ABSTRACT
Mrs. Beecher Stowe had an extraordinary dramatic sense and the atmosphere she contrived to put round the girl is remarkable, and it is not surprising that pure, exquisite child's room should have affected another child deeply. The ladies spent the enormous amount of money on mechanical toys, dogs that wound up and would walk about the room, dolls that spoke, little trains and horrible little inventions which they played with for one day and probably smashed like other children. Some girls have the maternal instincts very early. There is an exquisite poem of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's which deals with a child of three. With many women, especially English women, it only awakens with the advent of a child, and many more literally never have it till they have grandchildren. This is very natural, but there are probably much more obscure causes for the fact that some women desire children at an early age and others have no wish for them.
