ontroversy raged. The
grandmother seemed to be bored by it, and the boys, who cared nothing
for salvation in the abstract, no matter how anxious they were about the
main chance, certainly shared this feeling with her. She was a pale,
little, large-eyed lady, who always wore a dress of Quakerish plainness,
with a white kerchief crossed upon her breast; and her aquiline nose and
jutting chin almost met. She was very good to the children and at these
times she usually gave them some sugar-cakes, and sent them out in the
yard, where there was a young Newfoundland dog, of loose morals and no
religious ideas, who joined them in having fun, till the father came out
and led them home. He would not have allowed them to play where it could
have aggrieved any one, for a prime article of his religion was to
respect the religious feelings of others, even when he thought them
wrong. But he would not suffer the children to get the notion that they
were guilty of any deadly crime if they happened to come short of the
conventional standard of piety. Once, when their grandfather reported to
him that the boys had been seen throwing stones on Sunday at the body of
a dog lodged on some drift in the river, he rebuked them for the
indecorum, and then ended the matter, as he often did, by saying, "Boys,
consider yourselves soundly thrashed."

I should be sorry if anything I have said should give the idea that
their behavior was either fantastic or arrogant through their religion.
It was simply a pervading influence; and I am sure that in the father
and mother it dignified life, and freighted motive and action here with
the significance of eternal fate. When the children were taught that in
every thought and in every deed they were choosing their portion with
the devils or the angels, and that God himself could not save them
against themselves, it often went in and out of their minds, as such
things must with children; but some impression remained and helped them
to realize the serious responsibility they were under to their own
after-selves. At the same time, the father, who loved a joke almost as
much as he loved a truth, and who despised austerity as something
owlish, set them the example of getting all the harmless fun they could
out of experience. They had their laugh about nearly everything that was
not essentially sacred; they were made to feel the ludicrous as an
alleviation of existence; and the father and mother were with them on
the