Lastly, but not least, I would plead most earnestly for the frequent home-letter, should your boy be sent to a boarding-school. If you would have him resist the temptations of school life, keep the home as close to his heart and as present to his mind as you can. Make it your first and paramount duty to write every day if you can, if not every other day, at least twice a week.
Do not misunderstand me here. God knows I do not go in for the devoted mother who thinks of nothing but her boys and to whom the whole world besides is nothing but an empty flourish of the pen about their names. Such mothers are like Chinese teacups, with no perspective and everything out of proportion; where the Mandarin is as big as the Pagoda, and suffers from a pathetic inability to get in at his own door. You must see things in moral perspective in order to train character on large and noble lines. And it is from the rough quarry of the outside world, with its suffering and sin, that you must fetch the most precious stones for the building up of true manhood or womanhood. The sooner children are taught that their small concerns must be subordinated at times to the needs of the sick, the poor, and the suffering, the better for them. For a mother, therefore, to undertake some outside work may and will prove the best element in their education, enabling them in their turn to live in relation with the world in which God has placed them and do their part in the service of humanity.
All that I mean is, do not so crowd your life with outside work or social engagements as to have no time to spare for this daily or at least bi-weekly letter to the boys at school. Bear in mind that the most important work you can do for the world is the formation of noble character, building it up stone by stone as you alone can do. Do not be too busy to make yourself your boy's friend and throw yourself heartily into all that interests him. I have known philanthropic mothers to whom cricket was nothing but an unmeaning scurrying backwards and forwards, and who scarcely knew the stern of a boat from its bows!
And what a liberal education a mother's home-letters to her boys at school might be made! The stirring incident in the newspapers, the fine passage in the book, a verse or two of a noble poem, as well as all the loving thought and prayer that is for ever flying like homing birds to the dear absent lads, and the inculcation of all things lovely and pure and manly, brightened by home jokes and the health of the last cherished pet—all these things might go to make up the home letters. Above all, what an opportunity it would give for pleading the cause of the little chaps who, by some strange insanity working in the brain of the British parent, are sent into the rough world of a large school when they are fitter for the nursery, and whom you might appeal to your boys to look after and protect, so far as they are able; and not only these, but to side with every boy who is being bullied for acting up to his conscience or because he has not the pluck to stand up for himself.
In conclusion, I would earnestly ask you to believe in your own power when united to the knowledge which is necessary to direct it. "A man is what a woman makes him," says the old saw. Look back upon the men you have known who have been touched to finest issues, and you will find, with few exceptions, that they are the shaping of a noble woman's hands—a noble mother, a noble wife, a noble sister. Doubt not, but earnestly believe that with those wonderful shaping hands of yours you can mould that boy of yours into the manhood of Sir Galahad, "whose strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure"; that you can send him forth into the world like King Arthur, of whom our own poet, Spenser, says, that the poorest, the most unprotected girl could feel that
"All the while he by his side her bore
She was as safe as in a sanctuary."
Nay, may I not go further still and say that by the grace of God you can send him forth "made of a woman" in the image of the strong and tender Manhood of Jesus Christ, to Whom even the poor lost girls out of the street could come and know that here was a Man who would not drag them down, but lift them up; believing in Whom, clinging to Whom, trusting in Whom, they grew no longer lost and degraded, but splendid saints of the Christian Church.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [11] Morality in Public Schools, by Dr. Butler, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and late Head-Master of Harrow.