rough boys. That wholesome bit of discipline kept me from ever breaking
the Third Commandment again. After his death, I passed entirely into
the care of one of the best mothers that God ever gave to an only son.
She was more to me than school, pastor or church, or all combined. God
made mothers before He made ministers; the progress of Christ's kingdom
depends more upon the influence of faithful, wise, and pious mothers
than upon any other human agency.

As I was an only child, my widowed mother gave up her house and took me
to the pleasant home of her father, Mr. Charles Horton Morrell, on the
banks of the lake, a few miles south of Aurora. How thankful I have
always been that the next seven or eight years of my happy childhood
were spent on the beautiful farm of my grandfather! I had the free pure
air of the country, and the simple pleasures of the farmhouse; my
grandfather was a cultured gentleman with a good library, and at his
fireside was plenty of profitable conversation. Out of school hours I
did some work on the farm that suited a boy; I drove the cows to the
pasture, and rode the horses sometimes in the hay-field, and carried in
the stock of firewood on winter afternoons. My intimate friends were the
house-dog, the chickens, the kittens and a few pet sheep in my
grandfather's flocks. That early work on the farm did much toward
providing a stock of physical health that has enabled me to preach for
fifty-six years without ever having spent a single Sabbath on a
sick-bed!

My Sabbaths in that rural home were like the good old Puritan Sabbaths,
serene and sacred, with neither work nor play. Our church (Presbyterian)
was three miles away, and in the winter our family often fought our way
through deep mud, or through snow-drifts piled as high as the fences. I
was the only child among grown-up uncles and aunts, and the first