My own darling boy,¹

This is just a little letter to yourself, you know you are the only one who remembers to write me on this day and to me your letter is just the sweetest gift and always cheers me up so much that instead of feeling sad I always feel particularly cheerful.² Last night my mind was so full of plans that I did not get to sleep till this morning, so I was having my breakfast in bed and feeling very stupid when your dear letter came. You do not know just what a help and strength you have been to your mother. I am so very nervous and anxious minded that if you had been anything else but what you are I would certainly have broken down. If you had been a lazy idle good for nothing, selfish and unsympathetic, it seems to me I would have died, for people do die of broken hearts. And it is really terrible the number of selfish men, sons who are positively cruel to their mothers and sisters through self indulgence without apparently any thought of it.

To one of my disposition and views it would seem to me life would have been impossible. As it is you were strong and vigorous and unlike son Cal, physically fit to go into any kind of a rollicking life and so have been led into many things altogether ruinous but thank God, you did hear His voice, I am sure, speaking to you, and you have been enabled to live a pure life and thus have been an unspeakable strength to me.

Many times, I have had grave anxiety as to whether my standard of right has been too puritanical and has shut out the girls from any opportunities, but yet I could not forget that "We are not to do evil that good may come," and I believed that it is only when obeying God, that we receive His help, and I always felt far too weak to go into anything without His approval. And as I look back and read my Bible, it still seems to me the only Safe Course. The only anxious thought I have for you dearie is, lest you should by mixing continually with those who have really scarcely a thought of God, you should grow formal in serving Him and not be spiritually minded. Sometimes you seem a little hard and unsympathetic with people and you know we ought to have "the mind that was in Christ." For this we both need to strive and pray earnestly if we are really to attain to what our Saviour expects of us. With fondest love, my dear son Tom, and earnest prayers.

Ever your loving Mother,

M.B. McQuesten

¹ Another letter was also contained in the same envelope as this letter, see W-MCP2-4.037b

² "This day" is the anniversary of Isaac Baldwin McQuesten's death, Tom's father and Mary's husband, March 7, 1888. (See W5440, March 6, 1906, Tom to his mother).