Such an Open Door has saved many from destruction, and in That Day it shall be counted to that Man (or, more often, that Woman) for righteousness.
For consider how lonely a lad’s life is when first he comes up from the country. He works till he is weary, and in the evening the little bedroom is intolerably lonely and infinitely stuffy. If the Door of Kindness be not opened for him—if he lack the friend’s hand, the comrade’s slap on the back, the modest uplift of honest maidenly eyes—take my word for it, the Lad in the Garret will soon seek another way of it. There are many that will show him the guide-posts of that road. Other doors are open. Other laughter rings, not mellow and sweet, but as the crackling of thorns under a pot. If a youth be cut off from the one, he will have the other—that is, if the blood course hot and quick in his veins.
And so, good folk of the city, you bien and comfortable householders, you true mothers in Israel, fathers and mothers of brisk lads and winsome lasses, do not forget that you may save more souls from going down to the Pit in one year than a score of ministers in a lifetime. And I, who write these things, know.
Many a foot has been stayed on the Path called Perilous simply because "a damsel named Rhoda" came to answer a knock at a door. The time is not at all bygone when "Given to hospitality" is also a saving grace. And in the Day of Many Surprises, it shall be said of many a plain man and unpretending housewife: "_Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto Me!_"
But so it was not with Willie my brother. There was none to speak the word, and so he did after his kind. How much he did or how far he went I cannot tell. Perhaps it is best not to know. But, at all events, I can remember his home-coming to Drumquhat one Saturday night after he had been a year or fifteen months in Edinburgh. He came unexpectedly, and I was sleeping in a little crib set across the foot of my parents’ bed in the "ben" room.
My mother was a light sleeper all her days, and, besides, I judge her heart was sore. For never breeze tossed the trees or rustled the beech-leaves, but she thought of her boy so far away. In a moment she was up, and I after her, all noiseless on my bare feet, though the tails of my night gear flapped like a banner in the draughty passage. The dogs upon the hearthstone never so much as growled.