Whatever the vicissitudes of life might be to me, I knew that I had a city of refuge beside grandmother’s big armchair, and when trouble came I instinctively sought that haven, often with rare celerity.  In that hallowed place there could be no hunger, nor thirst, nor persecution.  In that place there was peace and plenty, whatever there might be elsewhere.  I often used to wonder how she could know a boy so well.  I would be aching to go over to play with Tom, and the first thing I knew grandmother was sending me over there on some errand, telling me there was no special hurry about coming back.  My father might set his foot down upon some plan of mine ever so firmly, but grandmother had only to smile at him and he was reduced to a degree of limpness that contributed to my escape.  I have often wondered whether that smile on the face of grandmother did not remind him, of some of his own boyish pranks.

We boys knew, somehow, what she expected of us, and her expectation was the measuring rod with which we tested our conduct.  Boy-like, we often wandered away into a far country, but when we returned, she had the fatted calf ready for us, with never a question as to our travels abroad.  In that way foreign travel lost something of its glamour, and the home life made a stronger appeal.  She made her own bill of fare so appetizing that we lost all our relish for husks and the table companions connected with them.  She never asked how or where we acquired the cherry-stains on our shirts, but we knew that she recognized cherry-stains when she saw them.  The next day our shirts were innocent of foreign cherry-stains, and we experienced a feeling of righteousness.  She made us feel that we were equal partners with her in the enterprise of life, and that hoeing the garden and eating the cookies were our part of the compact.

When we went to stay with her for a week or two we carried with us a book or so of the lurid sort, but returned home leaving them behind, generally in the form of ashes.  She found the book, of course, beneath the pillow, and replaced it when she made the bed, but never mentioned the matter to us.  Then, in the afternoon, while we munched cookies she would read to us from some book that made our own book seem tame and unprofitable.  She never completed the story, however, but left the book on the table where we could find it easily.  No need to tell that we finished the story, without help, in the evening, and the next day cremated the other book, having found something more to our liking.  One evening, as we sat together, she said she wished she knew the name of Jephthah’s daughter, and then went on with her knitting as if she had forgotten her wish.  At that age we boys were not specially interested in daughters, no matter whose they were; but that challenge to our curiosity was too much for us, and before we went to bed we knew all that is known of that fine girl.

That was the beginning of our intimate, personal knowledge of Bible characters—­Ruth, Esther, David, and the rest; but grandmother made us feel that we had known about them all along.  I know, even yet, just how tall Ruth was, and what was the color of her eyes and hair; and Esther is the standard by which I measure all the queens of earth, whether they wear crowns or not.