found seated on her large arm-chair, with a small stand by her side, which holds her Bible and her prayer-book-the only book she ever reads nowwith her knitting usually in her hands, always ready to sympathize with me in any little homesickness which may disturb me, and to ask me questions about all you dear ones in Bristol, because she knows I want to talk about you. Notwithstanding her very delicate health, mother attends to and regulates all the household affairs, and all so quietly that you can't tell when she does it. All the clothes for the children, and for the servants, are cut out under her

immediate eye, and all the sewing is personally superintended by her. All the cake, jellies, custards-and we indulge largely in them-emanate from her: yet you see no confusion, hear no bustle, but only meet the agreeable result."

Mother, crooning soft and low,
Let not all thy fancies go
Like swift birds, to the blue skies.
Of thy darling's happy eyes.
But on some fair ringlet's gold
Let a tender prayer be told.

MOTHERS OF FAMOUS SONS

A lovely picture dear to all our hearts, is that of the mother keeping the cradle ajog with her foot, while her hands are busy with the tiny socks or the bigger socks, whose mending is sometimes the mother's only touch upon the household understanding. But the mother who would keep her hand upon the growing life must learn to deal with other points than those at the end of a needle, to weave stronger bonds than can be made of darning-cotton, and to sing the music to which the young new life keeps step, after the cradle is deserted and lullabies have ceased to charm.

That mothers have been doing these greater things all down the centuries is proved by the record of the noblest men of every nationality.

Notwithstanding everybody's familiarity with her history and characteristics, the name of the mother of Washington has rightful precedence.

When she heard of the surrender at Yorktown, she raised her hands and fervently thanked heaven that all was over. She had not seen her son for seven years. Now he was coming home. No word of "glory” or “honors " fell from his lips or hers. Yet this king among men had his reward. His mother had lived to welcome him back!

One has only to recall the familiar story of this noble mother's life to recognize its moulding power upon the patriot, the soldier and the statesman. His high temper and his habit of self-control were like her, as were his principles of equity and justice, his power of dealing with great and grave issues, and his habit of practical business detail. It was like her and like him, when she knew the world was regarding him as head of the nation, leader of victorious hosts, to say, " He has been a good son. I believe he has done his duty

as a man."

Abraham Lincoln's mother possessed but one book in the world, the Bible; and from this she taught her children daily. Of quick mind and retentive memory, Abraham soon came to know it by heart, and to look upon his gentle teacher as the embodiment of all good precepts in the book. Afterward, when he governed thirty million people, he said: "All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. Blessings on her memory!" When he was ten years old, this saintly mother died. For her boy the loss was irreparable. Day after day he sat on the grave and wept. A sad far-away look crept into his eyes, which those who saw him in the perils of his later life well remember.

The mother of the distinguished scientist, says a recent biography, was a woman of sweet and strong individuality, equipped with a solid, if unpretentious education, and endowed with rare abilities as a teacher. She was eminently qualified to deal with the plastic mind of her son, and it was to her judicious efforts, rather than to those of his father, that Edison owed that early impetus, which gave such admirable scope and direction to his dawning powers. Under her guidance, at the age of twelve, a period when most boys are inflaming their imagination and perverting their moral sense with trashy and sensational

fiction, Edison, partly from inclination, partly from over-consciousness, was wading through such ponderous tomes as Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume's History of England and History of the Reformation. We are justified in the inference that through such books as these, no boy, however remarkable, waded without the encouragement and companionship of the woman who could bestow not only the instructor's gift, but the mother's sympathy and love.

Henry Ward Beecher says of his mother: "I have only such a remembrance of her as you have of the clouds of ten years ago, yet no devout Catholic ever saw so much in the Virgin Mary as I have seen in my mother, who has been a presence to me ever since I can remember. Do you know why so often I speak what must seem to some of you rhapsody of woman? It is because I had a mother, and if I were to live a thousand years I could not express what seems to me to be the least that I owe to her. From her I received my love of the beautiful, my poetic temperament; from her, also, I received simplicity and childlike faith in God."

It was Garibaldi who says of his mother, a woman of humble station : "She was a model for mothers. I owe to her love, to her angel-like character, all the little good that belongs to mine? Often, amidst the most arduous scenes of my tumultuous life, when I have passed unharmed through the breakers of the ocean or the hailstorms of battle, she has seemed present with me. I have, in fancy, seen her on her knees before the Most High-my dear mother!-imploring for the life of her son, and I have believed in the efficacy of her prayers." Give me the mothers of the nation to educate, and you

may do what you like with the boys," was one of his favorite maxims.

The mother of Napoleon Bonaparte was the mother also of twelve other children, eight of whom were living when she was left a widow at the age of thirty-five. Napoleon said of her: "She managed everything, provided for everything, with a prudence which could neither have been expected from her sex nor from her age. She watched over us with a solicitude unexampled. Every low sentiment, every ungenerous affection, was discouraged and discarded. She suffered nothing but that which was grand and elevated to take root in our youthful understandings. She abhorred falsehood, and would not tolerate the slightest act of disobedience. None of our faults were overlooked. Losses, privations, fatigue, had no effect upon her. She endured all, braved all.

She had the energy of a man, combined with the gentleness and delicacy of a woman." Such was Napoleon's love for her that he confessed to his friend, when in exile at St. Helena, that in all his vicissitudes, only once had he been tempted to suicide, from which he was saved by the loan of a sum of money from a friend, which sum he sent at once to relieve the distress of his mother.

Mrs Bolton says: “Mother-love was always a strong force in the heart of Phillips Brooks. It is related that when some one asked him if he was not

afraid when he first preached before Queen Victoria, he replied, 'Oh, no; I have preached before my mother.'"

George Peabody was a poor little grocer-boy in a New England country store, who yet came to the place where he was able to leave nine millions to the needy and the homeless. When he went out into the world at eleven years of age to earn his living, he had already, through his beautiful devotion to hist noble mother, earned the name of a mother-boy.

Of Bayard Taylor, it is said that his mother, a refined and intelligent woman, who taught him to read at four, and who early discovered her child's love for books, shielded him as far as possible from picking up stones and weeding corn, and kept him from the hard work of farm life by claiming his help in rocking the baby, that thus she might be free for other household tasks.

William Lloyd Garrison's mother, too, was a noble woman, deeply religious, willing to bear all and brave all for conscience sake. It was she who, through her long and loving letters, kept him in courage and gave him the inspiration to battle, that lasted long after the hand that penned them had ceased its work. Of Wendell Phillips, it is said that his love for his mother was a passion. "Her earliest gift to him," says Carlos Marty," was a Bible. Her one counsel for him was 'be good, do good.'" That Bible was his prized treasure for seventy years. From her knowledge and common sense in political and mercantile affairs, he judged that other women must be able to take part in the world's work, and asked for them an equal place in home and state.

It was Samuel Johnson's mother to whom he said in his last letter: "You have been the best mother, and, I believe, the best woman in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have omitted to do well." It was to defray her funeral expenses that, in the evenings of one week, he wrote Rasselas, for which he received five hundred dollars.

In all the touching examples of the influence of motherhood, there is no story more tender than that of the devotion and the prayers that were rewarded finally by the conversion of St. Augustine. The heart-communion of son and mother was indeed " a fellowship of kindred minds."-Mary Lowe Dickinson.

THE NEW BABY

Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God, and the body in which it dwells is worth all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation, my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her life-long prayers!-Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.