fashion; but he was soon busy in his
father's shop, where, amid the glowing pots and the fire and smoke of his
little forge, he saw vivid pictures of hell and the devils which haunted
him all his life. When he was sixteen years old his father married the
second time, whereupon Bunyan ran away and became a soldier in the
Parliamentary army.

The religious ferment of the age made a tremendous impression on Bunyan's
sensitive imagination. He went to church occasionally, only to find himself
wrapped in terrors and torments by some fiery itinerant preacher; and he
would rush violently away from church to forget his fears by joining in
Sunday sports on the village green. As night came on the sports were
forgotten, but the terrors returned, multiplied like the evil spirits of
the parable. Visions of hell and the demons swarmed in his brain. He would
groan aloud in his remorse, and even years afterwards he bemoans the sins
of his early life. When we look for them fearfully, expecting some shocking
crimes and misdemeanors, we find that they consisted of playing ball on
Sunday and swearing. The latter sin, sad to say, was begun by listening to
his father cursing some obstinate kettle which refused to be tinkered, and
it was perfected in the Parliamentary army. One day his terrible swearing
scared a woman, "a very loose and ungodly wretch," as he tells us, who
reprimanded him for his profanity. The reproach of the poor woman went
straight home, like the voice of a prophet. All his profanity left him; he
hung down his head with shame. "I wished with all my heart," he says, "that
I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak
without this wicked way of swearing." With characteristic vehemence Bunyan
hurls himself upon a promise of Scripture, and instantly the reformation
begins to work in his soul. He casts out the habit, root and branch, and
finds to his astonishment that he can speak more freely and vigorously than
before. Nothing is more characteristic of the man than this sudden seizing
upon a text, which he had doubtless heard many times before, and being
suddenly raised up or cast down by its influence.

With Bunyan's marriage to a good woman the real reformation in his life
began. While still in his teens he married a girl as poor as himself. "We
came together," he says, "as poor as might be, having not so much household
stuff as a dish or spoon between us both." The only dowry which the girl
brought