A little book, published by the Tract Society, "The Mother and her
Work," has been doing just this thing. It is a modest little book. It
makes no pretensions to literary or other superiority. It has much
excellent counsel, pious reflection, and comfortable suggestion. Being
a little book, it costs but little, and it will console, refresh, and
instruct weary, conscientious mothers, and so have a large circulation,
a wide influence, and do an immense amount of mischief. For the Evil
One in his senses never sends out poison labelled "POISON." He mixes it
in with great quantities of innocent and nutritive flour and sugar. He
shapes it in cunning shapes of pigs and lambs and hearts and birds and
braids. He tints it with gay lines of green and pink and rose, and
puts it in the confectioner's glass windows, where you buy--what?
Poison? No, indeed! Candy, at prices to suit the purchasers. So this
good and pious little book has such a preponderance of goodness and
piety that the poison in it will not be detected, except by chemical
analysis. It will go down sweetly, like grapes of Beulah. Nobody will
suspect he is poisoned; but just so far as it reaches and touches, the
social dyspepsia will be aggravated.
I submit a few atoms of the poison revealed by careful examination.
"The mother's is a MOST HONORABLE calling. 'What a pity that one so
gifted should be so tied down!' remarks a superficial observer, as she
looks upon the mother of a young and increasing family. The pale, thin
face and feeble step, bespeaking the multiplied and wearying cares of
domestic life, elicit an earnest sympathy from the many, thoughtlessly
flitting across her pathway, and the remark passes from mouth to mouth,
'How I pity her! What a shame it is! She is completely worn down with
so many children.' It may be, however, that this young mother is one
who needs and asks no pity," etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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