“Will I have a cup of tea?” No; of course I won’t. I’m not an old maid. Tea! I’d like a dose of strychnine. There goes my head again--I should think a string of fire-crackers was fastened to each hair. Now the pain is in my left temple; now it is in my eyeballs; now--oh dear--it is everywhere. Sit down beside me, on the bed--don’t jar it; now put your cold hand on my forehead--so--good gracious! There’s a hand-organ! I knew it--the very one I moved here to get rid of. Playing the same old tune, too, composed of three notes: “tweedle--dum--tweedle--dee!” Now if that organ-man would pull each of my finger and toe-nails out by the roots, one by one, I wouldn’t object, but that everlasting “tweedle--” oh dear!--Or if a cat’s tail were to be irretrievably shut into yonder door--or a shirt-sleeve should be suddenly and unexpectedly thrown around an old maid’s neck in this room, any thing--every thing but that eternal, die-away “tweedle.” What’s the use of a city government? What is the use of any thing? What is the use of _me_? HAS A MOTHER A RIGHT TO HER CHILDREN? Most unquestionably, law or no law. Let us begin at the beginning. Let us take into consideration the physical prostration of mind and body endured by mothers antecedent to the birth of their offspring; their extreme nervousness and restlessness, without the ability for locomotion; the great nameless horror which hangs over those who, for the first time, are called upon to endure agonies that no man living would have fortitude to bear more than once, even at their shortest period of duration; and which, to those who have passed through it, is intensified by the vivid recollection (the only verse in the Bible which I call in question being this--“She remembereth no more her pains, for joy that a man-child is born into the world”). Granted that the mother’s life is spared through this terrible ordeal, she rises from her sick-bed, after weeks of prostration, with the precious burden in her arms which she carried so long and so patiently beneath her heart. Oh, the continuous, tireless watching necessary to preserve the life and limbs of this fragile little thing! At a time, too, of all times, when the mother most needs relaxation and repose. It is known only to those who have passed through it. Its reward is with Him who seeth in secret.