Curran speaks with great affection of his mother, as a woman of
strong original understanding, to whose wise counsel, consistent
piety, and lessons of honourable ambition, which she diligently
enforced on the minds of her children, he himself principally
attributed his success in life. "The only inheritance," he used
to say, "that I could boast of from my poor father, was the very
scanty one of an unattractive face and person; like his own; and
if the world has ever attributed to me something more valuable
than face or person, or than earthly wealth, it was that another
and a dearer parent gave her child a portion from the treasure
of her mind." (10)

When ex-President Adams was present at the examination of a girls'
school at Boston, he was presented by the pupils with an address
which deeply affected him; and in acknowledging it, he took the
opportunity of referring to the lasting influence which womanly
training and association had exercised upon his own life and
character. "As a child," he said, "I enjoyed perhaps the greatest
of blessings that can be bestowed on man--that of a mother, who
was anxious and capable to form the characters of her children
rightly. From her I derived whatever instruction (religious
especially, and moral) has pervaded a long life--I will not say
perfectly, or as it ought to be; but I will say, because it is
only justice to the memory of her I revere, that, in the course of
that life, whatever imperfection there has been, or deviation from
what she taught me, the fault is mine, and not hers."

The Wesleys were peculiarly linked to their parents by natural
piety, though the mother, rather than the father, influenced their