"Speaking of having children, reminds me of a circumstance that happened some fifteen years ago. I had a letter of introduction to a lady who wished to engage my children to read at a party she was about to give. She received me with an air of melancholy politeness, at the same time informing me that the gathering was postponed, as dear little Fanny was 'real sick.' I saw a wine-glass and teaspoon on the table by the side of the sofa, which had a small blanket on it bound with sky-blue ribbon, covering up something that I supposed to be a sick child. I approached, and gently drew aside the blanket. I jumped back--it was a poodle-dog, whose black eyes winked at me as if about to cry: a sort of appeal for sympathy shone in its glowing orbs. I was almost convulsed with laughter, it was so unexpected. When able to speak, I said, 'Pardon me, madam, for laughing; but I thought it was a baby.' She replied indignantly, 'Oh, dear, no! I never had a baby; nor I don't want one either!' And it would be a blessing, I say, if such women as these _never_ became mothers. When I was a young girl, and heard people say they hated children, and saw them fondling dogs, and feeding kittens with a spoon because the _old cat_ was too weak to attend to so many, and knew, at the same time, that poor _human mothers_ were compelled (just as _slaves once_ were) to separate from their husbands and children when _poverty_ demanded that they should go into the '_Union_,' or, rather, _Dis_union--I say, when I pondered on these things, thoughts would flit through my mind, whether, when death severed the body from the _souls_ of these people, that their spirits were not instantly infused into cats and dogs, and that they came back in those shapes as a penance for their _brutality_ to mankind, and their _loving-kindness_ to _brutes_. However, we never went to the party. The woman remarked to a friend that she thought me devoid of all feeling, to laugh at a little, sick, _innocent_ dog! "Three doors from the rooms I lived in is the stylish house of Dr. and Mrs. Grindle, where there are hundreds of 'fashionable murders' committed yearly. And twice the papers have teemed with accounts of the unhappy mothers dying, and on the last occasion the child was not to be found, although born alive--and nothing done to either the doctor or his lady!"