.
Jeremy Taylor, in one Of his rhapsodies
on the married state, says:
Marriage is a school and exercise of
virtue; marriage is the proper scene of
lpiety and patience, of the duty of par
ents; here kindness is spread abroad
| and love is united and made firm as a
center; marriage is the nursery of
heaven; the state of marriage fills up
the numbers of the elect, and hath in
| it the labor of love. the blessings of
society and the union Of the hands and
hearts. Marriage is the mother Of the
world, and preserves kingdoms. and
fills cities. and churches and heaven it.
self; marriage keeps order, exercises
many virtues and promotes the interest
of mankind, and is that state of good
things to which God hath designed the
present constitution of the world. =
| 1t is supposed that he was thus elo-
lquent about those people who have
Preached the deliberate conclusion that
lchildren do not belong to the present
lscheme of the universe; that they are
a nuisance, and that their laughter and
noise in a household are an annoyance
mot to be tolerated. In all old ciyiliza-
lions there are strains of weak races
land families which are so overcome
with world-weariness that they are not
Ito be classed with the vigorous and
sound life, but it is an oninouus sign
when the wealthy or the well-to-do who
lare healthy and strong begin to look
upon children as a burden, as an OBJ
lstacle to their pleasure, as in the
way.
4 How these people are cheating them
selves they never know. They are in
the rapid race for happiness, and yet
some of the most fortunate in the
world, like Goethe, blessed with every
gift of fortune and nature have testi-
fled that, search their memories as
they might, they could never count
more than q score of minutes when
lthey had attained to that supreme
Happiness to which they had aspired;
lit is, however, the testimony of the hui
Imam race that there is one great happi-
ness on earth, and that happiness Is in
/ the guiding and guarding of and the la