diligent and persevering,
that when his brother Samuel wrote home to his father, he said: "Jack is
a brave boy, and learning Hebrew as fast as he can." The next year he
went to Oxford, where he got on splendidly. He was very witty and
lively, and still _very fond of talking_; but his was not foolish talk,
and he always took care to stand up for the right.

At first he was much shocked at the drinking and gambling, and
wickedness of all sorts that went on among the students at the
university. But when day after day we witness wrong-doing, gradually we
get less and less shocked, and after a time think little about it. This
only happens though when we get down from our watch-tower, and the enemy
has a chance to get near to us. Jack's temptations to join his fellow
students were very great, and I am sorry to say, he got "off his guard,"
and yielded. For a time he quite disgraced the colours of his regiment,
and became a deserter from Christ's army. But it was not for long, he
remembered what he had learnt at home, and how his dear mother had
prayed for him. He remembered how he had been saved from the burning
house, and he felt sure that God had not spared his life for him to grow
up a wicked or a worldly man.

He had found it hard work to be a Christian at the Charterhouse School,
now he found it harder still at Christ Church College. He loved fun and
merry company, and this sometimes led him to seek the society of young
men who loved their own pleasure better than any thing else; and many
times Jack, following their bad example, did things for which he was
afterwards very sorry and very much ashamed.

I have somewhere read this line of poetry:

"The boy that loves his mother
Is every inch a man,"

and if ever boy loved his mother, Jack did. The memory of her loving,
holy life was Jack's good angel; and when temptations proved almost too
strong for him at Oxford, he wrote and asked her to pray for him, and to
pray on every Thursday. For Thursday had been Jacky's day with mother,
ever since a little boy he knelt at her knee; and he felt that his
mother's prayers on _that_ day could not fail to bring down God's
blessing upon him, and give him strength to resist the many evil
influences that surrounded his college life--and they did.

I told you before, I think, that Jack's parents were not rich; they had
never been able to allow him much pocket-money, and now at Oxford, when
his expenses were g