Perhaps the most remarkable thing, then, in the character of his mother—­which, please God, he will have, or, getting all things else, he can never be a gentleman—­was honor.  It shone from her countenance, it ran like melody in her voice, it made her eyes the most beautiful in expression that I have ever seen, it enveloped her person and demeanor with a spiritual grace.  Honor in what are called the little things of life, honor not as women commonly understand it, but as the best of men understand it—­that his mother had.  It was the crystalline, unshakable rock upon which the somewhat fragile and never to be completed structure of her life was reared.

If he be anything of a philosopher, he may reason that this trait must have made his mother too serious and too hard.  Let him think again.  It was the very core of soundness in her that kept her gay and sweet.  I have often likened her mind to the sky in its power of changeableness from radiant joyousness to sober calm; but oftenest it was like the vault of April, whose drops quicken what they fall upon; and she was of a soft-heartedness that ruled her absolutely—­but only to the unyielding edge of honor.  Yet she did not escape this charge of being both hard and serious upon the part of men and women who were used to the laxness of small misdemeanors, and felt ill at ease before the terrifying truth that she was a lady.

Beyond this single trait of hers—­which, if it please God that he inherit it, may he keep though he lose everything else—­I set nothing further down for his remembrance, since naught could come of my writing.  By words I could no more give him an idea of what his mother was than I could point him to a few measures of wheat and bid him behold a living harvest.

Upon these fields of cool October greenness there risen out of the earth a low, sturdy weed.  Upon the top of this weed small white blossoms open as still as stars of frost.  Upon these blossoms lies a fragrance so pure and wholesome that the searching sense is never cloyed, never satisfied.  Years after the blossoms are dried and yellow and the leaves withered and gone, this wholesome fragrance lasts.  The common people, who often put their hopes into their names, call it life-everlasting.  Sometimes they make themselves pillows of it for its virtue of bringing a quiet sleep.

This plant is blooming out now, and nightly as I wend homeward I pluck a handful of it, gathering along with its life the tranquil sunshine, the autumnal notes of the cardinal passing to better lands, and all the healthful influences of the fields.  I shall make me a tribute of it to the memory of her undying sweetness.

If God wills, when I fall asleep for good I shall lay my head beside hers on the bosom of the Life Everlasting.