The Women of the West 6 1 



is the gradual backsliding of maternal love and 

 tenderness as the child grows older. This is so in- 

 sidious as to escape the notice of most persons — 

 particularly the parents ; but amongst nearly all 

 classes in the West — as in the upper and upper- 

 middle class of England — there is an animal love 

 of the very young, a v^ish to cuddle, and kiss, and 

 flatter, and dress, and spoil the little ones, a love 

 which diminishes as imperceptibly, but as surely, as 

 the adored object increases. And the men like to 

 see it. They take the mother at her own valuation. 

 She tells them that she loves babies, that she 

 is so fond of children ; and they believe it ! These 

 women always sigh because their children are 

 growing up. The child is, or ought to be, develop- 

 ing, maturing, becoming in short a human being, 

 ceasing to be a kitten or a puppy ; and this — say 

 the mothers — is cause for regret. And as a rule, it 

 is cause for regret. The child is growing up to be 

 vain, hard, selfish, deformed in mind, perhaps in 

 body — essentially unlovable. Some wit said that 

 the spinsters of England were the mothers of Eng- 

 lish gentlemen. He was alluding to the nurses, 

 the governesses, the maiden aunts, the plain elder 

 sisters, who do not perhaps kiss and cuddle, but 

 who patiently and laboriously, day after day, month 

 after month, year after year, shape and prune and 

 water the tender plants committed to their charge. 

 And these are the women whom the men of the 

 world hold cheap ! I never meet a mother but I 

 wonder whether her children are denied, not kisses, 

 but that love which finds expression in ceaseless 

 ministration to the mental and moral faculties. I 



