spatched by an early train. "Well," he said,
"I sat up till past twelve last night reading your book; it is
excellent, and I gave it to my lad before starting him off. But there
is just one chapter in it, called a 'Strange Companion,' which I took
the precaution of previously cutting out with my penknife; and my boy in
his after years will thank me for not putting any such ideas in his
head, but having kept him the pure and innocent lad that he is." I need
not say that it was the one chapter that would have put the boy on his
guard. Oh, befooled and purblind father! I happened to know that the
school to which the boy was sent was swept at that time by a moral
epidemic, and before that hapless lad had been a week in its corrupt
atmosphere he would have had ideas put into his head with a vengeance.
His father had handed over the ground of his boy's heart for the devil
to sow the first crop, and as a rule the devil sows, not wild oats, as
we say, but acorns--a dread sowing which it may take years to root up
and to extirpate, even if, so far as after-taint is concerned, it can
ever be wholly extirpated.

In another case a widowed mother came to one of my meetings, and was
profoundly alarmed at what I said about the dangers of our schoolboys.
It had never occurred to her that her gentlemanly little lad of twelve
could have any temptations of the kind. Unlike the father I have
mentioned, she resolved to speak to him that same evening. She found
that he was fighting a battle against the whole school, standing up
alone for the right, guided by some blind instinct of purity to resist
the foul suggestions which were inflicted upon him, threatening him
with the most terrible consequences in after-life if he did not yield
and do as the other boys did. Think of it, ye mothers! a child of twelve
without a hand to guide him, without a voice to cheer him, refused the
knowledge that would have saved him from his deadly peril, his own
mother deaf and dumb and blind to his struggles, leaving him to fight
his little forlorn hope absolutely alone. I need scarcely say how
thankfully he poured forth his sore heart to his mother when once she
had opened the door, till now kept locked by her own ignorance; and how
she was able to explain to him that, far from reaping any evil
consequences from doing what is right, like Sir Galahad, "his strength
would be the strength of ten" if he kept himself pure. She probably took
steps to remove him from so