Year: 1871

| am perfectly well aware that very
many of my friends pity me. Not all of
them are candid enough to tell this in so
many words; some show it in their looks,
others act it out, but few take me. by
hand and say, "My dear sister, | am
downright sorry for you


1t has been a curious, and l confess a
somewhat amusing study to me to OBJ
serve that these good people pity me
not because they see the trials that l
feel, but because, imagining themselves,
placed in the predcarent of having so
many children, the difficulties seem ap-
palling. They don't stop to think that
the evil Gas they look st u has come on
very gradually at intervals of year or
two, and that by now | have had time
to get used to it, and that all my former
ambition 20 have elegant dresses and to
be a stylish housekeeper is laid away for
a season.


Mrs. Keepemstraight says: IF yon
would only manage your children better
you would not have half the trouble
with them that you do now. When a
child knows enough to cry, it knows
enough to learn something Every
body knows a Child that amt fool
cries when it is born, and then's the time
to commerce to edicate them, l say. If
you had brougll, your children up as l
did, they never would cried after the
first week or Two, and after they had
been washed ard polished and dressed
the first thing in the morning, there'd be
no more trouble with 'em than the chairs
and tables"


am conscious that I look at her in a
dreamy sort of way, as | hug my baby
tighter in my arms, for am thinking of
three little graves side by side in the
cold church yard, and of the small mar
BILE sacred to their memory, and that
this is all that is left of the theory Of
Mrs. Keepemstraight.


Mrs. Allchapel don't see how it is that
| can consent to be absent from the
sanctuary so much. "Just think of
il" she says, sometimes you don't hear
a gospel sermon for six or eight consecu
tive Sabbaths, and that pretty lavender
hat you had last summer you didn't
wear to meeting three times, and all be-
cause you have so many children. l
should think you would feel as though
you could not have it so


Mrs Evershine often comes in to see
me, because she says it does her good,
and makes me more contented to see how
cheerful | am under adversity(by this
last word she means my children, sup
pose, but she always acts as though l
allowed my darlipgs to make dining
table Of the parlor sofa. She glances at
the chairs, and turns up her velvet cloak
and sits on the veriest cornner, bolt up
right. She told a neighbor of mine that
my house looked neat always, but then
how could it be clean with SO many chill.
dren


Mrs. Do-it Brown, one of your thor.
oughly neat, childrenless. white aproned
women, who devotes all the energies of
her capacious mind to keeping her house.
herself, her husband. and mother-in-law
neat and cIean-never by any chance de-
waiting from this object in life-thinks
when che remembers me If had to
have those children, if Ihad to have the
doors left open on me every few minutes,
and the dust and dirt blown in from the
street on my brocatel furniture, and had
to have mud on my kitchen floor and
wet feet on my sitting room lounge, and
the chair slaves marked, and my door
knobs creased, and my window panes
fingered, and the table cloths knife-cut,
and the china broken. and my glasses