"I may thank our Percy for this excellent friend," he wrote. "He tells me his brave and honest avowal of those verses, which had given him so much pain, attracted him more toward me and mine, than even my own efforts to obtain his friendship. Percy little thought when he so conquered himself the help he would give his father--so little do we know to what hidden good, the straightforward, honest performance of a duty, however painful, may lead." "My father should thank you, mother, not me," was Percy's rejoinder, with a flushed cheek and eye sparkling with animation, as his mother read the passage to him. "No such thing, Percy; I will not have you give me all the merit of your good deeds. I did but try to guide you, my boy; neither the disposition to receive, nor the fruit springing from the seeds I planted, is from me." "They are, mother, more than you are in the least aware of!" replied he, with even more than his usual impetuosity, for they happened to be quite alone; "I thought I knew all your worth before I went to Oxford, but I have mingled with the world now; I have been a silent listener and observer of such sentiments, such actions, as I know would naturally have been mine, and though in themselves perhaps of little moment, saw they led to irregularity, laxity of principle and conduct, which now I can not feel as other than actual guilt; and what saved me from the same? The _principle_ which from my infancy you taught. I have questioned, led on in conversation, these young men to speak of their boyhood and their homes, and there were none guided, loved as I was; none whose parents had so blended firmness with indulgence, as while my wild, free spirits were unchecked, prevented the ascendency of evil. _I could not do_ as they did. Mother! love you more, perhaps, I can not, but every time I join the world, fresh from this home sanctuary, I must bless and venerate you more! To walk through this world with any degree of security, man _must_ have principle based on the highest source; and that principle can only be instilled by the constant example of a mother and the association of a home!" Mrs. Hamilton could not answer, but--a very unusual sign of weakness with her--tears of the most intense happiness poured down on the cheek of her son, as in his impetuosity he knelt before her, and ended his very unusually grave appeal by the same loving caresses he was wont to lavish on her, in his infancy and boyhood.