At first he was much shocked at the drinking and gambling, and wickedness of all sorts that went on among the students at the university. But when day after day we witness wrong-doing, gradually we get less and less shocked, and after a time think little about it. This only happens though when we get down from our watch-tower, and the enemy has a chance to get near to us. Jack's temptations to join his fellow students were very great, and I am sorry to say, he got "off his guard," and yielded. For a time he quite disgraced the colours of his regiment, and became a deserter from Christ's army. But it was not for long, he remembered what he had learnt at home, and how his dear mother had prayed for him. He remembered how he had been saved from the burning house, and he felt sure that God had not spared his life for him to grow up a wicked or a worldly man.
He had found it hard work to be a Christian at the Charterhouse School, now he found it harder still at Christ Church College. He loved fun and merry company, and this sometimes led him to seek the society of young men who loved their own pleasure better than any thing else; and many times Jack, following their bad example, did things for which he was afterwards very sorry and very much ashamed.
I have somewhere read this line of poetry:
"The boy that loves his mother
Is every inch a man,"
and if ever boy loved his mother, Jack did. The memory of her loving, holy life was Jack's good angel; and when temptations proved almost too strong for him at Oxford, he wrote and asked her to pray for him, and to pray on every Thursday. For Thursday had been Jacky's day with mother, ever since a little boy he knelt at her knee; and he felt that his mother's prayers on that day could not fail to bring down God's blessing upon him, and give him strength to resist the many evil influences that surrounded his college life—and they did.
I told you before, I think, that Jack's parents were not rich; they had never been able to allow him much pocket-money, and now at Oxford, when his expenses were greater, he somehow could never manage to make his money last out. I am afraid he was not always as careful as he might have been, and I am sorry to say when he was spent up—which was very often—he did what so many boys and young fellows do, borrowed money. This is always foolish, for, of course, it cannot make things any better, and indeed only makes them worse; because when the allowance comes, the debts have to be paid, and there is little or no money left. However, neither debt nor being short of money troubled Jack at this time; indeed he said it was just as well to be poor, for there were so many rogues at Oxford, that if you carried anything worth stealing, it was not safe to be out at night.
One of his friends was once standing at the door of a coffee-house about seven o'clock in the evening, and happening to look round, in an instant his hat and his wig—they wore wigs in those days—were snatched off his head by a thief, who managed to get clear off with his booty. Jack writing home about this said: "I am safe from these rogues, for all my belongings would not be worth their stealing."
When Jack had been four years at Oxford, and was about twenty-one, his brother Samuel wrote to tell him he had had the misfortune to break his leg. He also told him his mother was coming to London, and if he liked he might go and meet her there.
It was a long, long time since Jack had seen his mother, and you may imagine his delight when he got this letter. He wrote back:
"Dear Brother Samuel,