“And having made good this assertion, she interrogates thus:  ’How many women do we read of in the Gospel who, in all the duties of assiduous attendance on Christ, liberalities of love and respect, nay, even in zeal and courage, surpassed even the apostles themselves?  We find his cross surrounded, his passion celebrated, by the avowed tears and lamentations of devout women, when the most sanguine of his disciples had denied, yea, foresworn; and all had forsaken him.  Nay, even death itself could not extinguish their love.  We find the devout Maries designing a laborious, chargeable, and perhaps hazardous respect, to his corpse; and accordingly it is a memorable attestation Christ gives to their piety by making them the first witnesses of his resurrection, the prime evangelists to proclaim those glad tidings, and, as a learned man speaks, apostles to the apostles.’

“There are many works of this lady besides ‘The Whole Duty of Man,’ enumerated in her biographies.”

MRS. MARY WASHINGTON.

The material at hand is too meagre to admit of giving such a sketch of this lady as would afford any adequate idea of her character; and yet it is due to her memory, and to her nation, that there should be some tribute to her worth.

The mother of General Washington is as much the mother of the Great Republic as was Mrs. Susannah Wesley the mother of Methodism; for Washington owed the distinction to which he rose, and the high niche he occupies in the history of the world’s heroes, to the early and careful training of his mother.  Left a widow in a comparatively new and wild country, when her son George was but ten years old, she fully realized the very great responsibility resting upon her as sole remaining guardian of her children, and set herself to watch the bent of their inclinations, and to direct their energies into a proper channel.  Respecting the influence she exerted upon them, her daughter-in-law, the wife of the President, many years afterward remarked:  “You speak of the greatness of my husband.  His dear mother ever looked well to the ways of her household.  She taught him to be industrious by her example.”

By her mild but firm management of her boy, she established a hold upon his affections, which strengthened instead of decreasing with years; and when, in the later part of his life, honors and distinctions were heaped upon him, he considered them rather as tributes to the worth of his mother than to his own.  As was natural to so adventurous a spirit, George early manifested a predilection for the sea, and his elder brother encouraged him in thinking he might attain distinction as a gallant mariner.  A midshipman’s berth was procured for him, at the age of fifteen, on board of one of his majesty’s ships, then off the coast of Virginia; and it seemed as if the ardent desire of his boyhood was about to be realized.  But when all was ready, his mother gave expression to