STICK TO IT AND DO IT.

Set a stout heart to a stiff hill, and the wagon will get to the top of it.  There’s nothing so hard but a harder thing will get through it; a strong job can be managed by a strong resolution.  Have at it and have it.  Stick to it and succeed.  Till a thing is done men wonder that you think it can be done, and when you have done it they wonder it was never done before.

In my picture the wagon is drawn by two horses; but I would have every man who wants to make his way in life pull as if all depended on himself.  Very little is done right when it is left to other people.  The more hands to do work the less there is done.  One man will carry two pails of water for himself; two men will only carry one pail between them, and three will come home with never a drop at all.  A child with several mothers will die before it runs alone.  Know your business and give your mind to it, and you will find a buttered loaf where a sluggard loses his last crust.

LIKE CAT LIKE KIT.

Most men are what their mothers made them.  The father is away from home all day, and has not half the influence over the children that the mother has.  The cow has most to do with the calf.  If a ragged colt grows into a good horse, we know who it is that combed him.  A mother is therefore a very responsible woman, even though she may be the poorest in the land, for the bad or the good of her boys and girls very much depends upon her.  As is the gardener such is the garden, as is the wife such is the family.  Samuel’s mother made him a little coat every year, but she had done a deal for him before that; Samuel would not have been Samuel if Hannah had not been Hannah.  We shall never see a better set of men till the mothers are better.  We must have Sarahs and Rebekahs before we shall see Isaacs and Jacobs.  Grace does not run in the blood, but we generally find that the Timothies have mothers of a goodly sort.

Little children give their mother the headache, but if she lets them have their own way, when they grow up to be great children they will give her the heartache.  Foolish fondness spoils many, and letting faults alone spoils more.  Gardens that are never weeded will grow very little worth, gathering; all watering and no hoeing will make a bad crop.  A child may have too much of its mother’s love, and in the long run it may turn out that it had too little.  Soft-hearted mothers rear soft-hearted children; they hurt them for life because they are afraid of hurting them when they are young.  Coddle your children, and they will turn out noodles.  You may sugar a child till every body is sick of it.  Boys’ jackets need a little dusting every now and then, and girls’ dresses are all the better for occasional trimming.  Children without chastisement are fields without ploughing.  The very best colts want breaking in.  Not that we like severity; cruel mothers are not mothers, and those who are always flogging and fault-finding ought to be flogged themselves.  There is reason in all things, as the madman said when he cut off his nose.