Page:An address to women (Goodwin).djvu/12

 I am one of those who have lost their mothers at a very early age. I was somewhat over six years old when my dear mother was suddenly taken from me. I mention my age that I may put before you with the more force the effect which my mother's teaching had upon me; when you bear in mind the tender age at which it ceased, I think you may draw from what I tell you some useful lessons. When I look back to the teaching of my mother, what do I think of it? I say deliberately, and without any sense of exaggeration, that though I have since that time been at school, been under tutors, been at college, and had all the experience of life, I do not believe that all the lessons I have received put together amount in value and in importance to the lessons which I learned from my mother before I was seven years old. What did she teach me? She did not put me through the fifth or the sixth Standard—we had not any standards in those days; but she taught me a great many things which it was very good for me to learn.

One of the first lessons she taught me was this—always to speak the truth; and the lesson she gave me concerning truth has never been lost upon me. She brought me up in the feeling that what was to be spoken was to be always