Court Laureate Too Frank.
One of the Shahs of Persia was more anxious than able to acquire fame as a poet. He had just completed a new performance in very "peculiar meter," and summoned the court poet into the royal presence to hear the poem read.
The laureate, when his opinion was asked (in theatrical language), "damned" the composition.
The Shah, enraged at this uncourtly criticism, gave orders that the court poet should be taken to the stable and tied up in the same stall with a donkey. Here the poor sinner remained until his royal rival had perpetrated another poem, when he was again commanded to appear before the throne and submit to a second infliction of sovereign dulness.
He listened in silence while the new poem was read, and at the conclusion, his opinion being required, he fell upon his knees and significantly exclaimed to the royal author:
The Nation's Debt to Mothers.
By GILSON WILLETS.
Great Americans Who Have Achieved World-Wide Reputations By
Reason of the Success That Has Attended Their Careers,
Ascribe Their Triumphs to Maternal Influence.
An original article written for The Scrap Book.
The debt which the United States owes to the mothers of its citizens is one that is beyond the expression of either figures or language. It is a debt on which the republic can only pay the interest—interest that consists of the manifestation of an ever-increasing reverence for American motherhood; for, with all its magnificent resources, the nation is too poor to make even a feeble attempt to pay the principal.
No better evidence of the effect of maternal influence on the careers of successful Americans need be adduced than that which is offered here.
In the lives of the Presidents of the United States, it is found that the nation owes much to American mothers.
George Washington was only eleven years old when his father died, leaving the widowed mother, Mary Washington, with five children to educate and direct. She used daily to gather her children around her and teach them the principles of religion and morality from a little manual in which she wrote all her maxims.
That manual was preserved by Washington as one of his most valued treasures, "and was consulted by me many times in after-life." A French general, on retiring from the presence of Mary Washington, remarked: "It is not surprising that America should produce great men, since she can boast of such mothers."