“There,” thought I, “that’s the very ‘figure of speech’ I want! Yes, it comes just right. Let salt stand for goodness, and dough for the children. The goodness must be mixed in at the beginning of it: it is too late when the world has baked the dough up into men and women. It will be of no use then sprinkling it on outside: it won’t strike through. All this illustrates my theory exactly. Yes, yes, mix it in at the beginning: that’s it! And mothers must do it.” This point being settled, there arise three questions; namely, Is she qualified for this duty? Has she facilities for performing it? Does she feel that it is her chief duty? IX. “TURN ’EM OFF.” It was because I had my theory under consideration,--the theory of child-training being the chief duty of a mother,--that I was so much impressed by our neighbor’s remark concerning the “three meals.” “Now, how is this?” said I to myself. “If ‘the three meals take about all day,’ and making and mending, the evening, where is the children’s time coming from?” And, indeed, where is it coming from? I see that they get scraps of attention, when, for instance, as in Mrs. Fennel’s case, a bit of a sermon is thrown at them now and then in the intervals of cooking, but not often a good square meal. I see that all things else are attended to before the children; not meaning before they are clothed and fed, but before time is taken to talk or read with them. I see that mothers and children are, in a measure, strangers to each other; that they have too little opportunity of becoming intimate. I see, that, with the mothers of Tweenit, life is one prolonged hurry. Feet and hands are hurrying to “get things done.” The mind is ever on the stretch, planning how to “get things done,” or fearing things will not “get done;” and things do not “get done.” One day’s work laps over on to the next, one week’s on to the next, one month’s, one year’s; and so there is no pause, no let-down. Rest, quiet, leisure, are here unknown terms with the mother of a family; yet these are just what a mother of a family needs, and must have, for accomplishing what I think is her chief business; for this business of hers requires thought, study, earnest preparation. It requires the mother. Yes, it requires herself personally. But how shall the children of Tweenit get their mothers, or the mothers their children? No doubt both would enjoy each other’s nearer acquaintance. I remember hearing Mrs. Melendy talk one day to her little two or three years old Rosa. “You ’ittle peshious!” she said. “Mother hasn’t had you in her arms to-day. Mother _will_ let every thing go, and hold you a _little_ while, _whatever_!”