(Printed on this day, July 13, 1876 in The Associate Reformed Presbyterian.)
An eminent British statesman is said to have traced his own sense of the sacredness of a promise to a curious lesson he got from his father when he was a boy. When home for the holidays, and walking with his father in the garden, his father pointed to a wall which he intended to have pulled down.
“Oh,” said the boy, “I should so like to see a wall pulled down.”
“Well, my boy, you shall,” said his father.
The thing, however, escaped his memory, and during the boy’s absence a number of improvements were being made, amongst others the pulling down of this wall and the building of a new one in its place.
When the boy came home and saw it he said: “Oh, father, you promised to let me see that wall pulled down.”
Instantly, the father remembered his promise and was deeply pained to think that he had seemed careless about his plighted word.
“My boy,” he said, “you are right. I did promise, and I ought not to have forgotten. It is too late now to do just what I said I would, but you wanted to see a wall pulled down, and so you shall.”
And he actually ordered the masons up and made them pull down and rebuild the new wall, that as nearly as possible, his promise might be made good.
“It cost me twenty pounds,” he said to a friend who was bantering him about it; “but,” he added solemnly, “if it had cost a hundred, I would thought it a cheap way of impressing upon my boy’s mind, as long as he lives, the importance a man of honor should attach to his plighted word.”