A CONCEIT OF OUR OWN IMPORTANCE

which would render us insupportable through life.  Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.”  Perhaps the praises of our mothers tarry in our brains too long anyway.  It may be a provision of nature that woman shall inspire her child with sufficient self-esteem to take him through the world with a first-class ticket, a cabin passage, that he may escape the poor accommodations of excessive humility, the steerage of the ship of life.  It seems incredible that our mother was mistaken in thinking her boys the brightest, best, and most creditable in all the region roundabout!  Let us by our lives, marvel rather at the correctness of her vision than the blindness of her love.

“SHE WHO HAS LOST AN INFANT,”

says Leigh Hunt, “is never, as it were, without an infant child.  Her other children grow up to manhood and womanhood, and suffer all the changes of mortality; but this one alone is rendered an immortal child; for death has arrested it with his kindly harshness, and blessed it into an eternal image of youth and innocence.”  The mother teaches us the one grand lesson of

UNALTERABLE FIDELITY.

“Nothing is more noble,” says Cicero, “nothing more venerable.”  One of the most beautiful tributes to an aged mother was written by Lamartine.  “The loss of a mother,” he says “is always severely felt.  Even though her health may incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand endeavors to please, concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn!  It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends.”

THERE ARE MEN WHO FORGET THE CLAIMS

their mothers have upon them.  Of such ungrateful wretches, though clothed in outward excellences, the pen can write nothing too harsh in justice.  As old Dr. South says, “the greatest favors are to such a one but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them.  All kindness descend as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not all changed or sweetened by them.  If you look backward and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you look forward enough, it is a thousand to one that you will find that

HE ALSO DIES SO.

The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death.  I do not by this limit the operation of God’s grace, for that may do wonders.”  Be glad, if you are ungrateful, that a wise man has given you so good counsel to pray—­and pray as you do when you think yourself in extreme peril!