ome to the end of her trouble, and the world
appeared to be made over and made new. When they got to the Square Sam
handed her a roll o' bills and says he, 'Now go and buy yourself and
the children some Christmas gifts, while I lay in the groceries we
need, and then we'll meet at the drug store and go home whenever
you're ready to go.'

"Milly said she took the money and bought things for the children, but
when she begun to look in the windows and the show cases for
somethin' for herself, she couldn't see a thing that would make her
any happier than she was, so she put the rest o' the money in the
waist of her dress and when Sam met her in front o' the drug store she
handed it to him and says she, 'I've bought the children some things,
but there's no use wastin' money on a woman who's got everything on
earth she wants.' So she wouldn't let Sam buy her a thing that
Christmas, and yet, she said she felt as if she owned the whole earth.

"And, honey, when Sam dashed that glass o' whiskey to the ground and
said that was his last drink, he told the truth, and if he'd been the
chief of sinners there couldn't 'a' been more rejoicin' over him as
the time went by, and everybody in Goshen begun to feel sure that he'd
quit for good. Parson Page said somethin' to him one day about the
grace of God savin' him. And Sam shook his head and says he, 'No,
Parson, I'm certain God's too honest to want credit that don't belong
to him, and in the matter of my quittin' drink, it wasn't the grace of
God that stopped me, it was the grace of my wife, Milly.' And Doctor
Pendleton was standin' by and says he, 'Yes, all Sam needed was a
great moral uplift. The grace of God might have given it, but,' says
he, 'in a case like his there's no lever like a woman's love.'

"But I never got through wonderin' over the way Milly bore with Sam in
the days when he was walkin' the downward path and it looked like
nothin' could stop him. Human nature is a curious thing, child. You
may think you know a person so well that you can tell exactly what
he'll do, if a certain thing happens; but many and many time I've
found myself mistaken about folks I'd known all my life, and it was
that way with Milly. Milly was high-tempered and quick-spoken, and if
anybody had asked me how Milly would act if Sam took to drinkin', I'd
'a' said at once, 'Why, she'd leave him that quick.' But she didn't;
she was as patient with him as any mother ever was with her son. She'd
put h