14 She is a widow, and that only child 15. Attentively behold her pallid face, Whence every glowing tint of youth hath fled, flies. "Happy is the man that hath made her his wife; Happy the child that calleth her mother." The Economy of Human Life. TWO YOUNG MOTHERS. I was inattentive at church this afternoon: during the singing after the evening collect, I observed, in the next pew to me, two young women, each pressing to her breast a new-born baby. I am very fond of young babies, and could not help peeping into the next pew very frequently. I do love to watch the little quiet features, where the soul just faintly dawns; the eyes, whose bright pupils are surrounded by so blue a white; the eye-brows, hardly shadowed in their soft arches; the tiny arm, so round and soft; the little clutching hands; and the feet, struggling and kicking with unconscious pleasure through the long folded shirts. Even the cap, trimmed with its crimped profusion of lace, the chin-stay (I have just asked the name) of soft cotton rolled loosely K up; and the warm wrapper of fine flannel, bound with white galloon, have charms for me. Young babies certainly are very engaging their very helplessness makes them so. How often have I tried to waken their smiles, and to make them leap and crow with pleasure: but this is wearying to all but young mothers and old nurses; and yet I am neither the one nor the other. Do I not hear some one say, with a look of superiority," a little like the latter ?" The service for churching women began; I soon perceived that the two women next me had attended to be churched; and again I peeped over every now and then, into the next pew— one of them gave up her child to a friend who was with her, and knelt down; the other gazed for an instant at her baby, in that instant her love beamed over her face; pressed it closer to her bosom, and knelt down with it in her arms. I read the artless feeling of the poor woman, and felt how "the Lord preserveth the simple." I seemed to understand all the mother's feelings, during the short, but beautiful service: and what must not a mother feel, when she, thus, " in the Lord's House, pays her vows in the midst of his people," after "the pangs of death have compassed her round, and the pains of hell got |