And what a liberal education a mother’s home-letters to her boys at school might be made!  The stirring incident in the newspapers, the fine passage in the book, a verse or two of a noble poem, as well as all the loving thought and prayer that is for ever flying like homing birds to the dear absent lads, and the inculcation of all things lovely and pure and manly, brightened by home jokes and the health of the last cherished pet—­all these things might go to make up the home letters.  Above all, what an opportunity it would give for pleading the cause of the little chaps who, by some strange insanity working in the brain of the British parent, are sent into the rough world of a large school when they are fitter for the nursery, and whom you might appeal to your boys to look after and protect, so far as they are able; and not only these, but to side with every boy who is being bullied for acting up to his conscience or because he has not the pluck to stand up for himself.

In conclusion, I would earnestly ask you to believe in your own power when united to the knowledge which is necessary to direct it.  “A man is what a woman makes him,” says the old saw.  Look back upon the men you have known who have been touched to finest issues, and you will find, with few exceptions, that they are the shaping of a noble woman’s hands—­a noble mother, a noble wife, a noble sister.  Doubt not, but earnestly believe that with those wonderful shaping hands of yours you can mould that boy of yours into the manhood of Sir Galahad, “whose strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure”; that you can send him forth into the world like King Arthur, of whom our own poet, Spenser, says, that the poorest, the most unprotected girl could feel that

    “All the while he by his side her bore
    She was as safe as in a sanctuary.”

Nay, may I not go further still and say that by the grace of God you can send him forth “made of a woman” in the image of the strong and tender Manhood of Jesus Christ, to Whom even the poor lost girls out of the street could come and know that here was a Man who would not drag them down, but lift them up; believing in Whom, clinging to Whom, trusting in Whom, they grew no longer lost and degraded, but splendid saints of the Christian Church.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 11:  Morality in Public Schools, by Dr. Butler, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and late Head-Master of Harrow.]

[Footnote 12:  The Preservation of Health, by Clement Dukes, M.D., M.R.C.S., Howard Medallist, Statistical Society of London, p. 150.]

[Footnote 13:  Ibid., p. 157.]

[Footnote 14:  A Confidential Talk with the Boys of America, by J.M.  Dick.  Fleming H. Revell Co.]

[Footnote 15:  See Appendix.]

[Footnote 16:  See Parents’ Review, No. 5, July, 1895, p. 351.]