But a still more important duty devolves upon the mother. After
having brought into existence the offspring of the nuptial union, the
children are dependent upon the mother as they are not upon any other
human being. The trust is a most sacred, most responsible, and most
important one. To watch over them in their infancy, and as the mind
begins to expand to train, direct, and educate it in the paths of
virtue and usefulness is the high trust assigned to the mother. She
trains the twig as the tree should be inclined.

She molds the character. She educates the heart as well as the
intellect, and she prepares the future man, now the boy, for honor or
dishonor. Upon the manner in which she discharges her duty depends the
fact whether he shall in future be a useful citizen or a burden to
society. She inculcates lessons of patriotism, manliness, religion,
and virtue, fitting the man by reason of his training to be an
ornament to society, or dooming him by her neglect to a life of
dishonor and shame. Society acts unwisely when it imposes upon her
the duties that by common consent have always been assigned to the
stronger and sterner sex, and the discharge of which causes her to
neglect those sacred and all important duties to her children and to
the society of which they are members.

In the church, by her piety, her charity, and her Christian purity,
she not only aids society by a proper training of her own children,
but the children of others, whom she encourages to come to the sacred
altar, are taught to walk in the paths of rectitude, honor, and
religion. In the Sunday-school room the good woman is a princess, and
she exerts an influence which purifies and ennobles society, training
the young in the truths of religion, making the Sunday-school the
nursery of the church, and elevating society to the higher planes of