"A kiss from my mother," said West, "made me a painter." It
is on the direction of such seeming trifles when children that the
future happiness and success of men mainly depend. Fowell Buxton,
when occupying an eminent and influential station in life, wrote to
his mother, "I constantly feel, especially in action and exertion
for others, the effects of principles early implanted by you in my
mind." Buxton was also accustomed to remember with gratitude the
obligations which he owed to an illiterate man, a gamekeeper, named
Abraham Plastow, with whom he played, and rode, and sported--a man
who could neither read nor write, but was full of natural good
sense and mother-wit. "What made him particularly valuable," says
Buxton, "were his principles of integrity and honour. He never
said or did a thing in the absence of my mother of which she would
have disapproved. He always held up the highest standard of
integrity, and filled our youthful minds with sentiments as pure
and as generous as could be found in the writings of Seneca or
Cicero. Such was my first instructor, and, I must add, my best."
Lord Langdale, looking back upon the admirable example set him by
his mother, declared, "If the whole world were put into one scale,
and my mother into the other, the world would kick the beam.
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