The girls lack stamina, and have not their mother’s ambition to “put the work through.” Poor things! They do not know that they were born tired, or they would offer that as an excuse. They are lacking in the magnetism that attracts, in the hopefulness and health that makes every day a satisfaction. If the husband, on his farm, or in his factory, or store, has extra or increasing work, he forthwith hires more help; but as child after child add to the responsibilities and labors of the home, the mother struggles on unassisted, until at last she becomes a hopeless invalid, or sinks at middle age under her burdens, leaving her husband with his accumulated means to marry a younger woman, who sits in the parlor, hires plenty of servants--now considered quite necessary--and has a good time generally, on the savings of her predecessor. It is the conscientious, self-sacrificing woman who thus wears her life out so unnecessarily. She thinks it _her duty_. Her husband’s labor has _profits_ attending it--hers, none. Most fatal mistake! Her maternal office was her first and highest. If she filled that well, she did a more important and profitable work than any that could fall to her husband. And it is plain enough that when such domestic services as hers have to be _hired_, they have a very decided money value. As an illustration[1] of the dangers of over-work, I will cite the case of a boy born of well-to-do parents in ---- County, Kentucky. There were several children older and one younger than the lad in question. This youngest boy had a brain of the very best calibre. Talent, latent energy, and determination were written in every line of the child’s face. “He has the will of a Napoleon,” said his father, and this was true. [1] This and other illustrations are with the names of persons and places simply changed. The brother of whom I would speak was five years the senior of master Jefferson, a boy with a very large head, lack-lustre eyes, and a mixture of amiability and apathy in his air and manner. He relished neither work, or study, or play. I boarded in the family, and had ample opportunity for exact observation of the very different characters composing it. The parents were unusually rugged and hearty, and the children, with this one exception, took after them. When, by careful steps, I led the mother back to the summer preceding dull Charley’s birth, she was able to recall quite vividly the circumstances that had surrounded her, and the kind of life she led. “Had she,” I asked, “been unhappy?” “Oh, dear no; she had had nothing to be unhappy about.” “Was she sick during any part of her pregnancy? Had she felt her condition a greater tax on her powers than was usual with her?” “No; on the contrary, she had been filled with ambition.”