So it was that a week or so after her husband's death, Mrs. Manning found one of Jim's scratch pads on the table in his room, with a carefully printed title on the cover:
MY FATHER'S ADVICES TO ME.
After she had wiped the quick tears from her eyes, she read the few pages Jim had completed in his sprawling hand:
"My father said to me, 'Jimmy, never make excuses. It's always too late for excuses.'
"He said, 'A liar is a first cousin to a skunk. There isn't a worse coward than a liar.'
"He said to me, 'Don't belly-ache. Stand up to your troubles like a man.'
"My father said, 'Hang to what you undertake like a hound to a warm scent.'
"He said to me, 'Life is made up of obeying. What you don't learn from me about that, the world will kick into you. The stars themselves obey a law. God must hate a law breaker.'
"My father said, 'Somehow us Americans are quitters.'
"My mother said my father said, 'I want Jimmy to go through college. I want him to marry young and have a big family.'