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“Oh, no, Clarence; you must not say that you hate Aunt Mary, for Aunt Mary is very kind to you. You mustn’t hate anybody.”

“She isn’t kind to me, mother. She calls me a bad boy, and says every thing to make me angry when I want to be good.”

“Think, my son, if there is not some reason for Aunt Mary calling you a bad boy. You know yourself, that you act very naughtily sometimes, and provoke Aunt Mary–a great deal.”

“But she said I was a naughty boy when I went out just now, and I was sorry for what I had done, and wanted to be good.”

“Aunt Mary didn’t know that you were sorry, I am sure. When she called you ‘naughty boy,’ what did you say?”

“I was going to say ‘You’re a fool!’ but I didn’t. I tried hard not to let my tongue say the bad words, though it wanted to.”

“Why did you try not to say them?”

“Because it would have been wrong, and would have made you feel sorry; and I love you.” Again the repentant boy kissed her. His eyes were full of tears, and so were the eyes of his mother.

While talking over this incident with her husband, Mrs. Hartley said–“Were not all these impressions so light, I would feel encouraged. The boy has warm and tender feelings, but I fear that his passionate temper and selfishness will, like evil weeds, completely check their growth.”

“The case is bad enough, Anna, but not so bad, I hope, as you fear. These good affections are never active in vain. They impress the mind with an indelible impression. In after years the remembrance of them will revive the states they produced, and give strength to good desires and intentions. Amid all his irregularities and wanderings from good, in after-life, the thoughts of his mother will restore the feelings he had to-day, and draw him back from evil with cords of love that cannot be broken. The good now implanted will remain, and, like ten just men, save the city. In most instances where men abandon themselves finally to evil courses, it will be found that the impressions made in childhood were not of the right kind; that the mother’s influence was not what it should have been. For myself, I am sure that a different mother would have made me a different man. When a boy, I was too much like Clarence; but the tenderness with which my mother always treated me, and the unimpassioned but earnest manner in which she reproved and corrected my faults, subdued my unruly temper. When I became restless or impatient, she always had a book to read to me, or a story to tell, or had some device to save me from myself. My father was neither harsh nor indulgent towards me; I cherish his memory with respect and love; but I have different feelings when I think of my mother. I often feel, even now, as if she were near me–as if her cheek were laid to mine. My father would place his hand upon my head caressingly, but my mother would lay her cheek against mine. I did not expect my father to do more–I do not know that I would have loved him had he done more; for him it was a natural expression of affection; but no act is too tender for a mother. Her kiss upon my cheek, her warm embrace, are all felt now; and the older I grow, the more holy seem the influences that surrounded me in childhood.”