The rights of women and the rights of wives are often
discussed, but the rights of mothers is a term expressing a principle
which is not to be called new, only because in the bee-hive, for
instance, we see it expressed and inerrably served.
Perhaps it may be permitted to close with a personal reminiscence which,
at any rate, bears on the genesis of this chapter. Some nine years ago
when I was resident-surgeon to the Edinburgh Maternity Hospital, I
proposed to get up a concert for the patients on Boxing Day, and on
asking permission of the distinguished obstetrician who was in supreme
charge, was met with the question, "Do they deserve it?" After several
seconds there slowly dawned the fact which I knew but had long
forgotten, that the mothers in the large ward where the music was
proposed, were all unmarried, and finally I answered, "I don't know."
Nor do I know to this day, and though the answer was given in weakness
and in a disconcerted voice, I doubt whether any wiser one could be
framed. We all know what desert means, and merit and credit, until we
begin to think and study: and we end by discovering that we do not know
what, in the last analysis, these terms mean. But, at any rate, these
women,--one of them, I remember, was a child of fourteen--were mothers,
and whatever favoured their convalescence unquestionably made for the
survival of their babies. It might have been argued that if the patients
did not deserve music, they did not deserve the air and light and food
and skill and kindness with which they were being restored to health.
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