Puerility

“ Wordsworth—the touching sentiment, profound wisdom, and copious harmony of whose loftier writings we left unnoticed, in the desire of burlesquing them; while we pounced upon his popular ballads, and exerted ourselves to push their simplicity into puerility and silliness. With pride and pleasure do we now claim to be ranked among the most ardent admirers of this true poet ”

“ How often is the health of the mother, giving birth every year to an infant—happy if it be not twins!—and compelled to toil on, even at those times when nature imperiously calls for some relief from daily drudgery—how often is the mother’s comfort, health, nay, her life, thus sacrificed! Or, if care and toil have weighed down the spirit, and at last broken the health of the father, how often is the widow left, unable, with the most virtuous intentions, to save her fatherless offspring from becoming degraded objects of charity, or profligate votaries of vice! ”

“ The great chastity of paternity, to match the great
chastity of maternity,
The oath of procreation I have sworn—my Adamic
and fresh daughters,
The greed that eats me day and night with hungry
gnaw, till I saturate what shall produce boys to
fill my place when I am through,
The wholesome relief, repose, content,
And this bunch plucked at random from myself,
It has done its work—I toss it carelessly to fall
where it may. ”

“ Mother, when your little one was struck down with the deadliest and most infectious ailment, did you reason for one moment whether you could be expected to risk your life, whether you were not too delicate to make it worth while doing it, whether you would not be throwing away your existence? If any man came and suggested that to you,—"No!" Love, duty, they do not argue, they command. ”

“ If you really love the offspring of your own bodies; if your bowels yearn over those amiable pledges of conjugal endearment; spare no pains, give all diligence, I entreat you, to "bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Then may you have joy in their life, or consolation in their death. If their span is prolonged, their unblameable and usetul conduct will be the staff of your age, and a balm for declining nature. ”

“ We omit the most obvious, which all can understand, the weariness of pregnancy, the danger in childbirth, the cares of nursing, the tearing of her heart in two for her offspring, and, if she is the mother of many, the dividing of her soul into as many parts as she has children ”

“ If you should wed, may a father's curse
⁠Be your swift and sure undoing.
“My curse shall feed on your fields of corn,
⁠On your roof-tree make its nesting,
Your wife shall wish your child unborn
⁠As he pines on her sore heart resting.”
Now when this cruel oath he said
⁠The youth did chide him, crying,
“Since I have neither field nor bed
⁠Your curse shall fall to dying. ”

“ O Mother, full of mercy, interest yourself in our behalf, that we may be able to enjoy the ineffable happiness for which our God deigned to inclose Himself for nine months in your most holy womb. If you deign to pray for us to your Divine Son, you will be assuredly heard. Let the bowels of your maternal mercy speak in our favour. If you, our tender Mother, have no compassion for us, what will become of your most miserable children? What will be our destiny when your Divine Son, as Judge of the living and the dead, will call us to His judgment-seat? ”

“ One manifests great precocity, another is below the average in mental attainments; one is amiable, another irritable in disposition; indeed, there are often as great differences between children of the same, as of different families. This is due to the physical and mental conditions of the parents, more especially the mother, not only at the time of the impregnation [pg 286] but also during the period intervening between conception and the birth of the offspring. The ancients regarded courage as the principal virtue. By us, purity is so estimated. ”

“ How dare you, how dare any husband, commit the destiny of his child into the hands of one, who, as he knows, thus loathes the thought of its existence? How can you subject your child to the possibility of such a gestational organization and development; such an ante-natal education; or force upon your wife the suffering and anguish of a loathed and hated maternity, or the necessity of doing a deed from which the soul of every 63noble woman must shrink with sickening horror? You could not do this wrong to your wife and child, till your manhood was sunk in the mire of disgusting sensualism. ”

“ No pains are too great for them to take in behalf of the faint and feeble one. What self-denial of the father; what sacrifice on the mother's part! The best of medical skill is procured; the tenderest watching is not spared. No outlay of money, time, or sacrifice is thought too much to save the child's life ”

