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your life which you deem to be useful or beneficial to your fellow men.
But by cherishing such ambitions in your son and transmitting to him all
that is best in your own self, this same result may be obtained for the
use and benefit of your fellow men. And in addition to that, you will
have given to the world a wonderful human being, who may be able to
achieve many bigger and better things than you could hope to do. More
than that, your son may be able to transmit the ambitions and feelings
which you have given him, to his children and their children, until your
one achievement in making a splendid son, may expand and multiply into a
wonderful lot of men and women, each and every one of whom may achieve
more useful and beautiful things for the benefit of mankind than you
could hope to do. All this may readily come about, if you apply yourself
unsparingly to the unique and glorious task of making your son the right
kind of man.

This is only one part of the wonder. If you are willing to devote your
heart and soul to this one task, another recompense is in store for
you--a multitude of sublime recompenses. Each and every fine and
beautiful thing your son does, as long as you live, will fill you with
deeper gladness, more intense joy, than anything you yourself could
possibly accomplish, through your own efforts. That is the crowning
miracle of a mother's love and every mother who loves her own with all
her heart, knows that it is eternally true. Just to look at your son and
feel that he is fine and right and worthy of all the love you have
lavished on him, is to taste an exquisite contentment, to which no
other kind of earthly pleasure is comparable.

And this same feeling of contentment will be waiting to steal into your
heart upon the coming of your son's children--each and every one. Your
mother's love will find a renewal of its glory in your grandchildren.
For they, too, have in them the same mysterious spirit of you which you
cherished in your son. And so, as you sit back, in old age, in brooding
contentment over the young lives, so full of possibilities, you may
reflect, in the sweetest way imaginable, that it is going on
indefinitely, this essence of you and yours, on and on, to the end of
time, fulfilling on earth the unfathomed but divine purpose of the
all-wise Creator.

People whose interest in life is centered in self-indulgence and
material pleasure, may regard with dread the approach of old age; but
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