This is an excerpt taken from a popular book, Stepping Heavenward, by Elizabeth Prentiss. Unfortunately I haven't read the book, but over the last couple of years I have seen this quote repeated in several places on the Internet and it's a joy to read it each time for a fresh reminder. Katy's sister-in-law had said another baby would be "one more mouth the more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music, and drawing. " In response to her, Katy says:

"Well, this is one side of the story to be sure, but I look at the other. Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which it dwells is worthy all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!"