TO A YOUNG MOTHER
[FROM A LETTER]
… All that you say about your finding your own best expression in and through the little life which is confided to you is good and true, and I am so happy to see how you feel on the subject. I think a mother who devotes herself to her child, in watching its culture and keeping it from baleful influences, is educating and cultivating herself at the same time. No artist work is so high, so noble, so grand, so enduring, so important for all time, as the making of character in a child, You have your own work to do, the largest possible expression. No statue, no painting, no acting, can reach it, and it embodies each and all the arts, Clay of God's fashioning is given into your hands to mould to perfectness. Is this not something grand to think of? No matter about yourself—only make yourself worthy of God's sacred trust, and you will be doing His work—and that is all that human beings ought to care to live for. Am I right?