"Besides this, they both had yet another feature which I believe contributed to their indifference to the judgment of men-it was that they never condemned any one.

"A feature which distinguishes my mother among her circle was her truthfulness and the simple tone of her letters. At that time the expression of exaggerated feelings was especially cultivated in letters: 'Incomparable, divine, the joy of my life, unutterably precious,' etc., were the most usual epithets between friends, and the more inflated the less sincere. "I have been told that my mother loved me very much, and called me 'Mon petit Benjamin'

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. . . The fourth strong feeling which did perhaps exist, as my aunts told me I earnestly hope that it did exist was her love for me, which took the place of her love for Koko, who at the time of my birth had already detached himself from his mother and been transferred into male hands. It was a necessity for her to love what was not herself, and one love took the place of another.

"Such was the figure of my mother in my imagination. She appeared to me a creature so elevated, pure, and spiritual that often in the middle period of my life, during my struggle with overwhelming temptations, I prayed to her soul, begging her to aid me, and this prayer always helped me much.

"My mother's life in her father's family was a very good and happy one, as I may conclude from letters and stories.

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'My father's household consisted of his mother,

an old lady; of her daughter, my aunt Countess Alexandra Osten-Saken, and her ward Pashenka; of another aunt, as we used to call her, although she was a very distant relative, Tatiana Yergolsky, who had been educated in my grandfather's house and had passed all her later life in my father's; and the tutor, Feodor Ivanovich Resselier. We were five children

Nicolay, Sergey, Dmitri, myself, the youngest boy, and our younger sister Mashenka, at whose birth my mother died. My mother's very short married life -I think it lasted not more than nine years was very full, and adorned by every one's love to her and hers to every one who lived with her. Judging by the letters, I see that she lived at that time in great solitude. Scarcely anyone visited Yasnaya Polmana except our intimate friends the Ogarefs and some relatives who, if casually traveling along the high-road, might look in upon them.

"My mother's life was passed in occupations with the children, in reading aloud of an evening to my grandmother, and in serious readings such as Emile, by Rousseau and discussions about what had been read; in playing the piano, teaching Italian to one of my aunts, walks, and household work. In all families there are periods when illness and death are yet unknown, and the members live peacefully. Such a period, it seems to me, my mother was living through in her husband's family until her death. No one died, no one was seriously ill, my father's disordered affairs were improving. All were healthy, happy, and friendly. My father amused every one with his stor

ies and jokes. I did not witness that time. At the time with which my remembrances begin, my mother's death had already laid its seal upon the life of our family. All this I have described from what I have heard and from letters."

THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE *

BY JAMES FROUDE

The strongest personal passion which he (Carlyle) experienced through all his life was his affection for his mother. She was proud and willful as he. He had sent or offered her, more presents, and she had been angry with him. She had not been well, and she was impatient of doctors' regulations.

Birmingham, August 29, 1824.

To Mrs. Carlyle, Mainhill.

I must suggest some improvements in your diet and mode of life which might be of service to you, who I know too well have much to suffer on your own part, though your affection renders you so exclusively anxious about me. You will say you cannot be fashed. Oh, my dear mother, if you did not think of what value your health and comfort are to us all, you would never talk so. Are we not all bound to you, by sacred and indissoluble ties? Am I not so bound more than any other? Who was it that nursed me and watched me in frowardness and sickness from the earliest dawn of my existence to this hour?- My mother. Who is

it that has struggled for me in pain and sorrow with undespairing diligence, that has for me been up early and down late, caring for me, laboring for me, unweariedly assisting me?- My mother. Who is the one that never shrunk from me in my desolation, that never tired of my despondencies, or shut up by a look or tone of impatience the expression of my real or imaginary griefs? Who is it that loves me and will love me for ever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away?—It is you, my mother. As the greatest favor that I can beg of you, let me, now that I have in some degree the power, be of some assistance in promoting your comfort. It were one of the achievements which I could look back upon with most satisfaction from all the stages of my earthly pilgrimage, if I could make you happier. Are we not all of us animated by a similar love to you? Why then will you spare any trouble, any cost, in what is valuable beyond aught earthly to every one of us?

By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

WHAT MOTHERS HAVE DONE

"All that I am or hope to be," said Lincoln, after he became President of the United States, "I owe to my angel mother."

"All that I have ever accomplished in life," declared Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist, "I owe to my mother."

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To the man who has had a mother, all women are sacred for her sake," said Jean Paul Richter.

"A kiss from my mother made me a painter," said Benjamin West.

MONICA, ST. AUGUSTINE'S MOTHER

In his book de Beata Vita, Augustine thus addresses his mother: "You, through whose prayers I undoubtedly believe and affirm, that God gave me that mind that I should prefer nothing to the discovery of truth; wish, think of, love, nought besides. Nor do I fail to believe, that this so great good, which, through thee, I have come to desire, through thy prayers I shall attain; "

And says of her, "chiefly my mother, to whom I believe, I owe all which in me is life," and long after, "that to the faithful and daily tears of my mother, I was granted, that I should not perish."

And again, he says: "Our mother, whose endowments, and the fervor of her mind towards divine things, I had both before perceived through daily intercourse and careful observation, and in a discussion on a matter of no small moment, her mind had appeared of so high an order, that nothing could be more adapted to the study of true wisdom."

Augustine speaks of her "ardent love of the divine Scriptures" and preserves an answer of hers as to what constituted happiness, "If a man desire what is good and has it, he is happy; if evil, though he have it, he is wretched."

This from his Confessions: "We sought where we might serve Thee most usefully, and were together