I speak now only of _good_ mothers; mothers who deserve the high and holy name. Mothers who in their unselfish devotion look not at their capacity to endure, but the duties allotted to them (would that husbands and fathers did not so often leave it to the tombstone to call their attention to the former). Mothers, whose fragile hands keep the domestic treadmill in as unerring motion as if no new care was superadded in the feeble wail of the new-born infant. Mothers whose work is literally _never_ done; who sleep with one eye open, intrusting to no careless hireling the precious little life. Mothers who can scarce secure to themselves five minutes of the morning hours free from interruption, to ask God’s help that a feeble, tried woman may hold evenly the scales of domestic justice amid the conflicting elements of human needs and human frailties. Now I ask you--shall any human law, for any conceivable reason, wrest the child of such a mother from her frenzied clasp? Shall any human law give into a man’s hand, though that man be the child’s own father, the sole right to its direction and disposal? Has not she, who suffered, martyr-like, these crucifying pains--these wearisome days and sleepless nights, _earned_ this her sweet reward? Shall any virtuous woman, who is in the full possession of her mental faculties, how poor soever she may be, be _beggared_ by robbing her of that which has been, and, thank God! will be the salvation of many a down-trodden wife? “AND YE SHALL CALL THE SABBATH A DELIGHT.”