e without a mother," on the altar the family
Bible, every picture on the walls suggestive of home life and purity,
every chair and piece of bric-a-brac linked with the sweet association
of childhood, the conversation as pure as the sunlight on which the
young man lives; yet he will kiss his mother, leave this home, and
down the street make his way to a liquor saloon, where often vile
pictures hang on the walls, cards lie on the table instead of the
family Bible and the air is freighted with oaths and obscenities.

Boys, have any of you done this within the past month, or six months?
Promise me now you will never do this again. Oh what a grand meeting
this would be if every young man and boy in my presence would make the
promise! I plead with you, young man, by the sleepless nights your
mother spent to give you rest; by the shadow you have hung over her
pathway; by the bleeding heart you've wounded but which loves you
still:

"Come back, my boy, come back, I say,
And walk now in thy mother's way."

I would that every boy in our land were as grateful to his mother as
was that Southern girl to her father, who stood years ago in front of
an open fire, her back to the fire, her face toward the door, her bare
arms full of flowers, waiting for her brother to call with a carriage
to take her to a party. While standing there a flame caught her dress;
she gave a scream, dropped the flowers and ran through the door to
where her father was standing in the yard. When the father saw his
child coming with flame following, he ran toward her. As he ran he
took off his coat and wrapping it about her face, arms and shoulders,
threw her to the ground. With his left hand he kept the flame from the
body, while with his right hand he fought the fire. He saved his
daughter but burned his right arm to the elbow. Day after day when the
doctor would unwrap the arm to dress it, the girl, though burned
herself, would go to her father's bed, gently lift the burned arm and
caress it. When the father recovered his hand was so maimed and
scarred, that when introduced to strangers, he would hold his right
hand behind him and shake hands with the left. One day his daughter,
seeing him do this, went to his side and reaching for the scarred
hand, held it to her lips and kissed it. She was not ashamed, for that
hand had been burned for her. When the father died and lay in his
casket ready for burial, the family came to take their last look.
First ca