e influence of early example, and ideas early
implanted in the mind, compares them to letters cut in the bark of a
young tree, which grow and widen with age. The impressions then made,
howsoever slight they may seem, are never effaced. The ideas then
implanted in the mind are like seeds dropped into the ground, which
lie there and germinate for a time, afterwards springing up in acts and
thoughts and habits. Thus the mother lives again in her children.
They unconsciously mould themselves after her manner, her speech, her
conduct, and her method of life. Her habits become theirs; and her
character is visibly repeated in them.

This maternal love is the visible providence of our race. Its influence
is constant and universal. It begins with the education of the human
being at the out-start of life, and is prolonged by virtue of the
powerful influence which every good mother exercises over her children
through life. When launched into the world, each to take part in its
labours, anxieties, and trials, they still turn to their mother
for consolation, if not for counsel, in their time of trouble and
difficulty. The pure and good thoughts she has implanted in their minds
when children, continue to grow up into good acts, long after she is
dead; and when there is nothing but a memory of her left, her children
rise up and call her blessed.

It is not saying too much to aver that the happiness or misery, the
enlightenment or ignorance, the civilisation or barbarism of the world,
depends in a very high degree upon the exercise of woman's power within
her special kingdom of home. Indeed, Emerson says, broadly and truly,
that "a sufficient measure of civilisation is the influence of good
women." Posterity may be said to lie before us in the person of the
child in the mother's lap. What that child will eventually become,
mainly depends upon the training and example which he has received from
his first and most influential educator.

Woman, above all other educators, educates humanly. Man is the brain,
but woman is the heart of humanity; he its judgment, she its feeling;
he its strength, she its grace, ornament, and solace. Even the
understanding of the best woman seems to work mainly through her
affections. And thus, though man may direct the intellect, woman
cultivates the feelings, which mainly determine the character. While he
fills the memory, she occupies the heart. She makes us love what he can
only make us believe, and it i