Page:Letters to Mothers (1839).djvu/21

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Letters to Mothers.

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LETTER I.

PRIVILEGES OF THE MOTHER.

My Friend, if in becoming a mother, you have reached the climax of your happiness, you have also taken a higher place in the scale of being. A most important part is allotted you, in the economy of the great human family. Look at the gradations of your way onward; your doll, your playmates, your lessons; perhaps to decorate a beautiful person; to study the art of pleasing; to exult in your own attractions; to feed on adulation; to wear the garland of love; and then to introduce into existence a being never to die; and to feel your highest, holiest energies enlisted to fit it for this world and the next.

No longer will you now live for self; no longer be noteless and unrecorded, passing away without name or memorial among the people. It can no more be reproachfully said of you, that "you lend all your graces to the grave, and keep no copy."