Certainly. I deem it to be your imperative duty to study the subjects well. The proper management of children is a vital question,—a mother’s question,—and the most important that can be brought under the consideration of a parent; and, strange to say, it is one that has been more neglected than any other. How many mothers undertake the responsible management of children without previous instruction, or without forethought; they undertake it as though it may be learned either by intuition or by instinct or by affection! The consequence is, that frequently they are in a sea of trouble and uncertainty, tossing about without either rule or compass; until, too often, their hopes and treasures are shipwrecked and lost!
The care and management, and consequently the health and future well-doing of the child, principally devolve upon the mother; “for it is the mother after all that has most to do with the making or the marring of the man.”[[130]] Dr. Guthrie justly remarks that—“Moses might never have been the man he was unless he had been nursed by his own mother. How many celebrated men have owed their greatness and their goodness to a mother’s training!” Napoleon owed much to his mother. “‘The fate of a child,’ said Napoleon, ‘is always the work of his mother;’ and this extraordinary man took pleasure in repeating, that to his mother he owed his elevation. All history confirms this opinion.... The character of the mother influences the children more than that of the father, because it is more exposed to their daily, hourly observation.”[[131]]
I am not overstating the importance of the subject in hand when I say that a child is the most valuable treasure in the world, that “he is the precious gift of God,” that he is the source of a mother’s greatest and purest enjoyment, that he is the strongest bond of affection between her and her husband, and that
“A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure,
A messenger of peace and love.”[[132]]
In the writing of the following pages I have had one object constantly in view—namely, health—
“That salt of life, which does to all a relish give;
Its standing pleasure, and intrinsic wealth,
The body’s virtue, and the soul’s good fortune—health.”