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.