May He guide and bless you, and
grant that in a better and happier world I and mine may meet again.-
Your most affectionate mother,
"CHRISTINA PONTIFEX.".
From enquiries I have made, I have satisfied myself that most
mothers write letters like this shortly before their confinements, and
that fifty per cent keep them afterwards, as Christina did.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE foregoing letter shows how much greater was Christina's
anxiety for the eternal than for the temporal welfare of her sons. One
would have thought she had sowed enough of such religious wild oats by
this time, but she had plenty still to sow. To me it seems that
those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people
than those who are not, and that thus in the event of a Resurrection
and Day of Judgement, they will be the most likely to be deemed worthy
of a heavenly mansion. Perhaps a dim unconscious perception of this
was the reason why Christina was so anxious for Theobald's earthly
happiness, or was it merely due to a conviction that his eternal
welfare was so much a matter of course, that it only remained to
secure his earthly happiness? He was to "find his sons obedient,
affectionate, attentive to his wishes, selfdenying, and diligent," a
goodly string forsooth of all the virtues most convenient to
parents; he was never to have to blush for the follies of those "who
owed him such a debt of gratitude," and "whose first duty it was to
study his happiness.
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