was not
asleep. John's active mind was soon being schooled in many evils that he
had not known before. And to make the matter still worse, John's father
had a number of bachelor friends with whom he was in the habit of
meeting for pleasant evenings, and their amusements were mostly drinking
strong drinks and playing card games.

Among these men, as among his schoolmates, John became a favorite; and
he was often praised and admired for his shrewd and manly ways. And when
the report concerning his intense desire to become a man was circulated
among them, they urged him to drink beer, saying that it would make him
more manly and that all men must learn how to drink and smoke if they
would be thought of as being manly. As a result John was soon able to
drink his share of the beer, although he did not like the taste at
first. Besides this, John discovered that at these evening gatherings he
could often replenish his supply of tobacco by slipping a little from
someone's pocket when the owner was not on his guard.

Poor little John!--such a favorite! so gifted, and yet so neglected! in
regard to high ideals and purposes in life, so ignorant! and so desirous
of that motherly love and interest that were ever denied him! He
endeavored to fill his life with other things; but in his day-dreams he
often pictured his mother, and wondered: "Was she like my aunt? Would
she take me and hold me in her arms while she smoothed my hair with her
hand? Would she bind my bruises? And would she sit by my bedside at
night and hold my hand in hers while telling me stories that she had
read?" "Oh, how would it all seem?" he would ask himself; and then,
remembering that such could never be, he would try to forget and be
happy. His mother was gone, he reasoned, and he must be content. It was
to his two little feathered friends alone that he confided his sorrows.

Had John's father remembered the determination that filled his soul on
the dark day of his wife's funeral, and had he continued to teach his
little son to pray and to serve God, how much better it might have been!
How much better might John have understood the difference between right
and wrong! In such a case, John's life's record might have been filled
with good and noble deeds, and his habits might have been clean and
wholesome.

As it was, because of his ignorance of right, he was laying a crumbling
foundation formed of evil motives and desires. And should he continue to
build, usi