236 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
edness is not so discouraging merely because it 
is wicked, as from a suspicion that it is drain- 
ing the life-blood of the nation. A mob of 
miners or of New York bullies may be uncom- 
fortable neighbors, and may make a man of 
refinement hesitate whether to stop his ears or 
to feel for his revolver; but they hold more 
promise for the coming generations than the 
line which ends in Madame Bovary or the 
Vicomte de Camors. 
But behind that cottage curtain, at any rate, 
a new and prophetic life had begun. I cannot 
foretell that child’s future, but I know some- 
thing of its past. The boy may grow up into 
a criminal, the woman into an outcast, yet the 
baby was beloved. It came “not in utter na- 
kedness.” It found itself heir of the two prime 
essentials of existence,—life and love. Its 
first possession was a woman’s kiss; and in 
that heritage the most important need of its 
career was guaranteed. “An ounce of mother,” 
says the Spanish proverb, “is worth a pound 
of clergy.” Jean Paul says that in life every 
successive influence affects us less and less, so 
that the circumnavigator of the globe is less 
influenced by all the nations he has seen than 
by his nurse. Well may the child imbibe that 
reverence for motherhood which is the first 
need of man. Where woman is most a slave, 
