Milk of human kindness

“ The soured milk of human kindness is again sweetened. Or, if that be too much to say, at least man, with all the dissonance that hangs by his name and recollections, is forgotten, suspended—for the time absolutely lost. ”

“ The theory here expounded, that moral teaching should keep pace with the experience and intelligence of the child, should save us from such mistakes.
To proceed with the stories, the book of Joshua offers nothing that we can turn to account, nor do the stories of Jael, Deborah, and Gideon contain moral lessons fit for the young. Sour milk is not proper food for children, nor do those stories afford the proper moral food in which, so to speak, the milk of human kindness has turned sour. ”

“ There was more, too, what you might call the milk o' human kindness in people then—none o' them amalgamated stores, every man keepin' his own little shop; not so eager to cut his neighbour's throat, as you might say. ”

“ Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be [3835]
What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature; [3836] 15
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness [3837]
To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, 20
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou'ldst have, great Glamis, [3838] [3839]
That which cries 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it; [3838] [3839]
And that which rather thou dost fear to do [3839]
Than wishest should be undone.' Hie thee hither, ”

“ A great deal has been said and written on the subject of indiscriminate giving, and many who have little sympathy with the needy or distressed, make the supposed unworthiness of the object an excuse for withholding their alms; while others, who really possess a large proportion of the milk of human kindness, in awaiting great opportunities to do good, overlook all in their immediate pathway, as beneath their notice. ”

“ The milk of human kindness thou hast turned To rankling poison in my breast, and made Appalling deeds familiar to my soul. ”

“ Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! ”

“ And tender human kindness, which is as nourishing to the ailing little ones as mother's milk? It is small reproach against poor parents to say that seldom do their children know real childish happiness, and cleanliness, and comfort, till they are brought into one of these wards. ”

“ That they are not so, is no more proved from the fact that as things now are they are generally found addicted to the contrary habit, than the very general neglect of milk among the higher classes of our citizens, proves that they have not a natural relish for it—when every one knows that at our first setting out in life, milk is, almost without exception, the sole article of human sustenance. ”

“ Is it not its duty to examine itself, to increase, to strengthen, and to exercise itself in charity? Scarcely in a state to digest milk, ought it to load itself with solid food, and such as can serve the purposes of nourishment only to the perfect man? ”

“ Very few human beings have such fragrance of good-will as milk. The farmer knew that he had gone too far in speaking coarsely of the cow, whose children first forego their food for the benefit of ours, and then become veal to please us. “My little maid is gone,” said the lord of many cows, and who had robbed some thousand of their dear calves. “I trow I must make up my mind to see my little maid no more.” ”

“ It demonstrated a truth that we are apt to lose sight of, that mothers' milk, even the milk from badly-nourished, poverty-stricken mothers is infinitely better than an abundant supply of artificial food combined with neglect. ”

“ Why should such people, it is asked, indulge in a luxury which is only proper for their betters; and not rather content themselves with milk, which is in every form wholesome and nourishing? Were it true that poor people could every where procure so excellent an article as milk, there would be then just reason to reproach them for giving the preference [129] to the miserable infusion of which they are so fond. But it is not so. Wherever the poor can get milk, do they not gladly use it? ”

“ How, I pray, can it agree with nature that they should thrust from themselves that which is a part of themselves?—that they should at last withdraw the milk from their own offspring, which during so many months they bore and nourished beneath their hearts? God certainly gave not the milk for the use of the mothers, but of the children ”

“ And yet men complain, instead of being thankful!” Any single created thing, he said, would suffice to demonstrate Providence to a grateful mind. Then he instanced the production of milk from grass and of cheese from milk. ”

“ How many a poor infant has fallen a victim to that crime!—for crime it may truly be called.
It is folly in the extreme for a mother to bate a milkman down in the price of his milk; if she does, the milk is sure to be either of inferior quality, or adulterated, or diluted with water; and woe betide the poor unfortunate child if it be either the one or the other! The only way to insure good milk is to go to a respectable cow-keeper, and let him be made to thoroughly understand the importance of your child having genuine milk, and that you are then willing to pay a fair remunerative price for it. ”

“ Impelled by childishness I then addressed mother, saying,—"This O mother, that thou hast given me is not any preparation of milk."—Filled with grief and sorrow at this, and embracing me from parental affection and smelling my head, O Madhava, she said unto me,—"Whence, O child, can ascetics of cleansed souls obtain food prepared with milk? Such men always reside in the forest and subsist upon bulbs and roots and fruits. ”

“ Do it for God's sake and your own single-heartedly. Go to the school, return to your flowers, and never shun innocent society, however dull. Milk and water is a poor thing, but it is a diluent, and all we can do just now is to dilute your grief. ”

“ Often, it is true, a mother came who placed her gift in the hands of her child, or a modest old woman, tradesman, or soldier, from motives of genuine compassion, offered the prisoners a jug of new milk or strengthening wine. ”

“ Every one, even his own father, prostrates himself before the milkman, and no one would dare to refuse him anything. No human being, except another milkman, may touch him; and he gives oracles to all who consult him, speaking with the voice of a god. ”

“ In which they grievously offended the other citizens, for thus they gave men to understand that those folk who shouted not did not love their mother the State nor the fair land of their birth, which was a manifest imposture and an injury not to be suffered, for men drink with their mother’s milk this natural love and it is sweet to breathe one’s natal air. ”

“ Things done among father and mother, brothers and sisters, are either very peaceful or very flat, according as your feelings are either wholesome or unwholesome—there is none of the pleasurable excitement, generally more or less feverish, of working with friends we love and admire; it is the difference between milk and wine. I do not think wine wrong, but I think it is much better to cultivate a taste for milk; you must watch yourselves, and not get to feel home things dull. ”

