CHILDLESSNESS

'"I...have a strange yearning in my heart whenever I see a mother with her baby in her arms. Nay, my dear," - (and by a sudden blaze which sprang up from the fall of the unstirred coals, I saw that her eyes were full of tears - gazing intently on some vision of what might have been) - "do you know, I dream sometimes that I have a little child - always the same - a little girl of about two years old; she never grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don't think I ever dream of any words or sounds she makes; she is very noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my neck. Only last night - perhaps because I had gone to sleep thinking of this ball for Pheobe - my little darling came in my dream, and put up her mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real mothers before going to bed."'

Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, p.130.

MEN

'"Well, Miss Matty! Men will be men. Every mother's son of them wishes to be considered Samson and Solomon rolled into one - too strong ever to be beaten or discomforted - too wise ever to be outwitted. If you will notice, they have always forseen events, though they never tell one for one's warning before the events happen; my father was a man, and I know the sex pretty well."'

Miss Pole in Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford and other stories, p.117.