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176 recollections of a pure mother. Blessed beyond all common blessedness Is the man who can look back to that God has given to him a talisman which will carry him triumphant through many a temptation. To other men purity may be a name; to him it has been once a reality. 'Faith in all things high beats with his blood.' He may be tempted; he may err; but there will be a light from home shining for ever on his path inextinguishably. By the grace of God, degraded he cannot be."

When we meet a man of remarkable gifts, consecrated to the service of God and of humanity, we instinctively ask, "Who was his mother?" Fathers make money, but mothers make character. They mould their children in their own likeness, The arrogant mother sees her child puffed up with pride; the gay, worldly mother sees her daughter develop into a flirt or a wanton. A Volumnia makes a Coriolanus; an Agrippina, a Nero. After a lengthened interview with the mother of Goethe, an enthusiast exclaimed, "Now I understand how Goethe has become the man he is."

The annals of biography abound with examples illustrating the influence of mothers over their sons. Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, the Roman tribunes who achieved such fame and greatness, owed everything to the judicious training of their mother, Cornelia. She educated them in nobleness, and inspired them for glori-