, eight months went on, and I thought it was time to get him off the
Bowery--he had had his lesson. So I wrote his father, and he sent the
necessary cash for clothes, railroad ticket, etc. And one night I said,
"Tom, would you like to go home?" You can imagine Tom's answer! I took
him out and bought him clothes, got back his watch and chain from the
pawnbroker, and went with him to the Grand Central Station. I got his
ticket, put him on the train, said "Good-by and God bless you!" and Tom
was bound for home.

I receive a letter from him every month or so. I have visited his home
and have been entertained right royally by his father and mother. I
visited Tom last summer, and we did have a grand time fishing, boating,
driving, etc. I asked him, "Do you want to go back to New York, Tom?"
and he smiled and said, "Not for mine!" If any one comes from New York
and happens to say it's a grand place to make your fortune, Tom says,
"New York is a grand place to keep away from." You couldn't pull him
away from home with a team of oxen.

"He arose and went to his father." Tom fed on husks. He learned his
lesson--not too dearly learned, because it was a lasting one. He is now
a man; he goes to church and Sunday-school, where he teaches a class of
boys. Once in a while he rings in his own experience when he was a
prodigal on the Bowery and far from God, and God's loving-kindness to
him.

There are other boys on the Bowery from just as good families as
Tom's--college men some of them--who are without hope and without God's
friendship or man's. What can you and I do for them?

LAST WORDS

I have married again, and have a good sweet Christian as companion, and
we have a little girl just beginning to walk. I'm younger, happier, and
a better man in mind and body than I was twenty years ago. I've a good
home and know that all good things are for those that trust.

I remember one night, when I was going home with my wife, I met a
policeman who had arrested me once. He had caught me dead to
rights--with the goods. After awaiting trial I got off on a technical
point. I said, "Helen, let me introduce you to the policeman that
arrested me one time." He had changed some; his hair was getting gray.
He knew me, and when I told him I was a missionary, he said, "God bless
you, Reilly" (that's the name I went under), "and keep you straight! You
did cause us fellows a lot of trouble in those days."

Indeed I did cause trouble! There wasn't