"To me it all leads up to this--and now the road turns away from colts to the road you and I walk in as men. It leads up to this: the difference between failure and transgression. Command to do; and the worst result can only be failure. Command not to do; and the worst result is transgression. Now we all live on partial failure: it is the beginning of effort and the incentive to effort. We try and fail; with more will and strength and experience we wipe out the failure and stand beyond it. Long afterwards men look back and laugh at their failures, love them because they are the measure of what they were and of what they have become. It is our life, the glory of more strength, the triumph of will and determination. It is the crowning victory of the world. And it is the road that leads upward. "But transgression! No transgression ever develops life; it is so much death. You can't wrest victory out of transgression: it's a thing by itself--a final defeat. And what has been defeated is your last safeguard--your will. Every transgression helps to kill the will. It weakens, discourages, humiliates, stings, poisons. The road of transgression is downward." He stood up, and his guest with him. As he lifted his alpaca coat from the grass and put it on, there was left lying his bowie-knife, and he put that on. It was the bowie-knife age. "Will you come with us, Downs?" Downs thought he would now read the newspaper. "Where is Fred Ousley?" asked the minister of him, knowing that the two boys were inseparable. "He has gone to a picnic." "Why didn't you go to the picnic?" "I wasn't invited: it's his cousins'." "And haven't you any cousins who give picnics?" "I don't like my cousins: I hate my cousins: Fred hates _his_ cousins: it's a girl that goes _with_ his cousins." "And what about a girl with your cousins?" "Well, while you're talking, what about your sons and their cousins? We're running this farm very well, and we're all pleased. From what I have been hearing, it's more than can be said about yours." The minister laughed good-naturedly at this rudeness as the two friends walked away; but the vicar of the stables observed mildly:-- "You gave him the wrong kind of suggestion, Aleck. It wasn't in your words exactly; I don't know where it was; but I felt it and he felt it: somehow you challenged him to employ his manly art of self-defence; and part of that art is to attack. But never mind about Downs. Now come to the stable: I am going to show you a young thoroughbred there that has never had a disagreeable suggestion made to him: he thinks this farm paradise. And the five great things I tried to teach him are: to develop his will, to develop his speed, to develop his endurance and perseverance, to develop his pride, and to develop his affection: he is a masterpiece." * * * * *