M'arthur Democrat

The Joys of Maternity.

Grace Greenwood, (Mrs. Lippincott) in an advertisement to mothers, in the last number of the The Little Pilgrim, thus writes:—

Since I last addressed you another year has passed over us--a peaceful and fortunate year to most of you, I trust, yet, doubtless, bringing to the happiest hearts and homes something of change and sorrow. To me it has brought the most profound and sweet, the most sacred and solemn happiness of womanhood--for within this year I have been joined to the great and noble army of mothers. I am now one of you. Oh, if there is a time when woman may feel that she, like Mary of old, is "blessed among women," it is when she folds in her arms her first-born child, feels the touch of its tender little hands thrill on her heart-strings: feels upon her cheek the first soft breath of a life immortal: sees faintly twinkling in the misty depths of sleepy little eyes a love that shall yet brighten the world for her. This joy unspeakable, this holy triumph of maternity, is heaven's abundant compensation for all that is suffered by woman—for all that is denied to her.- With existence renewed and freshened by the inflowing of this pure rill from the divine fountain of life; with my heart made more tender and loving by the sweet mysterious influences by which babyhood, mighty in helplessness, and without speech most eloquent, comes to us, I feel like consecrating myself anew to the service of such as Jesus took in his arms and blessed, and of you, whom maternity makes kin to her once elected to the highest joy and deepest anguish of mortality; her whom he most loved and most tenderly remembered in his last hour.