"Children are a burden to a mother, but not the way a heavy box is to a mule. Our children weight hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank,and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it.

—Sarah Elliot, entry for October 10, 1887"
— Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901 : A Novel)