Our dear mother was still an active woman, with
few signs of age about her, when, in her sixty-seventh year, she was
almost suddenly taken from us by an attack of gout in the stomach.
I feel as if I had not done her justice, and as if she might seem
stern, unsympathising, and lacking in tenderness. Yet nothing could
be further from the truth. She was an old-fashioned mother, who
held it her duty to keep up her authority, and counted over-
familiarity and indulgence as sins. To her 'the holy spirit of
discipline was the beginning of wisdom,' and to make her children
godly, truthful, and honourable was a much greater object than to
win their love. And their love she had, and kept to a far higher
degree than seems to be the case with those who court affection by
caresses and indulgence. We knew that her approval was of a
generous kind, we prized enthusiastically her rare betrayals of her
motherly tenderness, and we depended on her in a manner we only
realised in the desolation, dreariness, and helplessness that fell
upon us, when we knew that she was gone. She had not, nor had any
of us, understood that she was dying, and she had uttered only a few
words that could imply any such thought. On hearing that there was
a letter from Clarence, she said, 'Poor Clarence! I should like to
have seen him. He is a good boy after all.
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