t, when the picture
of his father's last moments would not let the boy sleep. It seemed to
Jim that if he could learn to forget this picture a part of his grief
would be lifted. It was the uselessness of Big Jim's death that made the
boy unboyishly bitter. He could not believe that any other death ever
had been so needless. It was only in the years to come that Jim was to
learn how needlessly, how unremittingly, industry takes its toll of
lives.

Somehow, Jim had a boyish feeling that his father had had many things to
say to him that never had been said; that these things were very wise
and would have guided him. Jim felt rudderless. He felt that it was
incumbent on him to do the things that his father had not been able to
do. Vaguely and childishly he determined that he must make good for the
Mannings and for Exham. Poor old Exham, with its lost ideals!

It was in thinking this over that Jim conceived an idea that became a
great comfort to him. He decided to write down all the advice that he
could recall his father's giving him, and when his mother became less
broken up, to ask her to tell him all the plans his father might have
had for him.

So it was that a week or so after her husband's death, Mrs. Manning
found one of Jim's scratch pads on the table in his room, with a
carefully printed title on the cover:

MY FATHER'S ADVICES TO ME.

After she had wiped the quick tears from her eyes, she read the few
pages Jim had completed in his sprawling hand:

"My father said to me, 'Jimmy, never make excuses. It's always too late
for excuses.'

"He said, 'A liar is a first cousin to a skunk. There isn't a worse
coward than a liar.'

"He said to me, 'Don't belly-ache. Stand up to your troubles like a
man.'

"My father said, 'Hang to what you undertake like a hound to a warm
scent.'

"He said to me, 'Life is made up of obeying. What you don't learn from
me about that, the world will kick into you. The stars themselves obey a
law. God must hate a law breaker.'

"My father said, 'Somehow us Americans are quitters.'

"My mother said my father said, 'I want Jimmy to go through college. I
want him to marry young and have a big family.'

"The thing my father said to me oftenest lately was, 'Jimmy, be clean
about women. Some day you will know what I mean when I say that sex is
energy. Keep yourself clean for your life work and your wife and
children.'"

Mrs. Manning read the pages over several t