“Sonny,” I said, “it’s for you. You can have it at the same price I paid for it.”
“Begorra,” says he, “you will tell me to give up my religion, you will!”
I said, “If God has put anything in your life that helps you to be a better and a nobler and a braver man, He doesn’t want you to give it up.”
“He doesn’t?” he asked. “What am I to give up, then?”
And I replied, “Your sin.”
The boy said again, “You’re a gentleman.”
If I had said one word about his religion or his creed, my line would have snapped and I would have lost my fish.
That night, when all the boys had gone, we got into a corner and we knelt down, and when he went he said, “I’ve got it, sir. I’ve got the little song—and it’s singing.”
At one of my meetings the boys were four thousand strong and the Commandant of the camp was to preside. As they say in the Army, he had got the wind up. He did not know me. When he saw the crowd there he began to wonder what was going to happen. He called one of the officers to him, and said,