“ Mothers and nurses tell us that they appease these things by I know not what remedies; and may this be taken for innocence, that when the fountain of milk is flowing fresh and abundant, one who has need should not be allowed to share it, though needing that nourishment to sustain life? Yet we look leniently on these things, not because they are not faults, nor because the faults are small, but because they will vanish as age increases. ”

“ The lad's heart yearned to the generous farmer, for he felt that his kindness had the stamp of truth and sincerity upon it. He could only raise his eyes in a silent prayer, that none belonging to him might ever be compelled, as strangers and way-farers, to commit themselves, as he did, to the casualties of life, in pursuit of those attainments which poverty cannot otherwise command. ”

“ Because mothers for years were willing to feed their children bad milk, was then the movement to provide good milk for babies a waste of time and money? Plenty of people always could be found who would willingly drink impure water. ”

“ On the contrary, if by ‘milk’ it is meant all or any earthly good whatever, it is the ‘spilt milk’ that we should lament. There is no reason to cry for the milk that has not been wasted, the good that is not lost. ”

“ Kindness to animals always indicates something good in the heart. Life, in its every form, should be precious to us. Cows yield much less milk, and of an inferior quality, on the eastern than western continent. ”

“ It is our business afterwards to keep them in condition, and improve them if possible. The daughters of every man of any consequence are compelled, every morning, to imbibe a jar of milk under their father's eye. ”

“ There's always a neighbor to give you a jug of boiling water, if you've no time for fire, or it's summer, and tea livens you up a bit where a herring won't. I take mine without milk, and like it better without, and often I don't have butter on me bread. But I get along, and, please God, I'll be able to keep out of the 'house' to the end."
The married women fare better. The men decline to be put off with bread and tea, and the cook-shops and cheap markets help them to what they call good living. ”

“ They should also be well fed with wholesome provender, and have access to good water. If kept quite clean, by occasionally rubbing them down, and washing their bag, and legs and feet, their health would be promoted, and of course the nutricious quality of the milk. If the comfort and welfare of society were consulted, the higher classes would not slight their dairies for studs of horses, kept more for ostentation than for use. ”

“ And this is what must occur in our Christian world: it must cry out of its helplessness; only the consciousness of its helplessness, consciousness of the impossibility of nourishing itself the former way and the impossibility of using any other way of nourishment than its mother's milk, will deliver it to the mother's breast, already overfilled with milk. ”

“ Altho' indeed she is scarce Half a Mother that refuses to feed what she has brought into the World. The nourishing of the tender Babe is the best Part of Geniture: For he is not only fed by the Milk, but with the Fragrancy of the Body of the Mother. He requires the same natural, familiar, accustomed Moisture, that he drew in when in her Body, and by which he received his Coalition. And I am of that Opinion, that the Genius of Children are vitiated by the Nature of the Milk they suck, as the Juices of the Earth change the Nature of those Plants and Fruits that it feeds. ”

“ But treat everybody well, and do what is right to everybody, and cultivate the spirit of kindness towards all. And when you see somebody's cattle in somebody's grain, feel sufficient interest in his welfare to go and drive them out ”

“ These tears, in which we think we see only weakness, ought not to be disregarded. They show that the child needs her still. Nursing is not yet finished. Intellectual nourishment, like physical food, ought in the beginning to be administered to the child under the form, as it were, of milk, fluid, tepid, mild, and full of life. Woman alone can so give it. Men expect too much at once of this new-born babe, whose teeth, scarcely formed, are painful. They want to give it bread, and they beat it if it does not bite. In God's name give him more milk: he will drink willingly. ”

“ She may even be saying to her: "The only thing it can swallow, poor little dear, is a little milk and arrowroot, and the doctor says unless it can have this it must die." A great deal of the London milk is adulterated, and, perhaps, this honest-looking milk-woman knows that water has been added to hers. May be, she has babies of her own, and then her heart must be sore when she realizes that the little sick one upstairs may perish through her employer's greed for undue profits. ”

“ All these are good—bread, potatoes, suet pudding; but children need other food as well.
First and foremost children need milk. All children need milk, not only infants in arms. When a mother weans her child, she ought to be able to give it plenty of milk or food made with milk. The writer well remembers a course of eloquent and striking lectures delivered by an able medical man to an audience of West-End charitable ladies. ”

“ Anticipation of good to come appears and with it the germ of hope and forward looking, and there is realization or disappointment, joy or anger or sorrow. Thus desire is linked up with satisfaction in a definite way, ideas and feelings of demand and supply begin to appear and perhaps power itself, in the vague notion, "I can get milk," commences to be felt. Social life starts when the child associates the mother with the milk, with the desire and the satisfaction. In the relationship established between mother and baby is the first great social contact ”

“ It is for the young ones to carry on the world. We old ones who have served our time must stand by and encourage the others.”
He set about preparing his frugal supper—a small loaf and a pennyworth of milk, which he took from a cupboard in one corner of the room. He put the milk into a tiny tin saucepan, and, as of course there was no fire in the grate, he lighted a little spirit lamp, set the saucepan over the flame, and sat down to watch till it boiled. ”

“ I went over to a man staring into a shop-window, and asked him in great haste what, according to his opinion, should one give a man who had been starving for a long time. It was a matter of life and death, I said; he couldn't even keep beef down.
"I have heard say that milk is a good thing--hot milk," answered the man, astonished. "Who is it, by the way, you are asking for?"
"Thanks, thanks," I say; "that idea of hot milk might not be half a bad notion;" and I go.
I entered the first café I came to going along, and asked for some boiled milk. ”