and I had the Dutch hard mouth and a tendency to feel my ground and see
how the land lay, which made me take so long to balk at any new vice or
virtue that the impulse or temptation was sometimes past before I could
get ready to embrace it. I guess there are some who may read this who
have let chances for sinful joys go by while an inward debate went on in
their own souls; and if they will only own up to it, found themselves
afterward guiltily sorry for not falling from grace. "As a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he," is Scripture, and must be true if rightly
understood; but I wonder if it is as bad for one of us tardy people to
regret not having sinned, as it would have been if he had been quicker
and done so. I hardly think it can be as bad; for many a saint must have
had such experiences--which really is thinking both right and wrong, and
doing right, even if he did think wrong afterward.

That first winter, I lived on Captain Sproule's farm, and had my board,
washing and mending. His sister kept house for him, and his younger
brother, Finley, managed the place summers, with such help in handling
it as the captain had time to give when he passed the farm on his
voyages. It was quite a stock farm, and here I learned something about
the handling of cattle,--and in those days this meant breaking and
working them. It was a hard winter, and there was so much work on the
farm that I got only one month's schooling.

The teacher was a man named Lockwood. He kept telling us that we ought
to read about farming, and study the business by which we expected to
live; and this made a deep impression on me. Lockwood was a real
teacher, and like all such worked without realizing it on stuff more
lasting than steel or stone,--young, soft human beings. I did not see
that there was much to study about as to driving on the canal; and when
I told him that he said that the business of taking care of the horses