David Starr Jordan, president of Leland Stanford University, was asked what great man or woman most influenced him as a boy.
He replied, in writing:
"I was far more influenced by my mother than by any other person I ever knew or heard of."
Fulton, Franklin, and Astor.
Robert Fulton was only three years old when his father died. "So that," he said, "I grew up under the care of my blessed mother. She developed my early talent for drawing and encouraged me in my visits to the machine-shops of the town."
Robert was a dull pupil at school, however, and the teacher complained to his mother. Whereupon Mrs. Fulton replied proudly:
"My boy's head, sir, is so full of original notions that there is no vacant chamber in which to store the contents of your musty books."
"I was only ten years old at that time," said Fulton, "and my mother seemed to be the only human being who understood my natural bent for mechanics."
The fact that Fulton's mother let the boy have his own way in his "original notions" had its direct result later in the building of the first steamboat.
Benjamin Franklin many times, in his own story of his life, mentions the powerful influence which his mother had over him, referring to her always with peculiar affection.