There is no love so lasting, so strong, so disinterested, so unselfish, so devoted as that first and purest of all loves, a mother's love.

It begins with your birth, and ends with her death. It will follow you through childhood, youth, and manhood, from the cradle to the grave--if not in reality, in memory; it will stimulate you to every noble and heroic action you may contemplate or do, and deter you from many an evil one. The memory of it alone will sweeten many a cup of sorrow in after years, lighten many an hour of darkness, and the soft music of her voice in gentle accents you will oft hear years after she, perhaps, is no more. You may lose everything in this world, and a mother's love will alone stick by you; you may go down, down to the lowest depths of degradation, be steeped in crime and sin, an outcast from your fellow beings, when, at the eleventh hour, the memory of your mother and her undying love may come like a golden cloud, and with all its early strength and warmth, may be the means of wresting you from the very jaws of hell. The blessing of having had a good and a kind mother is one blessing unequalled, I may say, by any other on earth, and your heart will oft turn with the tenderest love to the years when you knew it, to the scenes where you felt it, long, long after her sweet and gentle voice is hushed in the cold grave. Boys and girls, youths and maidens, when about to sin, remember your mother, and break not her fond heart.