MOTHER AND CHILD. 
91 
she must seek of an ungenial nature, must demand of some other 
being—tree, plant, fruit, or perhaps the earth itself—that it will con¬ 
descend to continue the work of her maternity. This is rigorous, but it 
is not cruel. Let us look at it seriously. If death separate the mother 
and the child, it is because they cannot live together; because they 
are strongly sundered by the opposite conditions of life and nutrition. 
The child, at first a lowly grub, larva, or worm, an obscure miner, a 
concealed nocturnal worker, must for a long time continue to feed 
upon the coarsest food, and sometimes even on death itself. She, the 
I ” ' % 
mother, who, winged and transfigured, has mounted to a higher life, 
and lives solely on the honied sweets of flowers,—how could she accus¬ 
tom herself to the shades, and the useful but abject circumstances in 
which her offspring grows strong ? That which is salutary and vital 
for the tenebrous child of the earth would be fatal to an aerial mother, 
who has already fluttered in the warmth and genial light of heaven. 
It is needful for the due development of the child that its mother 
should provide it with a triple or quadruple cradle, and there deposit 
