Every object at home seemed to remind Willie of his mother, and keep his bereavement uppermost in his thoughts.  He did not weep as much after a few weeks, but through all his boyhood there rested a sadness on his countenance, that indicated a mournful recollection of that dear mother.  Through his whole life he felt that he was like a tender branch lopped from the parent-tree; like a lamb sent out from the fold while too young to meet the storms and travel the dangerous paths of which he often heard from his mother.  This idea seemed ever present, and served many times to hold him back from adventurous pursuits and untried schemes.  “I don’t know—­but I should have known had my dear mother lived,” was the expression of his general course in life.

As long as he was a child he spoke often and tenderly of his mother.  He cherished a remembrance of her faithful admonitions and precepts, as vivid as might have been expected from a child bereaved at the age of eight or ten.  When older, he realized more fully his loss, especially when he met one whom he believed to be a good mother. He then seldom spoke of his mother; but his visits to the grave-yard, his sadness on the anniversary of the day of her death, his conversations about her with his brothers and sister, the value he attached to every token of her love to him, convinced us that he remembered her with deep affection.

When a young man, he was several times beguiled by the tempter into forbidden paths, and his eyes were not opened to behold the danger until the fangs of the serpent pierced deeply into his heart.  Then most fully did he realize that he was poor motherless William; that he was abroad in the world without those most effectual safeguards against sin, a good mother’s counsels and a mother’s daily prayers; that while others could express unreservedly to their mothers their hopes or fears, their success or misfortune, their faithfulness in the hour of temptation or weakness under its power, and be counselled, encouraged, urged or entreated anew,—­he could only go to his mother’s grave and shed bitter tears of repentance in loneliness, or withdraw himself from all around him, and, a poor motherless child, call up the dim remembrance of that young and cheerful being who once called him her precious son, her treasured child,—­and weep the more bitterly that no answering voice or smile, or look of encouragement or hope, met him in this sinful world!

Oh ye who have hearts to feel, who profess Christian principles to guide you, and the holy love of our Master for your example, seek out the motherless child of the poor, the ignorant, the vicious, and by the power of Christ which is within you, according to the measure of that power, strive to be like fond mothers to the thousands who cry “We have no dear mother—­our mother is in heaven—­is dead—­and we know not what is right or what is wrong!” Help and pity them.  Rescue them from that heart-breaking loneliness and sorrow that prey incessantly on the feelings of a sensitive, intelligent, motherless child.