The sentiments with which children inspire women raise them above vulgar surroundings, and purify their souls with the holy fire of poetry. When we see women filled with such feelings, let us ask them why they love children, and they will reply to us with these words, or similar ones—
"Because, when we seek for angels on earth, we can only find them in these little children."
If for other qualities, for other virtues, for other attractions, women do not merit the love and respect of all generous and good souls, they deserve it for the sympathy which children awaken in their hearts.
Let those be blessed and loved who understand and experience the feeling which moved the lips of the divine Nazarene when He said, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me!"
"Ismael," said Ximena to the Moorish boy, "did you ever know your mother?"
"Yes, kind Christian; she was beautiful and good, and loved me as you do; but Allah took her to Paradise just at the end of the last Ramadan."
"Son of my soul!" exclaimed Teresa Nuña, "and did you love her much?"
"Ah yes," replied the child, "and yet she did not take me with her."
His eyes overflowed with tears, and he continued—
"When holy Allah called her to Paradise, my father and I wept very much. A short time after the king was enrolling people for the war, and my father asked me, 'Would you wish to go see your mother?' 'Oh yes,' I answered. On that very day he took me up behind him on his horse, and we set out for the frontiers of Castile. 'We are going to the war, my son,' said my father to me, on the road; 'I trust that we may be killed in it, for then we shall fly to Paradise, and never again be separated from your mother, who is there.'"