There was nothing very tragic to me in being whipped. All the boys I knew were punished so. I had never given the matter any thought. As I would not admit that I had lied, this was the worst beating I ever received. He stopped at last from lack of breath and sent me to bed. "Oliver will be back to-morrow," he said. "It is no use persisting in your lie. You will be found out. And if you have not confessed...." The threat was left open. I remember tossing about in bed and wishing that I had lied and taken a whipping for disobedience. It would not have been so bad and would have been over at once. The next morning I sat sullenly in my room waiting for Oliver’s return, wondering if he would tell the truth. I was not at all confident. Towards noon, the blackboard turned in at the gate, one of the negroes took the horse and I heard the Father call Oliver into his study. Then suddenly a door slammed and I heard the Father’s step on the stair. He was running. He burst into my room and before I knew what was happening, he had picked me up in his arms. And, wonder of wonders, he was crying. I had never before seen a grown man cry. He was asking me, I could not understand what he meant, but he was asking me to forgive him. Then I heard the Mother’s voice at the door. "What is the matter, Josiah?" "Oh, Martha. It’s horrible! I caned the lad for a lie and he was telling the Truth! Oh, my son, my son, forgive me." At first all I realized was that I was not to be whipped any more. But all day long the Father kept me close to him and gradually from his talk I began vaguely to understand that there was such a thing as justice. I had always supposed that punishments were a matter of the parents’ good pleasure. That it had any relation to cause and effect, that sometimes a father might be right and sometimes wrong in beating a child, had never occurred to me. It is interesting how such things take form in a child’s mind. The Father bought me a set of tools like Oliver’s as a peace offering, and of course I was much more interested in them than in any abstract conception of justice. Yet in some gradual, subconscious way, the idea arranged itself in my mind. I began to judge everything by it. I suppose it marked the end of babyhood, the first faint beginning of manhood. *III* It Is not surprising that, in that austere home, my first fundamental idea should have been of justice rather than of love.