the Twentieth of February--the morning of my seventieth birthday. What a
long time to look back upon! This morning, at the hour when my mother
gave me birth, I wished my first thoughts to be of her. Dear Mother, how
often have the tears risen to my eyes at the remembrance of you! It was
your absence--the longing I had for you--that made you so dear to me. The
love of my heart goes out to you! Do you hear me, Mother, calling and
crying for you? How sweet it must be to have a mother, I say to myself."

* * * * *

"I would have every man rich," said Emerson, "that he might know the
worthlessness of riches."

Every man should have a college education, in order to show him how
little the thing is really worth. The intellectual kings of the earth
have seldom been college-bred. Napoleon ever regretted the lack of
instruction in his early years; and in the minds of such men as Abraham
Lincoln and Ernest Meissonier there usually lingers the suspicion that
they have dropped something out of their lives.

"I'm not a college man--ask Seward," said Lincoln, when some one
questioned him as to the population of Alaska. The remark was merry jest,
of course, but as in all jest there lurks a grain of truth, so did there
here.

At the height of Meissonier's success, when a canvas from his hand
commanded a larger price than the work of any other living artist, he
exclaimed, "Oh, if only I had been given the advantages of a college
training!"