“ In the first place, therefore, it must be considered, that in procreating children, we not only beget assistants for ourselves, nourishers of our old age, and participants with us of every fortune and every circumstance that may occur in life I say, we do not beget them for ourselves alone, but in many things also for our parents. For the procreation of children is gratifying to them; because, if we should suffer any thing of a calamitous nature prior to their decease, we shall leave our children instead of ourselves, as the support of their old age. ”

“ Better, far better, to bear a child every year for twenty years than to resort to such a wicked and injurious step; better to die, if need be, of the pangs of child-birth, than to live with such a weight of sin on the conscience. ”

“ What misery it is to be pregnant! How many women die in childbed. The woman who suckles her baby knows neither rest nor pleasure. Children may be deformed or disobedient; the husband may die, and leave his widow behind in care and poverty. ”

“ Incredible as these results may appear to those who have never felt nor witnessed your mode of alleviating the pains of labour, the earnest desire of both myself and husband is, that by God's blessing your valuable life may long be spared, and that you may enjoy the happiness and privilege of being, to a constantly-increasing number of ladies, the means of proving that what has hitherto been considered an impossibility can be done—namely, the birth of a child without any pain or any loss of consciousness to the mother throughout the whole of her labour. ”

“ Had you taken this journey for the purpose of making me your wife, were you to propose to do so this day, and bring a clergyman into the room to perform the ceremony, it would be futile. The injury to the child can never be repaired; and, for myself, I cannot imagine any fate in life worse than being compelled to pass it with you. ”

“ Surely, if this poor creature, whom you call yours, to tease, to torment, to ill-use,—in fact, your souffre douleur,—be not worthy of your pity, her infant has done nothing to offend you. Did you forget, when striking the mother, that the unborn babe might suffer from your blows? And when she besought your mercy, 'twas not for herself, but her child. When she craves of you a morsel of bread, if, indeed, you have it to spare, 'tis not to satisfy her own hunger she begs it, but that her infant may live ”

“ The many rites and ceremonies, ablutions, fastings, abstentions from certain foods and drinks, which the husband has to undergo and submit to among certain more or less uncivilized peoples, shortly before, or after, or upon, the occasion of the birth of a child, or while his wife is pregnant, arise, in part at least, from a firm belief in the influence of parent upon child and the intimate sympathy between them even while the latter is yet unborn. ”

“ No angry words or unhappy feelings should be tolerated. Purity of heart and life should be maintained. The husband should do his part by supplying favorable surroundings, suggesting cheerful thoughts, and aiding mental culture.
3. After birth, the mother still possesses a molding influence upon the development of her child through the lacteal secretion. Every mother knows how speedily the child will suffer if nursed when she is exhausted by physical labor or when suffering from nervous excitement, as anger or grief. ”

“ Forsake Him not for any other that is wicked, unclean, base, and defiled, with whom you shall have more distress than joy. For if that other is good-looking, you will be afraid of his unfaithfulness; if deformed, of ennui; if drunken or bad-tempered or of other evil habits, of a devil's life. If offspring be granted to you, there will be misery during pregnancy and in the birth and in the training of the child. ”

“ Undoubtedly, the trial is great, but if a sacrifice be required, let the husband forbear the gratification of passions which will assuredly be the means of developing in his delicate wife symptoms that may speedily hurry her into a premature grave. Before she has recovered from the effects of bearing, nursing, and rearing one child, ere she has regained proper tone and vigor of body and mind, she is unexpectedly overtaken, surprised by the manifestation of symptoms which again indicate pregnancy. Children thus begotten are not apt to be hardy and long-lived. ”

“ Everyone gets married, everyone dances, everything ends with a "rustic revelry." Where is the pleasantness of these puerilities? First, the fact of its being puerile; the absence of the serious is refreshing; There are no events, and there is no plot. We gently follow the easy current of graceful or melancholy emotions, which takes us away and moves us about without wearying. ”

