Page:Letters to Mothers (1839).djvu/29

 individual exertion can be of little value. Let her not omit daily to cast into the treasury of the unfolding mind, her "two mites." The habits which she early impresses, though to her eye they seem but as the filmy line of the spider, scarcely clasping the spray, trembling at every breeze, may prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe. A glorious aggregate will at last be formed by long perseverance in "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little." As the termites patiently carry grains of sand, till their citadel astonishes the eye, as the coral insect toils beneath the waters, till reef joins reef, and islands spring up with golden fruitage and perennial verdure, so let the mother, "sitting down or walking by the way," in the nursery, the parlour, even from the death-bed, labour to impress on her offspring that goodness, purity and piety, which shall render them acceptable to society, to their country, and to their God.