getting abroad in some of the families of Americans; there are mothers
who banish themselves from the home circle. For three fourths of their
maternal duties they prove themselves incompetent. They are ignorant
of what their children wear, and what their children eat, and what
their children read. They intrust to irresponsible persons these young
immortals, and allow them to be under influences which may cripple
their bodies, or taint their purity, or spoil their manners, or
destroy their souls.
From the awkward cut of Samuel's coat you know his mother Hannah did not
make it. Out from under flaming chandeliers, and off from imported
carpets, and down the granite stairs, there has come a great crowd of
children in this day, untrained, saucy, incompetent for all practical
duties of life, ready to be caught in the first whirl of crime and
sensuality. Indolent and unfaithful mothers will make indolent and
unfaithful children. You cannot expect neatness and order in any house
where the daughters see nothing but slatternness and upsidedownativeness
in their parents. Let Hannah be idle, and most certainly Samuel will
grow up idle.
Who are the industrious men in all our occupations and professions?
Who are they managing the merchandise of the world, building the
walls, tinning the roofs, weaving the carpets, making the laws,
governing the nations, making the earth to quake, and heave, and roar,
and rattle with the tread of gigantic enterprises? Who are they? For
the most part they descended from industrious mothers, who, in the old
homestead, used to spin their own yarn, and weave their own carpets,
and plait their own door-mats, and flag their own chairs, and do their
own work. The stalwart men and the