Whats an autobiography

A THEORY is advanced by some students of character that in what concerns the formation of the individual nature, the shaping and determination of it in the plastic stage, and especially in respect to the moral elements on which the stability and purpose of a man’s life depend, a man is indebted to his mother, for good or for ill.

The question is too subtle for argument, but so far as my own observation goes, it tends to a confirmation of the theory. I have often noticed, in children of friends, that in childhood the likeness to the mother was so vivid that one found no trace of the father, but that in maturity this likeness disappeared to give place to that of the father.

In my own case, taking it for what it is worth, I can only wish that the mother’s part had been more enduring ; not that I regret the effect of my father’s influence, but because I think my mother had some qualities from which my best are derived, and which I should like to see completely carried out in the life of