CHAPTER XXXI.
A MOTHER'S DUTY.
I CLOSE my volume of rambling sketches, with a chapter more didactic and serious.

The duties of the housekeeper and mother, usually unite in the same person; but difficult and perplexing as is the former relation, how light and easy are all its claims compared with those of the latter.

Among my readers are many mothers--Let us for a little while hold counsel together.
To the mind of a mother, who loves her children, no subject can have so deep an interest as that which has respect to the well being of her offspring.

Young mothers, especially, feel the need, the great need of the hints and helps to be derived from others' experience.
To them, the duty of rightly guiding, forming and developing the young mind is altogether a new one; at every step they feel their incompetence, and are troubled at their want of success.

A young married friend, the mother of two active little boys, said to me, one day, earnestly, "Oh! I think, sometimes, that I would give the world if I only could see clearly what was my duty towards my children.