have read. [It is well to
have all of these quotations in note form to be read with accuracy.]

"I find that John Randolph, one of America's greatest statesmen, said,
'I should have been an atheist if it had not been for one
recollection--and that was the memory of the time when my departed
mother used to take my little hand in hers and cause me on my knees to
say, "Our Father who art in heaven."'

"I find that Abraham Lincoln said of his mother, 'All that I am and
all that I hope to be I owe to my mother. Blessings on her memory!'

"I find that George Herbert said, 'One good mother is worth a hundred
schoolmasters.'

"I find that Oliver Wendell Holmes said,

"'Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother's secret hope outlives them all.'

"I find that Coleridge said,

"'A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.'

"I find that Beecher said, 'A mother's heart is the child's school
room.'

"I find that Benjamin West, the great artist, said, 'A kiss from
my mother made me a painter.'

"I find that General Wallace, in Ben Hur, said, 'God could not be
everywhere, so he made mothers.'

"I find everywhere the great men of the world paying loving tribute to
these mothers, and after all there is only one real perfect, true and
faultless mother in all the world and that is our own mother, whether
she be gone before or whether she be still with us. I am sure that
every one of us older ones will find ourselves in tune with the
expressive words of George Griffith Fetter, who wrote:

"'The noblest thoughts my soul can claim,
The holiest words my tongue can frame,
Unworthy are to praise the name
More sacred than all other.
An infant, when her love first came--
A man, I find it just the same;
Reverently, I breathe her name,
The blessed name of mother.'

"And so, I answer the question that I asked at the beginning, who are
these mothers? Really, it seems to me that the mothers of the world
are the power which keeps it moving toward all that is good and high
and holy. Mother love has been a power in the world since history
commenced, and the scriptures are filled with beautiful demonstrations
of it. How we love to read the story of the mother of Moses who hid
her child in the bullrushes and then succeeded in being engaged as his
nurse. How often has the heart thrilled at the hearing of the sto