“Oh, no,” replied Percy, “—­I am not a preacher, any more than every Christian must be loyal to the name.”

“Well, anyway, I’ve learned a lesson I’ll try to remember.  I never thought before about how it might hurt other people when I swear.  I don’t mean nothing by it.  It’s just a habit; but your saying Christ is your friend makes me feel that I have no business talking about anybody’s friend, any more than I’d like to hear anybody else use my mother’s name as a by-word.  I reckon nobody has any right to use Christ’s name ’cept Christians or them as wants to be Christians.  I reckon we’d never heard the name if it hadn’t a been for the Christians.

“But I don’t have so many bad habits.  I don’t drink, nor smoke, nor chew; and I don’t want to.  My father smoked some and chewed a lot, and I know the smell of tobacco used to make my mother about as sick as she could be; but she had to stand it, or at least she did stand it till father died; and now she lives with me, and I’m mighty glad she don’t have to smell no more tobacco

“She often speaks of it—­mother does; and she says she’s so thankful she’s got a boy that don’t use tobacco.  She says men that use tobacco don’t know how bad it is for other folks to smell ’em.  Why, sometimes I come home when I’ve just been driving a man some place in the country, riding along like you and I are now, and he a smoking or chewing, or at least his clothes soaked full of the vile odor; and when I get home mother says, ’My! but you must have had an old stink pot along with you to-day.’  She can smell it on my clothes, and I just hang my coat out in the shed till the scent gets off from it.

“No, Sir, I don’t want any tobacco for me, and I don’t know as I’d care to raise the stuff for other folks to saturate themselves with either; and every kid is allowed to use it nowadays, or at least most of them get it.  It’s easy enough to get it.  Why, a kid can’t keep away from getting these cigarettes, if he tries.  They’re everywhere.  Every kid has hip pockets full; and I know blamed well that some smoke so many cigarettes they get so they aren’t more than half bright.  It’s a fact, Sir,—­plenty of ’em too; and some old men, like Al Jones, are just so soaked in tobacco they seem about half dead.  Course it ain’t like whiskey, but I think it’s worse than beer if beer didn’t make one want whiskey later.

“But as I was saying, I feel that I have no business saying things about,—­about anybody you call your friend, and I think I’ll just swear off swearing, if I can.”

“You can if you will just let Him be your friend.”

“Well, I don’t know much about that,” was the slow reply.  “That takes faith, and I don’t have much faith in some of the church members I know.”

“That used to trouble me also,” said Percy, “until one time the thought impressed itself upon me that even Christ himself did all His great work with one of the twelve a traitor; and this thought always comes to me now when self-respecting men object to uniting with organized Christianity because of those who may be regarded as traitors or hypocrites, but not of such flagrant character as to insure expulsion from the Church?”