Mary Morris Werner

A GOOD MOTHER
WHOSE FINE SYMPATHY, KEEN PERCEPTION,
AND DEVOUT SENSE OF DUTY ARE MOULDING
THE CHARACTER OF

AN AMERICAN BOY

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
[Foreword]xi
I[From Baby to Boy]3
II[The Simplicity of Discipline]17
III[As the Twig Is Bent]33
IV[A Talk at Christmas Time]48
V[The Dynasty of the Dime Novel]63
VI[The Sin of Sex Secrecy]77
VII[The Weed and the Winecup]91
VIII[Out into the World]104

There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

—Polonius to his son.
Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3.