A little Candle, But Shining Far.


A MOTHER, on the green hills of Vermont, was holding by the right hand a son, sixteen years old, mad with the love of the sea. And as she stood at the garden gate one morning, she said:

"Edward, they tell me for I never saw the ocean that the great temptation of a seaman's life is drink. Promise me, before you quit your mother's hand, that you will never drink liquor."

"And," said he, for he told the story, "I have the promise, and went the globe over, to Calcutta, the Mediterranean, San Francisco, and the cape of Good Hope, the North and South Poles; I saw them all in forty years, and I never saw a glass filled with sparkling liquor that my mother's form at the gate did not rise up before my eyes, and today I am innocent of the taste of liquor."

Was that not sweet evidence of the power of a single word? Yet that is not half, "for," still continued he, "yesterday there came into my counting-room a man of forty years.

"'Do you know me?' "'No.'

"'Well,' said he, 'I was brought drunk into your presence on ship-board; you were passenger; they kicked me aside; you took me to your berth and kept me there till I had slept off the intoxication. You then asked me if I had a mother; I said I had never heard a word from her lips; you told me of yours at the garden gate, and today I am master of one of the finest ships in New York harbor, and I have come to ask you to come and see me.' "How far the little candle throws its beam. The mother's words-on the green hills of Vermont! God be thanked for the mighty power of a single word! 





Wendell Phillips.