“My violin instructor was an old German, who was to come to the Manse once a week to give me a lesson. He was a very impatient old fellow, but a good teacher, and with my interest in music I made good progress. The pleasantest memories of my life are of evenings when my mother sat sewing, and my father relaxed in his easy chair, while Helen played the piano and I accompanied her on the violin. “My father designed me, I believe, from my birth, for the ministry. I was a good student, and at sixteen entered college. Here a new world opened to me. I had always lived in an atmosphere of religion. Perhaps I had become satiated with it. At any rate I took only too kindly to the wild life of the crowd I fell in with at college. “For the most part the students were industrious, but there were a few, as there always are, who indulged themselves in dissipation because they thought it smart, and it was my misfortune to be drawn among these at the beginning. Perhaps the novelty, in strong contrast with my home life, attracted me. I do not know. “At first our dissipations were of a rather mild sort, and I did pretty well during the freshman year. But during my sophomore year I got in with a still wilder crowd, and took part in several discreditable escapades. Some of my companions drank, and early in the year I for the first time in my life tasted spirituous liquors. Before college closed for the summer vacation I had twice been mildly intoxicated. Of course my parents knew nothing of this, but they did know that I had neglected my studies and was conditioned in Greek, barely passing the test in other subjects. “The escapades of the sophomore year became orgies in the junior. I drank hard at these times, and the liquor made me wild. I’ll not tell you of the carousings I took part in, nor the reprimands I received for class and other delinquencies. It came to a climax in early spring when I entered a class one day in an intoxicated condition, insulted the professor, and did some damage to the furniture. “This ended in my dismissal from college. A full report of what had occurred preceded me home, and for the first time my parents learned of my debauchery. It was a terrible shock to them. I shall never forget their grief. If they had scolded or meted punishment it would have been different, but they did not. My mother threw her arms around my neck and cried as though her heart would break. My father, tears streaming down his cheeks, placed his hand upon my shoulder and called me his poor erring son. I promised them that I would reform. Helen talked with me and cried with me in private. “My father’s life hope that I should follow his footsteps in the ministry was crushed, and he had forever lost his former habitual cheerfulness. The change in him--I always felt it when in his presence--hurt me terribly. I resolved to atone, so far as possible, for the past.