saying of Napoleon, that "the fate of the child is always the work of his mother," but no other person or thing has so much to do with the present and the future of a child as the mother, and this of necessity, and by the law of our being. It is said that children partake more largely in the characteristics of the mother than the father, her influence dating back beyond its conscious being, and we very well know that all the earlier influences of its life come from her. It is her smile that first arrests its wondering gaze, and calls out the first response of an intelligence it has awakened. Day by day, by look, caress, accent, endearment, she fashions its growing spirit; up through childhood she not merely leads its tottering steps, but guides its opening mind, and upon its facile being engraves her own mental and moral image. Consciously by precept and by word, unconsciously by manner and example, and in a myriad nameless, unrecognized ways she acts upon it, establishing herself within its being as the one guide and rule of life, the one mighty and resistless influence. "What my mother says," and "what my mother does," are the two great laws of earlier childhood, and you might as well attempt to reverse the decree of fate as convince it that what she says and does is other than the absolute truth and right. As childhood develops into boyhood or girlhood, still this supremacy is maintained; the father,

even when faithful to his position, never attaining that first place God gave her, which only her folly or her sin can forfeit. Girlhood and boyhood pass. The old home is left, and the new begun. Away from old scenes and associations, restrained no longer, but altogether free, still you trace the mother's influence, to go down to children's children, blessing or cursing. In the home it chances often that the little seed unconsciously scattered by the wayside springs into luxuriance and life, and brings its hundred-fold of fruit, when that which is sown with care droops and dies, and He who can trace all things back unerringly to their first cause may see in some great virtue of today, or some huge crime, the inevitable consequence of some far back maternal influence.

As things are, the mother is the influence of the home, not by the decree of nature merely, but by the neglect of man. The child is left to the mother's care. It is trained, it is taught, it is watched by her. A double duty is hers; to that which God gave is added that which man shifts off upon her. As best she may, her womanly nature must supply his neglect, happy if she have only to contend against his negative influence. To the opening heart and mind she becomes, too often, the only parent, and with her rests the whole work of preparing her child for the grave encounters of life. That she does that work nobly

how many of us can attest, with a courage, a self-denial, and a faith that enshrine her in our hearts, as never virgin or saint in the heart of any devotee. Love as we may other women, there stands first and ineffaceable the love of "mother"; gaze as we may on other faces, our mother's face is still the fairest ; bend as we shall to other influences, still over all, silent but mighty, reaching to us from long gone years, is a mother's influence. The heart may be wayward at the time; tear, entreaty, the silent agony, all in vain; she may sink into her grave despairing, but these are not lost, no prayer, no counsel, no appeal. When tossing oceans separate, and other scenes distract; when years have rolled their steady increase, and care and toil and grief have joined to make the self-reliant man; when the green grass waves above her grave, then, audible to the soul as when first spoken to the ear, come those neglected words, to strengthen and to save. In the mighty want of his soul, the prodigal hears his mother's voice, her hymn, her prayer, her precept; flashes over him in his riot a vision of her form kneeling by his bedside and teaching his innocence to pray. In upon scenes of sin and shame and license comes that pure, that holy, that allloving presence. The wine-cup falls; the tempter is at bay. A little child in spirit, but a giant in a newfound strength, he dashes all away, and goes out into

the world with new resolve and hope, to contend, not alone, against the perils which had wellnigh mastered him. Full many a time, just at the crisis hour, you have known it, I have known it, a long-forgotten word or look -- a little waif floating down the tide of years has borne the perilled soul into its safety. Do you remember that toast which was given in the camp of the 20th Massachusetts Regiment, last Thanksgiving day," Our Mothers"? Did not it, and the response made to it there, and wherever the knowledge of it went, speak, as no eloquence of language could, to the all-pervading, unquenchable influence of our mothers?

With all this wealth of power in a mother's influence, is it not often worse than wasted? How frivolously, indolently, selfishly, some mothers live, their children catching from them, in all their ways, the feeling that they are an encumbrance, somehow or other always standing in the way of their mother's comfort or enjoyment. In how many homes does a mother's intercourse with her children alternate between caressing indulgence and pettish fault-finding. In how many are the bodies pampered and dressed, children reduced to mere fireside ornaments to gratify a maternal vanity, while the affections are thwarted or starved, and all the higher possibilities of the mind. and of the soul either uncultured or repulsed. Think

of daughters left to grow as the chance intercourse of life determines, going from the home devoid of all a rtue mother gives. Think of sons sent into the temptations and seductions of the world, with none of the controlling, sanctifying influences of a mother's character, and looking back at her as one among the number of childhood's tyrants. The deepest sympathies of our nature are touched when we see a motherless child going orphaned into life; but how many motherless souls are there out in the world, battling unsuccessfully with its influences, who might have been saved through a mother's fidelity! What right have they to become mothers who neglect all a mother's highest duty?

Great as is the maternal responsibility, it must not be suffered to become the one absorbing and evident anxiety of life. That is an extreme to be equally avoided with the last. The bane of some homes is the too evident fear of the mother that she shall not do exactly right by her children. You see and you feel that she takes the responsibility of her position hardly, worries and grows old under it. Not only does it destroy her own comfort and happiness, but it exerts an unfavorable influence upon her children, defeats the very purpose she has in view. There should not be too much anxiety about results. The aim should be to do conscientiously all that one can, and