T. L. Haines and L. W. Yaggy

“ Heaven has imprinted in the mother's face something beyond this world, something which claims kindred with the skies - the angelic smile, the tender look, the waking, watchful eye, which keeps its find vigil over her slumbering babe.
Mother! ecstatic sound so twined round our hearts that they must cease to throb ere we forget it! 'tis our first love; 'tis part of religion. Nature has set the mother upon such a pinnacle, that our infant eyes and arms are first uplifted to it; we cling to it in manhood; we almost worship it in old age. ”

“ Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother's tenderness while living. How heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness? But when she is dead and gone, when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts, when we experience how hard it is to find true sympathy, how few to love us for ourselves, how few will befriend us in misfortune, then it is that we think of the mother we have lost. ”

“ Her departed spirit still hovers over his affections, overshadows his path, and draws him by unseen cords to herself in heaven.
But in glancing at a mother's position in our homes, we should not overlook the sorrows to which she is often exposed. A mother mourning by the grave of her first-born is a spectacle of woe. A mother watching the palpitating frame of her child, as life ebbs slowly away, must evoke the sympathy of the sternest. ”

“ In what Christian country can we deny the influence which a mother exerts over the whole life of her children. The roughest and hardest wanderer, while he is tossed on the ocean, or while he scorches his feet on the desert sands, recurs in his loneliness and suffering to the smile which maternal affection shed over those holy precepts instilled by a virtuous mother, and, although they may, in the fullness of guilt, be neglected, there are many instances of their having so stung the conscience, that they have led to a deep and lasting repentance ”

“ He who can enter an apartment and behold the tender babe feeding on its mother's beauty - nourished by the tide of life which flows through her generous veins, without a panting bosom and a grateful eye, is no man, but a monster. ”

“ Perhaps the saddest sentence that can fall upon the ear regarding any child is--"He has no mother; she is dead!" It comes like a voice from the sepulchre, and involves the consummation of all the sorrows that can befall the young. In that condition they are deprived of their most tender comforter, and their wisest counselor. They are left a prey to a thousand temptations or a thousand ills, and freed from the restraint of one who could curb without irritating, or guild without affecting superiority. ”

“ How cheerfully does a virtuous son labor for a poverty-stricken mother! How alive is he to her honor and high standing in the world! And should that mother be deserted- be left in "worse than widowhood," how proudly he stands forth her comforter and protector! Indeed, the more we reflect upon the subject, the more entirely are we convinced, that no influence is so lasting, or of such wide extent, and the more extensively we do feel the necessity of guiding this sacred affection, and perfecting that being from whom it emantes. ”

“ It is true to nature, although it be expressed in a figurative form, that a mother is both the morning and the evening star of life. The light of her eye us always the first to rise, and often the last to set upon man's day of trial. ”

“ A sentence of encouragement or praise is a joy for a day. It spreads light upon all faces, and renders a mother's power more and more charm-like, as surely as ceaseless accusing, rebuking, and correcting, chafes, sours, and disgusts. So intense is her power that the mere rememberance of a praying mother's hand, laid on the head in infancy, has held back a son from guilt when passion had waxed strong. ”

“ Hence, in all ages, the better part of mankind have chosen and loved spots of the dead, and on these spots they have loved to wander at eventide. But of all places, even among the charnel-houses of the dead, none is so sacred as a mother's grave. There sleeps the nurse of infancy, the guide of our youth, the counselor of our riper years - our friend when others deserted us ”

“ A mother closing the dying eye of child after child, till it seems as if she were to be left alone in the world again, is one of the saddest sights of earth: when the cradle-song passes into a dirge, the heart is laden indeed. ”

“ Oh! there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to her son that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment ”

“ Now will mothers live with their children as if they were thus to leave them in a cold and inhospitable world? Will they guild their little ones to Him who is pre-eminently the God of the orphan, and who inspired his servant to say--"Though father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up." ”

“ Nay, in cases not a few, where there has been no fear of God before the eyes of the young - where His love has been unfelt and His law outraged, a mother's affection or her tremulous tenderness has held transgressors by the heart-strings, and been the means of leading them back to virtue and to God.
Woman's charms are certainly many and powerful. The expanding rose, just bursting into beauty, has an irresistible bewitchingness ”