Since this care is needful to the life of children, to neglect them is
to murder them; again, to give them up to be managed by those people
who have none of that needful affection placed by nature in them, is to
neglect them in the highest degree; nay, in some it goes farther, and
is a neglect in order to their being lost; so that 'tis even an
intentional murder, whether the child lives or dies.
All those things represented themselves to my view, and that is the
blackest and most frightful form: and as I was very free with my
governess, whom I had now learned to call mother, I represented to her
all the dark thoughts which I had upon me about it, and told her what
distress I was in. She seemed graver by much at this part than at the
other; but as she was hardened in these things beyond all possibility
of being touched with the religious part, and the scruples about the
murder, so she was equally impenetrable in that part which related to
affection. She asked me if she had not been careful and tender to me
in my lying in, as if I had been her own child. I told her I owned she
had. 'Well, my dear,' says she, 'and when you are gone, what are you
to me? And what would it be to me if you were to be hanged? Do you
think there are not women who, as it is their trade and they get their
bread by it, value themselves upon their being as careful of children
as their own mothers can be, and understand it rather better? Yes,
yes, child,' says she, 'fear it not; how were we nursed ourselves? Are
you sure you was nursed up by your own mother? and yet you look fat and
fair, child,' says the old beldam; and with that she stroked me over
the face. 'Never be concerned, child,' says she, going on in her
drolling way; 'I have no murderers about me; I employ the best and the
honestest nurses that can be had, and have as few children miscarry
under their hands as there would if they were all nursed by mothers; we
want neither care nor skill.' She touched me to the quick when she asked if I was sure that I was
nursed by my own mother; on the contrary I was sure I was not; and I
trembled, and looked pale at the very expression. 'Sure,' said I to
myself, 'this creature cannot be a witch, or have any conversation with
a spirit, that can inform her what was done with me before I was able
to know it myself'; and I looked at her as if I had been frightened;
but reflecting that it could not be possible for her to know anything
about me, that disorder went off, and I began to be easy, but it was
not presently.