“I ate it up,” said the truthful youth.

“Did you eat the handkerchief, too?”

“No; I froed nashty old handkerchief out the window—­don’t want dirty old handkerchiefs in my nice ’ittle room.”

I was so glad that his burn had been slight that I forgave the insult to my handkerchief and called up Budge, so that I might at once get both boys into bed, and emerge from the bondage in which I had lived all day long.  But the task was no easy one.  Of course my brother-in-law, Tom Lawrence, knows better than any other man the necessities of his own children, but no children of mine shall ever be taught so many methods of imposing upon parental good nature.  Their program called for stories, songs, moral conversations, frolics, the presentation of pennies, the dropping of the same, at long intervals, into tin savings banks, followed by a deafening shaking-up of both banks; then a prayer must be offered, and no conventional one would be tolerated; then the boys performed their own devotions, after which I was allowed to depart with an interchange of “God bless you’s.”  As this evening I left the room with their innocent benedictions sounding in my ears, a sense of personal weakness, induced by the events of the day, moved me to fervently respond “Amen!”

Mothers of American boys, accept from me a tribute of respect, which no words can fitly express—­of wonder greater than any of the great things of the world ever inspired—­of adoration as earnest and devout as the Catholic pays to the Virgin.  In a single day, I, a strong man, with nothing else to occupy my mind, am reduced to physical and mental worthlessness by the necessities of two boys not overmischievous or bad.  And you—­Heaven only knows how—­have unbroken weeks, months, years, yes, lifetimes of just such experiences, and with them the burden of household cares, of physical ills and depressions, of mental anxieties that pierce your hearts with as many sorrows as grieved the Holy Mother of old.  Compared with thy endurance, that of the young man, the athlete, is as weakness; the secret of thy nerves, wonderful even in their weakness, is as great as that of the power of the winds.  To display decision, thy opportunities are more frequent than those of the greatest statesman; thy heroism laughs into insignificance that of fort and field; thou art trained in a school of diplomacy such as the most experienced court cannot furnish.  Do scoffers say thou canst not hold the reins of government?  Easier is it to rule a band of savages than to be the successful autocrat of thy little kingdom.  Compared with the ways of men, even thy failures are full of glory.  Be thy faults what they may, thy one great, mysterious, unapproachable success places thee, in desert, far above warrior, rabbi or priest.