When a mother once asked a clergyman when she should begin the education of her child, then four years old, he replied: "Madam, if you have not begun already, you have lost those four years. From the first smile that gleams upon an infant's cheek, your opportunity begins." Cowper's mother must have well used this opportunity considering the impression her brief companionship made upon the poet. She died when he was six years old, and yet in after-life he could say that not a week passed in which he did not think of her. When his cousin one day presented him with a portrait of his mother he said: "I had rather possess that picture than the richest jewel in the British crown; for I loved her with an affection that her death, fifty-two years since, has not in the least abated." Surely it is better for a mother to merit such love than to leave the care of her children almost entirely to servants because all her time is occupied "serving divers lusts and pleasures." "Give your child to be educated by a slave," said an ancient Greek, "and instead of one slave, you will then have two." On the other hand, "happy is he whom his mother teacheth." One good mother is worth a hundred nurses or teachers. If from any cause, whether from necessity, or from indolence, or from desire for company, children are deprived of a mother's care, instruction, and influence, it is an incalculable loss. Curran spoke with great affection of his mother, as a woman of strong original understanding, to whose wise counsel, consistent piety, and lessons of honourable ambition, which she diligently enforced on the minds of her children, he himself principally attributed his success in life. "The only inheritance," he used to say, "that I could boast of from my poor father, was the very scanty one of an unattractive face and person, like his own; and if the world has ever attributed to me something more valuable than face or person, or than earthly wealth, it was because another and a dearer parent gave her child a portion from the treasure of her mind."