You sometimes see a child who receives all these favors as
though they were her due. She appears to have no consciousness of
obligation; no heart of gratitude. Such a child is a disgrace to
human nature. Even the very fowls of the air, and cattle of the
fields, love their parents. They put to shame the ungrateful child.
You can form no conception of that devotedness of love which your
mother cherishes for you. She is willing to suffer almost every thing
to save you from pain. She will, to protect you, face death in its
most terrific form. An English gentleman tells the following affecting
story, to show how ardently a mother loves her child.
"I was once going, in my gig, up the hill in the village of Frankford,
near Philadelphia when a little girl about two years old, who had
toddled away from a small house, was lying basking in the sun, in the
middle of the road. About two hundred yards before I got to the child,
the teams of three wagons, five big horses in each, the drivers of
which had stopped to drink at a tavern at the brow of the hill,
started off, and came nearly abreast, galloping down the road. I got
my gig off the road as speedily as I could, but expected to see the
poor child crushed to pieces. A young man, a journeyman carpenter,
who was shingling a shed by the road side, seeing the child, and
seeing the danger, though a stranger to the parents, jumped from the
top of the shed, ran into the road, and snatched up the child from
scarcely an inch before the hoof of the leading horse.
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