“Yes,” said Miss Letitia; “and the same philosophical spirit regulates the education of the child throughout. An American gentleman, who wished to live in Paris, told me that, having searched all over it, he could not accommodate his family, including himself and wife and two children, without taking two of the suites that are usually let to one family. The reason, he inferred, was the perfection of the system which keeps the French family reduced in numbers. The babies are out at nurse, sometimes till two, and sometimes till three years of age; and, at seven or eight, the girl goes into a pension, and the boy into a college, till they are ready to be taken out,—the girl to be married, and the boy to enter a profession: so the leisure of parents for literature, art, and society is preserved.”
“It seems to me the most perfectly dreary, dreadful way of living I ever heard of,” said Mrs. Ferguson, with unwonted energy. “How I pity people who know so little of real happiness!”
“Yet the French are dotingly fond of children,” said Mrs. Follingsbee. “It’s a national peculiarity; you can see it in all their literature. Don’t you remember Victor Hugo’s exquisite description of a mother’s feelings for a little child in ‘Notre Dame de Paris’? I never read any thing more affecting; it’s perfectly subduing.”
“They can’t love their children as I did mine,” said Mrs. Ferguson: “it’s impossible; and, if that’s what’s called organizing society, I hope our society in America never will be organized. It can’t be that children are well taken care of on that system. I always attended to every thing for my babies myself; because I felt God had put them into my hands perfectly helpless; and, if there is any thing difficult or disagreeable in the case, how can I expect to hire a woman for money to be faithful in what I cannot do for love?”
“But don’t you think, dear madam, that this system of personal devotion to children may be carried too far?” said Mrs. Follingsbee. “Perhaps in France they may go to an extreme; but don’t our American women, as a rule, sacrifice themselves too much to their families?”
“Sacrifice!” said Mrs. Ferguson. “How can we? Our children are our new life. We live in them a thousand times more than we could in ourselves. No, I think a mother that doesn’t take care of her own baby misses the greatest happiness a woman can know. A baby isn’t a mere animal; and it is a great and solemn thing to see the coming of an immortal soul into it from day to day. My very happiest hours have been spent with my babies in my arms.”
“There may be women constituted so as to enjoy it,” said Mrs. Follingsbee; “but you must allow that there is a vast difference among women.”
“There certainly is,” said Mrs. Ferguson, as she rose with a frigid courtesy, and shortened the call. “My dear girls,” said the old lady to her daughters, when they returned home, “I disapprove of that woman. I am very sorry that pretty little Mrs. Seymour has so bad a friend and adviser. Why, the woman talks like a Fejee Islander! Baby a mere animal, to be sure! it puts me out of temper to hear such talk. The woman talks as if she had never heard of such a thing as love in her life, and don’t know what it means.”
“Oh, well, mamma!” said Rose, “you know we are old-fashioned folks, and not up to modern improvements.”
“Well,” said Miss Letitia, “I should think that that poor little weird child of Mrs. Follingsbee’s, with the great red bow on her back, had been brought up on this system. Yesterday afternoon I saw her in the garden, with that maid of hers, apparently enjoying a free fight. They looked like a pair of goblins,—an old and a young one. I never saw any thing like it.”