Let the mother be idle,
vicious, and a slattern; let her home be pervaded by cavilling,
petulance, and discontent, and it will become a dwelling of misery
--a place to fly from, rather than to fly to; and the children
whose misfortune it is to be brought up there, will be morally
dwarfed and deformed--the cause of misery to themselves as well
as to others.
Napoleon Buonaparte was accustomed to say that "the future good or
bad conduct of a child depended entirely on the mother." He
himself attributed his rise in life in a great measure to the
training of his will, his energy, and his self-control, by his
mother at home. "Nobody had any command over him," says one of
his biographers, "except his mother, who found means, by a mixture
of tenderness, severity, and justice, to make him love, respect,
and obey her: from her he learnt the virtue of obedience."
A curious illustration of the dependence of the character of
children on that of the mother incidentally occurs in one of Mr.
Tufnell's school reports. The truth, he observes, is so well
established that it has even been made subservient to mercantile
calculation. "I was informed," he says, "in a large factory,
where many children were employed, that the managers before they
engaged a boy always inquired into the mother's character, and if
that was satisfactory they were tolerably certain that her
children would conduct themselves creditably.
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