Holy as heaven a mother’s tender love!
The love of many prayers, and many tears,
Which changes not with dim, declining years.
                                                            Mrs. Norton.

The late President Polk’s mother, who died at Columbia, Tennessee, in the winter of 1851-2, was a member of the Presbyterian church, a highly exemplary Christian, and a faithful mother. The lessons which she taught her son in youth, were not forgotten when he had arrived at manhood, and risen to the highest office in the gift of a free and sovereign people. A single anecdote will show the abiding recollection and influence of her teachings.

A gentleman, who once visited Mr. Polk at the White House, remarked to him that his respect for the Sabbath was highly gratifying to the religious sentiment of the country; whereupon he made the following reply: “I was taught by a pious mother to fear God, and keep his commandments, and I trust that no cares of a government of my own, will ever tempt me to forget what I owe to the government if God.”

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Excerpted from Noble Deeds of American Women
(Patriotic Series for Boys and Girls)
Edited by J. Clement
——
With an Introduction by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney
Illustrated
BOSTON: Lee and Shepard, Publishers
Entered by Act of Congress, in the year of 1851,
by E. H. Derby and Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the Northern District of New York
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