my father I inherited my love for
muck on my boots, resin in my nostrils, the long trail, the camp fire,
forest sounds and silences in my soul. From my mother I learned to read
good books, to study subjects that puzzled me, to tell the truth, to
keep my soul and body clean, and to pursue with courage the thing to
which I set my hand.

"There was not money enough to educate me as she would; together we
learned to find it in the forest. In early days we sold ferns and wild
flowers to city people, harvested the sap of the maples in spring,
and the nut crop of the fall. Later, as we wanted more, we trapped for
skins, and collected herbs for the drug stores. This opened to me a
field I was peculiarly fitted to enter. I knew woodcraft instinctively,
I had the location of every herb, root, bark, and seed that will endure
my climate; I had the determination to stick to my job, the right books
to assist me, and my mother's invincible will power to uphold me where I
wavered.

"As I look into your faces, men, I am struck with the astounding thought
that some woman bore the cold sweat and pain of labour to give life to
each of you. I hope few of you prolonged that agony as I did. It was in
the heart of my mother to make me physically clean, and to that end she
sent me daily into the lake, so long as it was not ice covered, and put
me at exercises intended to bring full strength to every sinew and fibre
of my body. It was in her heart to make me morally clean, so she took
me to nature and drilled me in its forces and its methods of reproducing
life according to the law. Her work was good to a point that all men
will recognize. From there on, for a few years, she held me, not because
I was man enough to stand, but because she was woman enough to support
me. Without her no doubt I would have broken the oath I took; with her
I won the victory and reached years of manhood and self-control as she
would have had me. The struggle wore her out at half a lifetime, but
as a tribute to her memory I cannot face a body of men having your
opportunities without telling you that what was possible to her and
to me is possible to all mothers and men. If she is above and hears me
perhaps it will recompense some of her shortened years if she knows I am
pleading with you, as men having the greatest influence of any living,
to tell and to teach the young that a clean life is possible to them.
The next time any of you are called upon to address a body o