Page:An address to women (Goodwin).djvu/13

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AN ADDRESS TO WOMEN.
7

the whole truth and nothing but the truth; that there was to be no evasion; that everything was to be stated simply and honestly, exactly as it occurred; and I will tell you how she enforced that lesson—she always spoke the truth to me. I never caught her in any kind of deceit. I always knew that what she said to me she meant. I was sure that if she told me she was going to do a thing she would do it, and that no amount of coaxing or persuasion would lead her to change her mind. Absolute truth, absolute in the smallest matters, that was her practice, and that was the lesson which she impressed upon me.

Then she taught me to say my prayers. I have as vivid a recollection now, at a distance of sixty years, as I had at the time, of the manner in which she made me kneel down at her knees, and, with her hand upon my head, taught me the simple prayers which were suitable for childhood. I remember how, when I rose up from my knees, she would gently talk to me in a manner suitable to my childish capacity. Those early lessons of prayer have never been lost to me; and I remember how that afterwards when I was at school, and when I was beset by all the temptations and the difficulties to which boys at school are submitted, when I was sleeping in