When I was well grown,at last,I was sold and taken away,and I never saw her again.She was broken-hearted,and so was I,and we cried;but she comforted me as well as she could,and said we were sent into this world for a wise and good purpose,and must do our duties without repining,take our life as we might find it,live it for the best good of others,and never mind about the results;they were not our affair.She said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world,and although we animals would not go there,to do well and right without reward would give to our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward.She had gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the Sunday-school with the children,and had laid them up in her memory more carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases;and she had studied them deeply,for her good and ours.One may see by this that she had a wise and thoughtful head,for all there was so much lightness and vanity in it.
So we said our farewells,and looked our last upon each other through our tears;and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make me remember it the better,I think--was,"In memory of me,when there is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself,think of your mother,and do as she would do."
Do you think I could forget that?No.
