Marble Hill press., 1894-01-25

spectacles. for they have their third
sight-as they lived long enough on
earth to get their second sight
and they do not have to pant
for breath after going up the emerald
stairs of the eternal palace, at whose
window they now sit waiting for news
from the battle.
But if any one keeps on asking the
question where's mother?" l answer,
she is in your present character. The
probability is that you. physical feat
ures suggest her. If there be seven
children in a household at least six OF
them look like their mother and the
older you get the more you will look
like her. But l speak now especially
of your character, and not of your
looks. This is easily explained. Dur
ing the first ten years of your life you
were almost all the time with her, and
your father you saw only mornings
and nights. There are no years in any
life so important for impression as the
first ten. Then and there is the i'm
preston made for virtue or vice, for
truth or falsehood. for bravery or
cowardice, for religion or skeptIclsm.
Suddenly start out from behind door
and frighten the child and you may
shatter his nervous system for life
time. During the first ten years
you can tell him enough spook stories
to make him coward till he dies.
Act before him as though Friday
were an unlucky day, and it were bale
full to have thirteen at the table, or see
the moon over the left shoulder, and
he will never recover from the idiotic
superstitions. You may give that girl
before she is 10 years old a fondness
for dress that will make her a mere
dummy brame," or fashion plate for
forty years. Ezekiel 16:xliv, "As is the
mother so is her daughter Before
one decade has passed you can decide
whether that boy shall be a Shylock or
a George Peabody. Boys and girls are
generally echoes of fathers and
mothers. What an incoherent thing
for mother out of temper to punish a
child for getting mad, or for father
who smokes to shut his boy up in
dark closet because he has found
him with an old stump of cigar
in his mouth; or for that mother
to rebuke her daughter for staring at
herself too much in the looking glass,
when the mother has her own mirrors
so arranged as to repeat her form
from all sides The great English po-
cts loose moral character was decided
before he left the nursery, and his
schoolmaster in the school room over
heard this conversations: Byron, your
mother is fool and he answered, 81
know it." You can hear through all
the heroic life of Senator Sam Houston
the words of his mother. when she in
the war of 1912 put a musket in his
hand and said: There my son, take
this and never disgrace it, for remem-
Der l had rather all my sons should fill
one honorable grave than that one of
them should turn his back on an enemy
Go and remember, too, that while the
door of my cottage is open to all brave
men, it is always shut against cow
ards Agrippina, tine mother of
Nero, a murderess, you are not sur
prised that her son was murderer.
Give that child an overdose of cate
chism, and make him recite verses of
the bible as punishment, and make
Sunday bore, and he will become
stout antagonist of Christianity. In-
press him with the kindness and the
geniality and the loveliness of religion
and he will be its advocate and exem-
plar for all time and eternity. A few
days ago right before our express train
on the Louisville & Nashville railroad
the preceding train had gone down
through broken bridge, twelve cars
falling hundred feet and then con-
sumed. saw that only one span of
the bridge was down and all the other
spans were standing. Plan a good
bridge of morals for your sons and
daughters, but have the first span of
ten years defective and through that
they will crash down, though all the
rest keep standing. Oh man! Oh
woman! if you have preserved your
integrity and are really Christian,
you have first of all to thank
God, and think next you have to
thank your mother. The most impress
sive thing at the Inauguration of
James A. Garfield, as President of the
United States, was that after he had
taken the oath of Office he turned
round, and in the presence of the Su-
preme court and the senate of the
Unitel States kissed his old mother.
1t had time to take statistics out of
this audience, and I could ask what
proportion of you who are Christians
owe your salvation under God to ma
ternal fidelity, l think about three
fourths OF you would spring to your
feet. "Ha! ha!' said the soldiers of
the regiment to Charlie, one of their
comrades, What has made the change
in you? you used to like sin as well as
any of u.s." Pulling from his pocket
his mothers letter in which. after tell