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INFANT SEAMSTKESSES. 27
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Into One Of Those Narrow, Gloomy Streets...
puts forth , its head between the feathers of the "brooding wing , or dives from beneath it with bewitching wilfulnessnotwithstanding
ine solemn clucking of the mother fowl . You couldn , 't help this entirely , but when missy got a little older , then she would , of course ,
be quite different , and learn to be still . Be still ! You might as well 66 Be say still" "Be to the still dancing " to the chuckling skylark in brookle the morning t that is ; merry as well in say the ,
, midnight . Moreover , her doll is scalped and tattooed like other dolls in general ; her alphabet is flat on its face , and but we
never shall get to the end of a child ' s ways , and therefore we will stop here . Ahand if the shadow of a coffin-lid has ever passed over
the brow of , one such little one of yours , you know that these sweet irregularities are the points where memory halts with fondest
reflection and with bitterest tears . You recollect how once she seized a pencil , and , grasping * it as old age grasps a walking-stick ,
travelled a strange route over the finest page in your album ere you discovered the terrible circumstance ; but now that page is more
precious to you than all the rest . And now you have got another set of opinions . You discover , as
tlie late Dr . Johnson says , that in children , " Every fibre is so exuberant of vitalitytnat rest is pain and motion is pleasure . "
, Possibly you may even subscribe to an opinion of our own , that , where the spirit- of rebellion is absent , children are beautiful in
their mischief . Precious children ! How in this hollow , selfish world of ours , could we do without them ? We are less examples
to them than they to us ; they are everywhere a treasure , and a gloryand a gladness . " Of such is the kingdom of Heaven . "
Surel , y we shall not be understood as depreciating the obligation of perfect obedience on the part of children ; an obedience which ,
ought to be secured as early as a command is understood , only let not the command be an outrage on the necessities of the child ' s
physical nature . We presume we are expressing our views to sensible
wholehearted women , not to those whose hearts are shrunk and shrivelled , who have the faculty of misery extraordinary , and who regard life
merely as a thing of attitude , and gesture , and articulation : with these we have no wish to discuss any point whatever .
Between children of larger growth , and between men and women of the upper and lower classesthere exists a vast moral difference
but this is not the case with little , children . They may have been , trained to error from their birth , yet remove the ligature and the
tender plant will start back to its original uprightness , nothing but _,, time can warp it .
Neither is there any difference between the heir of indigence and the heir of wealthin respect of hysical conformation . The
pauper child has no largess , of constitution p superseding the
neces" sity be a of heavy what tax we on term the p brain lay . of PU a y _^ child not exercise while he merel has p y lenty . There of exer may -
Infant Seamstkesses. 27
INFANT SEAMSTKESSES . 27
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Sept. 1, 1859, page 27, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01091859/page/27/
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