isten to tedious details that
illustrated the practical impossibility of any one really winning out in
the fight with sin.

She sang the nursery songs of the old land and told the tales of magic
that made his eyes stare wide with loving, childish wonder. She told him
what a brave, kind man his father had been, and ever came back to the
world's great Messenger of Love. Not openly, but a thousand times--in a
thousand deeply felt, deeply meant, unspoken ways--she made him know
that the noblest calling man might ever claim was this, to be a herald
of the Kingdom. Alone, on her knees, she would pray that her boy might
be elected to that great estate and that she might live to see him going
forth a messenger of the Prince of Peace.

Kitty was alive to the danger of the inherited taste for drink in her
son. The stern, uncompromising Presbyterian minister of the town, in
whose church the widow had a pew, was temperate, but not an abstainer;
in fact, it was his custom to close the day with a short prayer and a
tall glass of whiskey and water. While, with his advice, she had
entirely buried her doctrinal scruples on the selling of drink to the
moderate, her mother-heart was not so easily put to sleep. Her boy
belonged to the house side of the hotel. He was not supposed to enter
the saloon; and when, one day, she found an unscrupulous barkeeper
actually amusing himself by giving the child a taste of the liquid fire,
she acted with her usual promptitude and vigour. The man was given just
enough time to get his hat and coat, and the boy was absolutely
forbidden the left wing of the house. Later, in the little room where he
was born, she told Jim sadly and gently what it would mean, what
suffering the drinking habit had brought upon herself, and thus, for the
first time, he learned that this had been the cause of his father's
death. The boy was deeply moved and voluntarily offered to pledge
himself never to touch a drop again so long as he lived. But his mother
wisely said:

"No, Jim; don't say it that way. Leaning backward will not make you
safer from a fall; only promise me you'll never touch it till you are
eighteen; then I know you will be safe."

And he promised her that he never would; he gave his word--no more; for
already the rough and vigorous teaching of Bill Kenna had gripped him in
some sort. He felt that there was no more binding seal; that any more
was more than man should give.

When Jim was twelve he was very ta