He laughed affectionately and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Oh, no, you don’t, old Dry-as-dust.  Not books.  That isn’t what I meant.  I mean life, struggles against odds.  I’ve just been wondering what chance I’d have to get, along by myself, without a lot of people waiting on me.”

“I’ve tried to show you, Jerry.  You can go into the woods with a gun and an ax and exist in comfort.”

“Yes, but the world isn’t all woods; and axes and guns aren’t the only weapons.”

“But the principle is the same.”

He flashed a bright glance at me.

“Flynn told me yesterday that I could make good in the prize ring if I’d let him take me in hand.”

(The deuce he had!  Flynn would lose his engagement as a boxing teacher if he didn’t heed my warnings better.)

“The prize ring is not what you’re being trained for, my young friend,” I said with some asperity.

“What then?” he asked.

“First of all I hope I’m training you to be a gentleman.  And that means—­”

“Can’t a boxer be a gentleman?” he broke in quickly.

“He might be, I suppose, but he usually isn’t.”  He was forcing me into an attitude of priggishness which I regretted.

“Then why,” he persisted, “are you having me taught to box?”

“Chiefly to make your muscles hard, to inure you to pain, to teach you self-reliance.”

“But I oughtn’t to learn to box then, if it’s going to keep me from being a gentleman.  What is a gentleman, Roger?”

I tried to think of a succinct generalization and failed, falling back instinctively upon safe ground.

“Christ was a gentleman, Jerry,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” he assented soberly, “Christ.  I would like to be like Christ, but I couldn’t be meek, Roger, and I like to box and shoot—­”

“He was a man, Jerry, the most courageous the world has ever known.  He was even not afraid to die for an ideal.  He was meek, but He was not afraid to drive the money changers from the temple.”

“Yes, that was good.  He was strong and gentle, too.  He was wonderful.”

I have merely suggested this part of the conversation to show the feeling of reverence and awe with which the boy regarded the Savior.  The life of Christ had caught his imagination and its lessons had sunk deeply into his spirit, touching chords of gentleness that I had never otherwise been able to reach.  His religion had begun with Miss Redwood and he had clung to it instinctively as he had clung to the vague memory of his mother.  No word of mine and no teaching was to destroy so precious a heritage.  He was not goody-goody about it.  No boy who did and said and thought the things that Jerry did could be accused of prudery or sentimentalism.  But in his quieter moods I knew that he thought deeply of sacred things.