I'm not sure but you are half right. It seems hard to call that poor, unfortunate youth a coward. But I do honestly think that he would have done well enough, if he had only scraped together a few more grains of courage. Look at that affair of the glass of gin. It was courage that he wanted there—courage to do right, no matter what his old playmate might say or think. He was afraid to offend the boy. He had more fear of the boy, it would appear, than he had of God. What that coarse, profane boy said, had more weight with him than the words which his conscience uttered. It was principle, after all, that he lacked. And so he was led away, and lost.
"Uncle Frank, I shall never forget what one glass will do."
I hope you never will; and I hope you will remember, too, as long as you live, that the success of the Peddler's Boy was owing quite as much to his honesty, and temperance, and faithfulness, and religion—for he was a sincere and devoted Christian—as to his ambition, and industry, and energy, and resolution.
