The highest grade of manhood and womanhood cannot be built without a considerable amount of ethical teaching. No matter what we do now, the action and reaction law of history will ultimately sweep us back again to the moralizing days. Then we shall carry didacticism to the same extreme that we are now carrying the lack of it. A better way is to have a reasonable amount of it all the while. Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby had a clear conception of the ethical phases of the highest educational ideal. He once said that he did not merely seek to turn out young men trained to take first in the schools, but “thoughtful, manly-minded men, conscious of duty and obligation.” Such is the largest service the school can render to the world, because it constantly sweeps us in the direction of a better order of things. The Same Face (1915) Along our years motherhood has planted three pictures that are so good for us to see that love and memory should always keep them bright. Pictures of sentiment they may be. Call them so if you will. But they are, nevertheless, the anchors that have held many a soul from sinking in the mire of life’s way. The first is the picture of the young face that bent above us when we were babes—a face wistfully tender and wonderfully touched with the glow of parenthood’s first self-consciousness. The lips move. They never knew the name of love so well until they had trembled in the midst of dismal floods for love’s own sake. They never knew the voice of prayer so well until the burden of creation came to be shared by the heart behind them. We did not suspect the love that throbbed in that heart above us and gave strength to the arms that held us. We know something of it now—and appreciate the debt that never can be paid. The next is the airy and elusive picture of our own futures which her fond hopes painted on the shadowed walls of the old room at home or in the air above our beds as we slept. Those pictures were too perfect, of course, for the hope and love were perfect that imaged them. She thought us better than we were and had more faith in us than we ever had in ourselves. But, what a garden this world would be if we refrained from violating at least the spirit of the dreams that thronged her mind when we were still wrapped in the unconsciousness of the years before the awakenings came. The last picture is seen not by looking backward but by looking forward. The other two are memories. This is an anticipation. They sadden us. This fills us with a wondrous joy. Many times we have seen her waiting face and her hand upon the gate at evening time. If we look, we can see her yonder now—ahead of us. The face that bent above the way’s beginning looms also at its close. It is older and gentler and touched with a perfect light. But it is the same face—and her hand is on the gate. The Will (1915)