The heart should be the first thing instructed; a motive and a reason should be given for every requirement--a motive and a reason should be given for every abstinence called for--and when the heart is made to love virtue, the actions will be those of virtue; for it is the heart which is the great mover of all actions--and the moment a child can distinguish between a smile and a frown, from that moment should instruction commence--an instruction suited indeed to infantine capacities, but which should be enlarged as the child's capacities expand.

It is very bad policy to suffer the first years of a child's life to pass without instruction; for if good be not written on the mind, there is sure to be evil.

It is a mother's duty to watch the expanding intellect of her child, and to suit her instructions accordingly: it is equally so to learn its disposition--to study its wishes, its hopes and its fears, and to direct, control, and point them to noble aims and ends.
Oh! not alone is it needful that a mother be solicitous for the health and happiness of her child on earth: a far higher and more important thought should engage her attention--concern for her child as an immortal and an accountable being.
To all who bear the endearing name of mother, thus would we speak: That child with whom you are so fondly playing--whose happy and smiling countenance might serve for the representation of a cherub, and whose merry laugh rings joyously and free--yes! that blooming child, notwithstanding all these pleasing and attractive smiles, has a heart prone to evil.

To you is it committed to be the teacher of that child; and on that teaching will mainly if not entirely depend its future happiness or misery; not of a few brief years--not of a life-time, but of eternity; for though a dying creature, it is still immortal, and the happiness or misery of that immortality depends upon your instruction.
Will you neglect or refuse to be your child's teacher?
Shall the world and its pleasures draw off your attention from your duty when so much is at stake?
or, will you leave your child to glean knowledge as best it can, thus imbibing all principles and all habits, most of them unwholesome, and many poisonous?
You can decide--you, the mother.

You gave it life, you may make that life a blessing or a curse, as you inculcate good or evil; for if through your neglect, or through bad example, you let evil passions obtain an ascendency, that child may grow into a dissolute and immoral man; his career may be one of debauchery and profaneness; and then, when he comes to die, in the agonies of remorse, in the delirium of a conscience-stricken spirit, he may gasp out his last breath with a curse on your head, for having given him life, but not a disposition to use it aright, so that his has been a life of shame and disgrace here, and will be one of misery hereafter.