Of all the love affairs in the world, none can surpass the true love of a big boy for his mother. It is pure and noble, honorable to the highest degree in both. I do not mean merely a dutiful affection. I mean a love that makes a boy gallant and courteous to his mother, saying to everybody plainly that he is fairly in love with her. Next to the love of a husband, nothing so crowns a woman’s life with honor as this second love, this devotion of a son to her. I never yet knew a boy to turn out hopelessly bad who began by falling in love with his mother. Any man may fall in love with a fresh-faced girl, and the man who is gallant with the girl may cruelly neglect his worn and weary wife, but the boy who is a lover of his mother in her middle age is a true knight, who will love his wife as much in her sear-leaved autumn as he did in the daisied spring-time.—Selected.