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