“ The King abode three months, troubled in mind and saying in himself, “I wonder whether this thing will prove true or untrue”; till one day, as the lady his Queen was sitting, the child stirred in her womb and she felt a pain and her colour changed. So she knew that she was with child and calling the chief of her eunuchs, gave him this command, “Go to the King, wherever he may be and congratulate him saying, ‘O King of the Age, I bring thee the glad tidings that our lady’s pregnancy is become manifest, for the child stirreth in her womb’.” ”

“ Or if it must see the light, that its eyes may immediately be closed again for ever! No aid shall be given you in your labour; Bring your Offspring into the world yourself, Feed it yourself, Nurse it yourself, Bury it yourself: God grant that the latter may happen soon, lest you receive comfort from the fruit of your iniquity!”
This inhuman speech, the threats which it contained, the dreadful sufferings foretold to me by the Domina, and her prayers for my Infant’s death, on whom though unborn I already doated, were more than my exhausted frame could support. ”

“ I appeal to and confide in the goodness of your heart, of which already I have such abundant testimony, that will take pity upon the misfortune of a helpless infant and an equally helpless parent. May you be a mother to the motherless, and may the Heavenly Father bless you for what you shall do. ”

“ Fathers! where is your reverence for your offspring, your tender regard for the claims of your unborn children, and your respect for all that qualifies you to be fathers and your wives mothers, that you beget children to ante-natal murder, or to the, if possible, more terrible doom of an existence undesired, and abhorrent to the mothers that bore them? ”

“ You shelter innocence; you open asylums of penitence for guilt; you render virtue lovely to the unfortunate by the resources which they find in yours; you secure to husbands the fidelity of their wives, — to fathers the salvation of their children, — to pastors the safety of their flock; peace to families, comfort to the afflicted, innocence to the deserted widow, an aid to the orphan, good order to the public, and, to all, the support of their virtue, or the cure of their vices. ”

“ We teach you, provide you healthful amusements, give you books to read, and do all in our power to fulfil aright our duty as parents.
"But what is all we do compared with the loving care of Him who giveth us life, and breath, and all things? This constant, tender, overruling care of our heavenly Father, is called his providence, and extends to the very meanest of his creatures. ”

“ A man swayed by archaic dogma will allow, even coerce, his wife to bear and bring forth an [89] infant annually. Save where the woman is exceptional, each child following so rapidly on its predecessor, saps and divides the vital strength which is available for the making of the offspring. ”

“ Imagine a mother not feeding or taking care of her infant, and yet counting on its thriving! or, fondly and diligently tending, taking care of her infant, and continuing to do so year after year, yet perfectly satisfied though it gained no strength, did not grow, nor walk, nor speak, nor show the slightest sign of getting out of babyhood! ”

“ We can understand the comfort that would be prayed for—a higher Knowledge of the Divine mercy—and we can conceive how this came to her through her pure maternal charity, in the form of ever increasing tender regard for the woes of the children torn from their mothers’ breasts for ever, and of the bereaved childless women mourning their dearest ones. ”

“ Hear, said the Lord in his prophet, to the unfaithful soul, you who live in ease and in pleasures, and who nevertheless hope in me, sterility and widowhood shall at once burst upon your heads; sterility, that is to say, that you shall no longer be fit to bear the fruits of penitence; cultivation and watering shall be in vain; the power of my word, the virtue of my sacraments, the grace of my mysteries, all care shall be unavailing, and you shall no longer be but a withered tree alloted to the fire: widowhood, that is to say, I will for ever forsake you ”

“ We are a Christian family, members of an honourable community, trained each and all in religious principles, you, by the best, the sweetest of mothers—does it move you to think that one of you could contemplate parricide and even attempt it? ”

“ If the mothers of a people are sickly and weak, the sad inheritance falls upon their offspring, and this is why I must deal first, however briefly, with the health of our girls, because it is here, as the doctor well knows, that the trouble begins. Ask any physician of your acquaintance to sum up thoughtfully the young girls he knows, and to tell you how many in each score are fit to be healthy wives and mothers, or in fact to be wives and mothers at all. ”