HAPPY RESULTS OF MATERNAL FIDELITY.

Lift the heart and bend the knee.
Mrs. Hemans.

The superior influence of the mother in forming the character of the child, is generally conceded. Biographical literature abounds with illustrations of this fact, and renders it incontrovertible. As examples, in Great Britain, we are often, with propriety, pointed to the mothers of Isaac and John Newton, Doddridge, the Wesleys, Richard Cecil, Legh Richmond and many others; but it is needless for any people to search in foreign lands for such examples.

In the notices of the mothers of Washington, Jackson, Randolph, Dwight and some others, on preceding pages of this volume, the truth of the same proposition is endeavored to be substantiated: and, as facts most forcibly illustrate argument, and wholesome hints are often easiest given by example, we will add two or three more anecdotes having a bearing on this point.

The mother of Jonathan Edwards, it is well known, began to pray for him as soon as he was born; and probably no mother ever strove harder than she to rear a child "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." The result of her efforts is known to the world.

The late Professor Knowles, of the Newton theological institution, received much pious instruction from his mother in his infant years; and, as he lost his father at the age of twelve, at that period she assumed wholly the guidance of his steps and his studies. She early discovered his love of books and his promising talents; and while she admonished him, and led him to the Saviour, she also sympathized with him in his literary taste and encouraged him in his scientific pursuits. The zealous minister, the learned biblical instructor, the polished writer and biographer of the first Mrs. Judson, owed very much to the moral training and the literary encouragement of his faithful mother.

Nearly half a century ago, the mother of the celebrated Beecher family, made the following record: "This morning I rose very early to pray for my children; and especially that my sons may be ministers and missionaries of Jesus Christ." The "fervent" prayers of the good woman were "effectual:" her five sons became "ministers and missionaries of Jesus Christ," and all her children—eight in number—are connected with the "household of God"—several on earth and one,[73] at least, in heaven.

WONDERFUL ENDURANCE AND PERSEVERANCE
OF MRS. SCOTT.

——Mute The camel labors with the heaviest load,
And the wolf dies in silence; not bestowed
In vain should such examples be; if they,
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay,
May temper it to bear—it is but for a day.
Byron.

Mrs. Scott, a resident of Washington county, Virginia, was taken captive by Indians on the night of the twenty-ninth of June, 1785. Her husband and all her children were slain; and before morning she was forced to commence her march through the wilderness.

On the eleventh day of her captivity, while in charge of four Indians, provision becoming scarce, a halt was made, and three of the number went on a hunting excursion. Being left in the care of an old man, she made him believe she was reconciled to her condition, and thus threw him off his guard. Anxious to escape, and having matured her plans, she asked him, in the most disinterested manner possible, to let her go to a small stream, near by, and wash her apron, which was besmeared with the blood of one of her children. He gave her leave, and while he was busy in "graining a deer-skin," she started off. Arriving at the stream, without a moment's hesitation, she pushed on in the direction of a mountain. Traveling till late at night, she came into a valley where she hoped to find the track along which she had been taken by her captors, and thereby be able to retrace her steps. Hurrying across the valley to the margin of a river, which she supposed must be the eastern branch of the Kentucky, she discovered in the sand the tracks of two men who had followed the stream upwards and returned. Thinking them to be the prints of pursuers, and that they had returned from the search, she took courage, thanked God, and was prepared to continue her flight.

On the third day she came very near falling into the hands of savages, a company whom she supposed had been sent to Clinch river on a pilfering excursion. Hearing their approach before they came in sight, she concealed herself, and they passed without noticing her. She now became greatly alarmed, and was so bewildered as to lose her way and to wander at random for several days.

At length, coming to a stream that seemed to flow from the east, she concluded it must be Sandy river; and resolving to trace it to its source, which was near a settlement where she was acquainted, she pushed on for several days, till she came into mountainous regions and to craggy steeps. There, in the vicinity of a "prodigious waterfall," she was forced to leap from a precipice, upon some rocks, and was so stunned as to be obliged to make a short delay in her journey.

Soon after passing through the mountain,[74] she was bitten by a snake which she supposed was venomous. She killed it, and expected her turn to die would come next; but the only injury she received was some pain and the slight swelling of one foot. A writer, whose narration we follow and whose facts are more reliable than his philosophy, thinks that, being "reduced to a mere skeleton, with fatigue, hunger and grief," she was probably, on that account, "saved from the effects of the poisonous fangs."

Leaving the river, Mrs. Scott came to a forked valley, and watching the flight of birds, took the branch they did, and in two days came in sight of New Garden, the settlement on Clinch river, before referred to. Thus, after wandering in the wilderness for six long weeks, almost destitute of clothing, without a weapon of defence or instrument for obtaining provision; exposed to wild beasts and merciless savages; subsisting a full month on the juice of young cane stalks, sassafras leaves and similar food; looking to God in prayer for guidance by day, and for protection by night; shielded from serious harm, and led by an unseen Hand, on the eleventh of August, the wanderings of the widowed and childless captive were brought to a close.