n ever amount to anything? Never!

I remember a very promising young man whom I had in the Sunday school
in Chicago. His father was a confirmed drunkard, and his mother took
in washing to educate her four children. This was her eldest son, and
I thought that he was going to redeem the whole family. But one day a
thing happened that made him go down in my estimation.

The boy was in the high school, and was a very bright scholar. One day
he stood with his mother at the cottage door--it was a poor house, but
she could not pay for their schooling, and feed and clothe her
children, and hire a very good house too, out of her earnings. When
they were talking a young man from the high school came up the street,
and this boy walked away from his mother. Next day the young man said:

"Who was that I saw you talking to yesterday?"

"Oh, that was my washerwoman."

I said: "Poor fellow! He will never amount to anything."

That was a good many years ago. I have kept my eye on him. He has gone
down, down, down, and now he is just a miserable wreck. Of course he
would go down. Ashamed of his mother that loved him and toiled for
him, and bore so much hardship for him! I cannot tell you the contempt
I had for that one act.

Let us look at

A BRIGHTER PICTURE.

Some years ago I heard of a poor woman who sent her boy to school and
college. When he was to graduate, he wrote his mother to come, but she
sent back word that she could not because her only skirt had already
been turned once. She was so shabby that she was afraid he would be
ashamed of her. He wrote back that he didn't care how she was dressed,
and urged so strongly that she went. He met her at the station, and
took her to a nice place to stay. The day came for his graduation, and
he walked down the broad aisle with that poor mother dressed very
shabbily, and put her into one of the best seats in the house. To her
great surprise he was the valedictorian of the class, and he carried
everything before him. He won a prize, and when it was given to him,
he stepped down before the whole audience, and kissed his mother, and
said:

"Here, mother, here is the prize. It is yours. I would not have had it
if it had not been for you."

Thank God for such a man!

The one glimpse the Bible gives us of thirty out of the thirty-three
years of Christ's life on earth shows that He did not come to destroy
this fifth commandment. The secret of all those silent years is
embodied in t