ndifferent Governor of his Commonwealth, tells the
story of Pestalozzi taken by his grandfather to the homes of the poor,
the child saying: "When I am a man, I mean to take the side of the
poor." "He lived like a beggar that he might teach beggars to live
like men." Truly one must find the mother behind or rather before the
man. The mother of Emerson is thus described by his son[M]: "To a
woman of her stamp, provision for her sons meant far more than mere
food, raiment and shelter. Their souls first, their minds next, their
bodies last; this was the order in which their claims presented
themselves to the brave mother's mind. Lastly in those days the body
had to look after itself very much; more reverently they put it, the
Lord will provide." After his first week of Harvard life, Mrs. Emerson
wrote to her son[N]: "What most excites my solicitude is your moral
improvement and your progress in virtue. Let your whole life reflect
honor on the name you bear." Curious from the viewpoint of modern
practice that nothing was said about the weekly or fortnightly hamper
of goodies or the cushions shortly to follow,--to say nothing of the
ceaselessly entreated remittance!

The influence of a father upon his son comes to light as one reads Dr.
Emerson's life of his father: "In view of the son's shrinking from all
attempts to wall in the living truth with forms, his father's early
wish and hope, while still in Harvard, of moving to Washington and
there founding a church without written expression of faith or
covenant, is worthy of note." One comes to see that a man is what he
is because of the love he bears his mother, as one reads of Commodore
Perkins[O] that on the eve of the Battle of Mobile Bay he wrote to
her: "I know that I shall not disgrace myself no matter how hot the
fighting may be, for I shall think of you all the time." Thomas
Wentworth Higginson[P] tells that his own strongest impulse in the
direction of anti-slavery reform came from his mother. Being once
driven from place to place by an intelligent negro driver, my mother
said to him that she thought him very well situated after all; on
which he turned and looked at her, simply saying: "Ah, Missus, free
breath is good." Respecting his arrest later in connection with John
Brown and Harper's Ferry, Higginson writes[Q]: "Fortunately it did not
disturb my courageous mother, who wrote: 'I assure you it does not
trouble me, though I dare say that some of my friends are
com