est thing she ever did if it
would only help you, will give you the very gold of wisdom, refined
and superrefined by the fires of that love which burn nowhere else in
the universe save in a mother's heart.

Of course I am talking now of the ordinary American mother, who is a
mother in all that the term implies. We all know that there are women
who have children without understanding at all--yes, or even caring at
all--what motherhood means; without understanding or caring what their
duties to their children mean.

As is always the case with the abnormal, these unfortunate types are
found at the social extremes; in the so-called "depths" and the
so-called "heights." There are women too vicious to make good mothers
and women too vain to make good mothers. But these are not numerous.

The mother this paper is dealing with is that angel in human form that
the ordinary American man knew in the old home when he was a boy; and
whether she be intellectual or not, educated or not, such mothers have
shaped the characters that have made the American people the noblest
force for good in all the world.

In her work, her prayers, her daily life, you will find the sources of
all that is self-sacrificing, prudent, patriotic, brave, and uplifting
in American character. It is the influence of the American mother that
has made the American Republic what it is; and it is in her heart
that our national ideals dwell.

"That is all right," said a practical-minded man, with a dash of
American humor in him, in the course of a conversation along this
line; "that is all right, and I think so, too," said he; "but where
does 'the old man' come in? What about the father?" And the question
is as sane as it is pat. Don't you neglect the father. He feeds you.
He clothes you. He is schooling you. It is to his brain and hand, and
the wisdom and skill of them, that you are indebted for the college
education you are going to get.

And by these tokens your father is a _man_, and a whole lot of a man
at that.

You will realize how much of a man he is if you will think what you
would be up against if you had to support yourself, and then another
person more expensive than yourself, and in addition several other
persons more expensive than yourself--not only support them, but
supply their whims and humor their caprices; for it must be said of us
Americans that we really do not need more than half what we think we
positively must have.

Think, I say,