I was born in the Genesee Valley, Livingstone County, State of New York, on the second day of May, A. D. 1827. I was number two of a family of eight children,--six boys and two girls. My mother, while not in the popular sense an educated woman, having but a common-school education, had, as the philosopher Hobbes termed it, a large amount of "round-about common-sense." While she gave, as a religious mother, her assent to Solomon's declaration that he who spares the rod spoils the child, it was only in the most flagrant instances of disobedience that she put the doctrine in practice. She was firm, consistent, and truthful, indulging in no unfulfilled threats or promises of punishment in case of non-compliance with her orders. In fact, she acted upon the principle that certainty and not severity of punishment was the preventative of disobedience. Her all-prevailing governing power was affection--love,--thus exemplifying the teaching of the Master that "he who loveth Me keeps My commandments." I say it now, after eighty years of memory, that we obeyed her because we loved her. She has gone to her reward. My observation and experience is that the mother's influence over her sons, if she be a true and affectionate mother, is far stronger than that of the father. Her love is ever present in the conflict of life; it remains as an enduring and restraining force against evil, and a powerful impulse in favor of honor and right. Someone has said that there are but three words of beauty in the English language: "Mother, Home, Heaven." My father owned a farm of forty acres in the Genesee Valley, and I first saw the light of day in a plain but comfortable frame house. Back of it, and between two and three rods from it, quietly ran in a narrow channel a flower-strewn and almost grass-covered spring brook, whose clear and pure waters, about a foot in depth, were used for domestic and farm purposes. I mention this brook because connected with it is my first memory. I fell into that brook one day when I was about three years old, and would have drowned had it not been for the timely arrival of my mother. As the years advanced, observation extended, experience increased and enlarged, and I became a parent myself, I have often considered how many children would have reached manhood or womanhood's estate wanting the almost divine affection and ceaseless vigilance of a mother's love.