? Is
she yonder in the mighty Jupiter, looking down, and smiling at me? Is
she permitted, in her new being, to come at will, and breathe to my
mind holy thoughts and holy feelings? Disembodied, is she, as God,
pervading all, and knowing all? Does she, with that devotion of heart
which was so much hers in time, still love and protect me? Shall I,
when purified by death, go to her? and shall this hope become a
reality, and endure forever? Surely, this must be true; or, why are
these thoughts and hopes in the mind--why this affection sublimated
still in the heart--why this link between the living, and the dead, if
its fruition shall be denied in eternity? Why this question, which
implies a doubt of the goodness of God? Sweet is the belief, sweeter
the hope, that I shall see that smile of benignity, feel that gentle,
loving caress, and forever, in unalloyed bliss, participate heaven
with her. My mother--my mother! see you into my heart, here by your
gravestone, to-night? Hast thou gone with me through my long
pilgrimage of time? If I have kept thy counsels, and walked by their
wisdom, hast thou approved, my mother? My mother, all that is good and
pure in me has come of thee! If the allurements of vice have tempted,
and frail nature has threatened to yield, the morning's admonition,
the evening's counsel in our long walks, would strengthen me to
forbearance. These bright memories have lived and remained with me a
guide and salvation; and now they are the morning's memory, the
evening's thought. As I have remembered and loved thee, I have been
guided and governed by these. Surely there can be no loss to the child
like the loss of the mother! How those are to be pitied! They go
through life without the holy influences for good coming from a
mother; they stumble on, and learn here and there, as time progresses,
the moral lessons only taught to childhood from a mother's lips: they
stumble and fall for the want of these; and, by experience, too often
bitter experience, learn in youth what in childhood should be taught,
which should grow up with them as a part of their being, to be the
guides and comforts of life. And oh, how many never learn this!

Go, and converse with the wise and good, and they will tell you of
their mothers' teachings; go to the condemned criminal, whose crimes
have cast him from society, and ask him why he is thus--and he will
tell you he disregarded the teachings of his mother; or, 'I had a
wicked and vici