portion of mankind. I, in this respect at least, was of the elect, quite sure that the weakness of their world could never stain me personally.
Yet I never shared the beliefs of my parents with anything like genuine pleasure. I was afraid they were true, not glad.
Without wholeheartedly sharing my father's faith, however, his religious and emotional temperament, with its imperious need of believing something, he certainly bequeathed to me.... The evangelical and revivalist movement, at any rate, was the dominant influence in my boyhood's years. People were sharply divided into souls that were saved and those that were--not saved. Moody and Sankey, the American Revivalists, stayed in our house.
I was particularly influenced in this direction by a group of young 'Varsity men who worked with Moody, and who were manly fellows, good cricketers, like the Studd brothers, or Stanley Smith and Montague Beauchamp, men who had rowed in their University boats, and who were far removed from anything effeminate. Of course I thought that what these men did could not be otherwise than fine and worth copying, and I lost no time in attacking everyone I met and asking the most impertinent questions about their souls and fallen natures. By some lucky chance no one kicked me to death--probably because most of my evangelizing work was done at home!
My old nurse I implored to yield herself up to the Saviour, and I felt my results were very poor in her case because I only got affectionate caresses and smiles, and even observations about the holes in my clothes, in return. The fat butler (I assured him) was going headlong down the kitchen stairs to everlasting fire because he showed no symptoms of ecstasy when he met my pleadings with "O, I'm sure 'E died for me all right, Master Algie. I don't feel a bit afraid!"
But all this was genuine so far as I was concerned, and
it lasted a considerable time, to my father's great joy,
