me, Hardy," was what he
said. Strange words, were they not, for a scene of carnage? Yes, but
words which touched the hearts of the English people.

They showed that upon the mind of England's greatest captain of the
sea the tender influence of the old mother, and the old home in
distant England, survived all the variableness of his character, all
the supreme efforts of his career, and that a gentleness and an
almost womanly yearning for affection were the qualities that ruled
the soul of the most desperate ocean fighter the world had seen since
Drake. They showed that the heart of the sternest warrior may be
beautiful with the humanities. How does the old song go?--"The bravest
are the tenderest"--that is it.

So fear not that mother's influence will weaken you. It will do
nothing of the kind. It will strengthen you. It will make you want to
fight only for something worth fighting for. But when you fight for
that, it will make you fight to the death. And what is the use of
fighting at all unless it be to the death. A brawl is not conflict,
bravado is not bravery.

I know there is another side to this question. It has been recently
stated by a resourceful Oriental. He said that the influence of women
on the Occidental man is effeminizing our civilization. He declared
that the mother gives the boy his first training, teaches him to talk,
etc., which is natural and therefore right and proper.

But then, said our Asiatic critic, we give our boys to women
school-teachers, who educate them until they are ready for college,
and then, as soon as they are ready for college, they begin to "call
on the young women," and generally frequent the society of the softer
sex until the time arrives for them to marry.

So that, according to this Oriental, we are under the direct influence
of woman from the cradle to the grave; and he points out that
gradually (imperceptibly, perhaps, to our own eyes) an effeminizing
process occurs in mind and character. As a result of this, he
maintains, our men increasingly fear hardships and seek to avoid them;
and life and even personal appearance are given a value which is
absurd, considering the inevitableness of death in any event, the
perfectly unthinkable number of myriads of human beings who exist,
have existed, and will exist hereafter.

This philosopher of the East, therefore, claims that we will in the
end be no match at all for the Orientals, and that the yellow race,
which has been m