"Thank God! His blessing and peace came to me from the cradle. One day I found my Bible open at II Esdras, second chapter, and my eyes fell on the fifteenth verse: 'Mother, embrace thy children and bring them up with gladness.' I knew a poor woman who had ten children, and instead of complaining, she was proud and happy because she said God must have thought her a rare good mother to trust her with ten of His sons and daughters."

"I have not seen much of Sir John."

"He is on the yacht with the boys most of the time. They are visiting every day some one or other of the little storied towns of Fife. Sometimes it is black night when they get back to St. Andrews. But they have always had a good time even if it turned stormy. John finds, or makes, good come from every event. Greenwood—you remember Greenwood?"

"Oh, yes!"

"He used to say Sir John Hatton is the full measure of a man. He was very proud of Sir John's title, and never omitted, if it was possible to get it in, the M.P. after it. Greenwood died a year ago as he was sitting in his chair and picking out the hymns to be sung at his funeral. They were all of a joyful character."

So we talked, and of course only the best in everyone came up for discussion, but then in fine healthy natures the best does generally come to the top—and this was undoubtedly one reason that conversation on any subject always drifted in some way or other to John Hatton. His faith in God, his love for his fellowmen, his noble charity, his inflexible justice, his domestic virtues, his confidence in himself, and his ready-handed use of all the means at his command—yea, even his beautiful manliness, what were they but the outcome of one thousand years of Christian faith transmitted through a royally religious ancestry?

When a good man is prosperous in all his ways they say in the North "God smiled on him before he was born," and John Hatton gave to this blessing a date beyond limitation, for a little illuminated roll hanging above the desk in his private room bore the following golden-lettered inscription:

…God smiled as He has always smiled, Ere suns and moons could wax and wane, God thought on me His child.

THE END

1

I need hardly remind my readers that I refer to the war of 1861 between the Northern and Southern States. At this time it was in its third year, and the Southern States were closely blockaded and no cotton allowed to leave them. Consequently the cotton-spinning counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire were soon destitute of the necessary staple, and to be "out of cotton" meant to more than a million cotton-spinning families absolute starvation—for a cotton-spinner's hands are fit for no other labor, and are spoiled by other work. This starvation was borne with incredible faith and patience, because the success of the blockading States meant freedom for the slaves of the cotton-growing States.

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