owerful as that mysterious fluid. You get its effects by putting
yourself eagerly and lovingly under its soothing yet ennobling and
tonic influence. It is a matter hard to describe, but more real than
any other human force I know of.

So the first thing for you to do is to resolve to be "mother's own
boy," as the sneering tongue of shallowness puts it, just as long as
you possibly can. It will be the greatest luck you will ever have, if
you are able to be "mother's own boy" as long as she lives. Don't be
afraid that that will make you effeminate and soft; don't think for a
moment that it will paralyze the force and power of your growing
manhood.

I have seen one of this kind of fellows hold in awe a mob of cowboys
and plainsmen when passions were aroused and blows had already been
struck. I have seen such a man put down, single-handed, by word of his
fearless authority, fights among a score of woodmen who had known
nothing but the rank vigor of their unruled male lives.

The man whose will and character has been tempered by this holy fire
takes on something of the suppleness, hardness, and firmness of steel,
of which a delicate blade will cut the grosser iron of which that
blade itself was a part before it was subjected to the refining
process that made it steel.

Some time ago I was privileged to read the letters that one of our
naval heroes had, when a young man, despatched home to his mother
during our civil war. He participated in two or three of our most
desperate fights. All of these letters showed him to have been--and,
what is better, to have remained--a "mother's own boy" as long as she
lived.

He never sailed far enough away to weaken that potent and sacred
power. It reached around the world. The years did not diminish it.
When her hair of brown had turned to white, he found that the
influence which to his boyhood and youth had been so delightful became
to his manhood uplifting and glorious.

And yet no buccaneer that rioted afloat with Morgan had courage more
ferocious. Yes, and, on the other hand, no Bayard "without fear and
without reproach"; no Sydney who, when dying, handed his canteen to a
wounded comrade that he might moisten his lips, while Sydney's own
were crackling with fever, was ever more tender or considerate.

What was it the expiring Nelson said when his decks ran blood, and
crimson victory placed upon his whitening brow laurels of triumph,
whose leaves were mingled with cypress? "Kiss