Mother's Learning Library: A Mother's Influence

bud there comes a hint of its promise; as it were, a letter to its guardian from the Creator.

So close is the relation between mother and child that to the spiritually minded mother there seems to come a premonition of her child’s destiny. And yet this fact does not in the least lighten the burden of responsibility that falls on every mother at the birth of her child. Such a premonition, indeed, would always be a safe guide were it always given; but a mother, through lack of susceptibility dependent on temperamental conditions, may hold in her arms unawares that which the world has a right to claim. Out from among the thrice ten thousand little children that swell the murmur in the schoolrooms of the great cities, or with bare and sunburnt feet patter up the aisles of those dear old schoolhouses that nestle among the hills and valleys, sacred urns that hold the childish secrets and hallowed memories of a thousand hearts, out from among these shall the angel of destiny select one and place upon his little head the crown of Longfellow and dedicate him to the service of his kind, and make him the sweet interpreter of star and flower.

Mother! shall it be your boy? Do you hear in your soul the gentle whisper? If you do, wherever you may be, may the benediction of humanity rest upon you. May your precious life be spared to watch the opening of that bud of promise. As friends and neighbors assemble to see the unfolding of the night-blooming cereus, so the world shall watch the unfolding of that precious bud.

Let every mother act as if she held a bud of promise. Let those who have not felt the premonition attribute it to their insensibility. Better a thousand times bestow your tenderest care upon an idiot, better believe that you hold the bud of genius and awake to bitter disappointment, than to learn in the end that you have failed to do your duty, and that a genius 92