MY MOTHER

Dark passage, the hand of a servant would touch Alexander or me with caress; or a peasant woman, on
meeting us in the fields, would ask, "Will you be as good as your mother was? She took compassion on
us. You will, surely."

"Us" meant, of course, the serfs. I do not know what would have become of us if we had not found in
our house, among the serfs servants, that atmosphere of love which children must have around them.
We were her children, we bore likeness to her, and they lavished their care upon us, sometimes in a
touching form, as will be seen later on.

Men passionately desire to live after death, but they often pass away without noticing the fact that the
memory of a really good person always lives. It is impressed upon the next generation, and is
transmitted again to the children.

Is not that an immortality worth striving for?