took me there for fuel for our hearth. Sometimes the baker's son
brought a companion of his class. These boys were well-fed and
well-clothed, and it was when we spent whole days together that I
noticed the disparity. They were "quality"--the baker was called
"Mr.," wore a tall hat on Sundays, and led the psalm singing in the
Presbyterian Church. In the summer time, when the church windows were
open, the leader's voice could be heard a mile away. My childish
misgivings about the distribution of the good things of life were
quieted in the Sunday School by the dictum: "It is the will of God."
My first knowledge of God was that He was a big man in the skies who
dealt out to the church people good things and to others experiences
to make them good. The Bible was to me God's book, and a thing to
be handled reverently. We had a copy, but it was coverless, loose and
incomplete. Every morning I used to take it tenderly in my hands and
pretend to read some of it, "just for luck!" My Sunday School teacher
informed me that work was a curse that God had put upon the world and
from what I saw around me I naturally concluded that life was more of
a curse than a blessing--that was the theory. My father, however,
never seemed to be able to get enough of the curse to appease our
hunger.

[Illustration: Where Mr. Irvine Spent His Boyhood and the pig-sty that
never had a pig]

The lack of class-conscious envy did not prevent an occasional
questioning of God's arrangement of the universe; occasionally, in the
winter time, when my feet were bleeding, cut by the frozen pavements,
I wondered why God somehow or other could not help me to a pair of
shoes. Nevertheless, I reverently worshipped the God who had consigned
me to such pitiless and poorly paid labour, and believed that, being