I had not trusted them in vain.
I said, “Very well, you choose your hymn.”
“When I survey the wondrous Cross”—that was the song they chose.
And they sang it all the better because I had sung their songs with them. Before we had got to the end of the last verse some of those boys were in tears, and it wasn’t hard to pray. It isn’t far from rag-time to “When I survey the wondrous Cross.”
When they had finished the hymn I said, “Boys, I am going to tell you the story of my father’s conversion.” For I had to convince my padre friend that they were not sceptical. I took them to the gipsy tent and told them of my father and five motherless children, and of how Jesus came to that tent, saving the father and the five children and making preachers of them all.
I said, “Did my father make a mistake when he brought Christ to those five motherless children?” And the eight hundred boys shouted, “No, sir.”
“Did he do the right thing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What ought you to do?”
“The same, sir.”