.

"In conversing with the captain of a certain boat, I found him a very
amiable and companionable man, although he acknowledged, that he had no
reason to hope that he was a Christian. Said he, 'I ought to have been a
Christian, long ago,' without giving his reasons for such an assertion.
When the hour for prayer arrived, (I staid on his boat all night,) I
asked him for a Bible. He seemed to be affected, and I did not know but
he was destitute of a Bible. I told him I had one in my trunk, on the
deck, and that if he had none, I would go up and get it. 'I have one,'
said he, and unlocking his trunk, he took out a very nice Bible, and as
he reached it out to me, the tears dropped on its cover. 'There, sir,'
said he, 'is the last gift of a dying mother. My dear mother gave me
that Bible about two hours before she died; and her dying admonition I
shall never forget. O, sir, I had one of the best of mothers. She would
never go to bed without coming to my bed-side, and if I was asleep, she
would awaken me, and pray for me before she retired. Twelve years have
elapsed since she died, and five years of that time I have been on the
ocean, five years on this canal; and the other two years traveling. I do
not know that I have laid my head on my pillow and gone to sleep, during
that time, without thinking of the prayers of my mother: yet I am not a
Christian; but the prayers of my mother are ended. I have put off the
subject too long, but from this time I will attend to it. I will begin
now and do all that I can to be a Christian.'

"I hope those dear mothers, who may have an opportunity of reading these
sketches, will inquire of their own hearts, 'Will my own dear children,
those little pledges of God's love, remember my prayers twelve years
after my head is laid in the narrow house appointed for all the living?'
Oh, could we place that estimate on the soul which we should do, in the
light of eternity, how much anxiety would be manifested on the part of
parents for their children, and for the whole families of the earth. The
midnight slumber would more often be disturbed by cries to God, and
tears for this fallen, apostate, rebellious world."

Mothers! what do you think of such facts? And what are they designed to
teach you? Every one of them, as you meet them in the pilgrimage of
life, is a voice of encouragement from above. Has God been kind towards
other mothers? he can be kind towards you. Has he blessed their efforts?
he ca