Man is of Woman born, and her face bends over him in infancy with an
expression he can never quite forget. Eminent men have delighted to
pay tribute to this image, and it is an hackneyed observation, that
most men of genius boast some remarkable development in the mother.
The rudest tar brushes off a tear with his coat-sleeve at the hallowed
name. The other day, I met a decrepit old man of seventy, on a
journey, who challenged the stage company to guess where he was going.
They guessed aright, "To see your mother." "Yes," said he, "she is
ninety-two, but has good eyesight still, they say. I have not seen her
these forty years, and I thought I could not die in peace without." I
should have liked his picture painted as a companion-piece to that of
a boisterous little boy, whom I saw attempt to declaim at a school
exhibition--
"O that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last."
He got but very little way before sudden tears shamed him from the
stage.
Some gleams of the same expression which shone down upon his infancy,
angelically pure and benign, visit Man again with hopes of pure love,
of a holy marriage.
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