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 Sunday-school that I ever attended had only one scholar, and my good mother was the superintendent.

She gave me several verses of the Bible to commit thoroughly to memory and explained them to me; I also studied the Westminster Catechism.