with his own hands dug and walled a cellar,
at times when he had no work to do for others. When he had earned an
additional hundred or two dollars he bought lumber and began to build
a house. People asked him what he was going to do with it, and he
replied that if he should live to finish it, he was going to live in
it.

Well, in two years the house was finished, to the last nail and hook.
Then he went away, as it was thought, for a wife. In a week he
returned, bringing with him some neat household furniture, and three
persons instead of only one.

He did bring a wife--a bright-eyed, merry-hearted young girl--and
also two aged women, "our mothers," as he called them.

The first night in the house they dedicated their humble home--"our
house" to God, and in the name of the Lord they set up their banner,
praying that ever after this his banner over them might be love.

Many a family moves into a new home and asks God to come in and
prosper them, and take up his abode there; but they do nothing to draw
him thither. They begin for self, and go on for self; and sometimes
God leaves them to themselves.

But the young owners of "our house"--the children of "our
mothers"--made their little home His home and the home of His poor
and feeble ones. "Our mothers" now laid down the weapons of toil over
which they had grown gray, and came out of the vale of honest poverty
into the sunshine of plenty. Their hearts grew warm in this gift of
double love. They renewed their youth.

In their first days at their children's home, one of "our mothers"
spoke of "Henry's new house," when he checked her, saying, "Never call
this my house again. I built it for God and for all of you, and I want
it always called 'our house.' There is yet one thing I want done here
before I shall feel that I have made my thank-offering to God for the
health and strength and the work which have enabled me to build and
pay for this house. I promised then that no stranger or wanderer
should ever go hungry or weary from this door. You have made sure of a
neat and sunny room for our friends. Now I want a bed, a chair, and a
table put in the shed-chamber for such strangers as we cannot ask into
the house. I want also to fill the little store-closet under the back
stairway with provisions to give the needy. They will then not be our
own; and if at any time we should be short of money, we will not be
tempted to say, 'I have nothing to give.' I want to live for more