“To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be…gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier…it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book…”

“He only knew that he had lived up to his best impulse, and that is all any one can do.”

“One," said the recording secretary."Jesus wept," answered Leon promptly.There was not a sound in the church. You could almost hear the butterflies pass. Father looked down and laid his lower lip in folds with his fingers, like he did sometimes when it wouldn't behave to suit him."Two," said the secretary after just a breath of pause.Leon looked over the congregation easily and then fastened his eyes on Abram Saunders, the father of Absalom, and said reprovingly: "Give not sleep to thine eyes nor slumber to thine eyelids."Abram straightened up suddenly and blinked in astonishment, while father held fast to his lip."Three," called the secretary hurriedly.Leon shifted his gaze to Betsy Alton, who hadn't spoken to her next door neighbour in five years."Hatred stirreth up strife," he told her softly, "but love covereth all sins."Things were so quiet it seemed as if the air would snap."Four."The mild blue eyes travelled back to the men's side and settled on Isaac Thomas, a man too lazy to plow and sow land his father had left him. They were not so mild, and the voice was touched with command: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise."Still that silence."Five," said the secretary hurriedly, as if he wished it were over. Back came the eyes to the women's side and past all question looked straight at Hannah Dover."As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman without discretion.""Six," said the secretary and looked appealingly at father, whose face was filled with dismay.Again Leon's eyes crossed the aisle and he looked directly at the man whom everybody in the community called "Stiff-necked Johnny."I think he was rather proud of it, he worked so hard to keep them doing it."Lift not up your horn on high: speak not with a stiff neck," Leon commanded him.Toward the door some one tittered."Seven," called the secretary hastily.Leon glanced around the room."But how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity," he announced in delighted tones as if he had found it out by himself."Eight," called the secretary with something like a breath of relief.Our angel boy never had looked so angelic, and he was beaming on the Princess."Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee," he told her.Laddie would thrash him for that.Instantly after, "Nine," he recited straight at Laddie: "I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?"More than one giggled that time."Ten!" came almost sharply.Leon looked scared for the first time. He actually seemed to shiver. Maybe he realized at last that it was a pretty serious thing he was doing. When he spoke he said these words in the most surprised voice you ever heard: "I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly.""Eleven."Perhaps these words are in the Bible. They are not there to read the way Leon repeated them, for he put a short pause after the first name, and he glanced toward our father: "Jesus Christ, the SAME, yesterday, and to-day, and forever!"Sure as you live my mother's shoulders shook."Twelve."Suddenly Leon seemed to be forsaken. He surely shrank in size and appeared abused."When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up," he announced, and looked as happy over the ending as he had seemed forlorn at the beginning."Thirteen.""The Lord is on my side; I will not fear; what can man do unto me?" inquired Leon of every one in the church. Then he soberly made a bow and walked to his seat.”

“There never was a moment in my life, when I felt so in the Presence, as I do now. I feel as if the Almighty were so real, and so near, that I could reach out and touch Him, as I could this wonderful work of His, if I dared. I feel like saying to Him: 'To the extent of my brain power I realize Your presence, and all it is in me to comprehend of Your power. Help me to learn, even this late, the lessons of Your wonderful creations. Help me to unshackle and expand my soul to the fullest realization of Your wonders. Almighty God, make me bigger, make me broader!”

“Is he well educated?""Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day...”

“For every bad man and woman I have ever known, I have met . . . an overwhelming number of thoroughly clean and decent people who still believe in God and cherish high ideals, and it is upon the lives of these people that I base what I write. To contend that this does not produce a picture true to life is idiocy. It does. It produces a picture true to ideal life; to the best that good men and good women can do at level best.I care very little for the . . . critics who proclaim that there is no such thing as a moral man, and that my pictures of life are sentimental and idealized. They are! And I glory in them! They are straight, living pictures from the lives of men and women of morals, honor, and loving kindness. . . .Such a big majority of book critics and authors have begun to teach, whether they really believe it or not, that no book is true to life unless it is true to the worst in life.”

“I object," said the man emphatically. He stopped work again and studied Elnora. Even the watching mother could not blame him. Against the embankment, in the shade of the bridge Elnora's bright head, and her lavender dress made a picture worthy of much contemplation.I object!" repeated the man.”