Alone, on birthdays or holidays, one is very apt to indulge in sad retrospections.

The thought of how much more I might have done for the perfect development of my children than I had accomplished, depressed me.

I thought of all the blunders in my own life and in their education.

Little has been said of the responsibilities of parental life; accordingly little or nothing has been done.

I had such visions of parental duties that day that I came to the conclusion that parents never could pay the debt they owe their children for bringing them into this world of suffering, unless they can insure them sound minds in sound bodies, and enough of the good things of this life to enable them to live without a continual struggle for the necessaries of existence.