whom she so fondly looked for protection from all harm?” DEAR FRIEND,—The following positions seem to me to be clearly sustained: 1. That it is a crime of the deepest dye, for a husband to impose on his wife, without design, a maternity whose responsibilities and sufferings she cannot joyfully endure. 2. That it is a sin for a husband to urge his wife to submit to a relation which may result in an undesigned and undesired maternity. 3. That no wife can stand proud and stainless before her own soul, who allows herself to come into a relation with her husband which may entail on her the curse of an unwelcome maternity, and reduce her to the revolting alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a child whose existence is abhorrent to her soul. May not every child, in justice, demand of its parents, as a birthright inheritance, (1) a healthy body, free from all tendency to disease; (2) a healthy soul, free from all tendencies to idiocy, and insanity of intellect or of heart; (3) a designed existence, the result of a wise and tender forethought, and not of blind, impetuous, selfish, sensual passion; (4) a love origin, rather than a mere sensual, animal origin; and (5) a joyous welcome into life? As you cast your little ones afloat on the ocean of eternal being, be careful to secure to them this outfit; then may you hope to see them bravely and successfully outride the storms of life, and enter into a true and endless rest. But what hope is there for these poor, diseased, suffering little ones, the offspring of a loathed and hated maternity, whose very existence, ere they were born, was made accursed by the mothers that bore them, and by the fathers, whose only thought or aim in the act in which they originated was mere sensual gratification? God pity these poor, unwelcome ones! No earthly parents welcome them into life with loving smiles. In whose warm, loving bosom can they be tenderly cherished? To whom can they look for love and sympathy? Again I say, GOD PITY THESE POOR, UNWELCOME CHILDREN! That your home may never be cursed by an undesigned and undesired maternity, or by an unwelcome child, is the anxious wish of Your friend, H. C. W. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.