it
for assault and battery, or for defamation; never to wound the feelings of
others, nor suffer my own to be outraged. These were her words of
admonition to me. I remember them well, and have never failed to respect
them."

Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson's father died when the lad was fourteen, and then his
mother became more than ever his companion and adviser. Thomas had,
indeed, always lived more under the influence of his mother than of his
busy father. She was a woman of unusual refinement of character, having
the culture of the best society. Thus equipped, she assumed the training
of Thomas. Upon the death of her husband she found herself her children's
guardian, responsible for a vast entailed estate that was to go to the
eldest son, Thomas.

John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy Adams's father was devoted to his family; but, engrossed in
political activities, he was frequently absent from home for long periods.
From the hour in which the boy learned to talk, his mental activities
received an uncommon stimulus from his mother.

"Being taught by my mother to love my country," wrote John Quincy Adams,
when he became President, "I did it literally by learning to love the
actual hills and rocks and trees, and the very birds and animals." And he
added elsewhere: "All that I am my mother made me."

It is an interesting coincidence that the three martyred Presidents should
each have been peculiarly dominated by a mother's influence.

Abraham Lincoln.

That expression of habitual melancholy in Lincoln's face, for example, was
really a reproduction of the features of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his mother.
For, through long drudgery and privation, in cabin after cabin, Mrs.
Lincoln had lost all her comeliness, and became bent and care-worn and
sad-faced while Abraham was still an impressionable youth.

How Lincoln reverenced that mother is told by all his biographers. She it
was who, possessing the accomplishments of reading and writing, not common
at that time among the poor people of Kentucky, taught Abraham his letters
and gave him his first lessons in writing.

When Mrs. Lincoln died her son spent months roving the woods, vainly
trying to recover from his grief. The mother was buried without any
funeral service, there being no minister in the vicinity. But Abraham
traversed the country for twenty miles in every direction till he found an
itinerant preacher and induced him to come to his mother's grave and t