I have been asked by some of my Christian friends to put in permanent form the story of the things which the Lord has done for me. There is perhaps a sense in which each of us is a “living epistle, known and read of all men,” but the most sacred story of every life is the hidden record which lies back of our words and actions. If there is anything in this story which can be used to help the children of God, I am willing to overcome the natural reticence which has made it always a pain even to publish my photograph, and let God use the testimony in any way in which it may please and glorify Him.

The first recollection of my childhood is the picture of my mother, as I often heard her in the dark and lonely night, weeping and wailing in her room, in her loneliness and sorrow, and I still remember how I used to get up and kneel beside my little bed even before I knew God for myself, and pray to Him to comfort her. The cause of her grief I afterwards better understood. She was a sensitive and high-spirited woman, who had come of a good family in the little island where I was born, and where her father was one of the public men of the island a honored member of the legislature, and she had a great number of friends. In their earlier married life my father had been engaged in the shipbuilding business, but had suffered a financial blow in one of the terrible panics that had struck the island, and had been obliged to close his business, saving but a few hundred dollars out of it, and had determined to seek his fortune in what was then the far west, that is, the most western portion of the province of Ontario, Canada. With little knowledge of the country, he had purchased a farm in one of the dreariest regions that could be imagined, and had taken his sensitive wife and his little family of four children into this wilderness. Before reaching our home the youngest child had been torn from its mother’s arms by sickness and death, largely the result of the trying journey of that day when there were no railroads or steamboats, and our journey of fifteen hundred miles had been slowly and painfully made on canal boats and stages. Burying her precious babe in a little town some distance from our home destination, my brokenhearted mother at length reached the dreary log cabin which was to be her future home.

Our nearest neighbor was a godly Scotch Highlander, who used to come and see us and pray with us in Gaelic, but could not speak one word of English. There was not another Christian friend within a circuit of miles. In that lonely cabin and that desolate wilderness, separated for the rest of her life from all the friends she held so dear, and from the social conditions to which she had been accustomed, was it a wonder, with her intense and passionate nature, which had not yet learned to know God in all His fulness as her all-sufficient portion, that she should often spend her nights in weeping and wailing, and perhaps in passionate upbraidings, because of her cruel lot, and that her little boy should find his first religious experience come to him in trying to grope his way to the heart of Him, who alone could help her.

My next reminiscence has also a tinge of religion about it. I had lost a boy’s chief treasure, an old jack-knife, with which I was playing, and I still remember an impulse came to me to kneel down and pray about it. Soon afterwards I was delighted to find it. The incident made a profound impression upon my young heart and gave me a lifelong conviction, which has since borne fruit innumerable times, that it is our privilege to take everything to God in prayer. I do not mean to convey the idea that I was at this time truly converted. No one had ever spoken to me about my soul and I only knew God in a groping, far away sense, but I can now see that God was discounting my future and treating me in advance as if I were already His child, because He knew I would be His child later. This explains why God does so many things even in answer to prayer for persons who do not yet fully know Him. He is treating them on the principle of faith and calling “the things that are not as though they were.”

The truth is, the influences around my childhood were not as favourable to early conversion as they are today in many Christian homes. My father was a good Presbyterian of the old school and the belief in the Shorter Catechism and the doctrine of foreordination, and all the conventional rules of a well ordered Puritan household. He was himself a devout Christian and most respected for his intelligent mind, his consistent life, and his strong practical sense. I can still remember his rising long before daylight and with his lighted candle sitting down in the cheerless sitting room to read his Bible and tarry long at his morning devotions, and the picture filled my soul with a kind of sacred awe. On the Sabbath days we were brought up according to the strictest Puritan formula. When we did not go in the family wagon to church, which was in a town miles distant, we were all assembled in the family circle and sat for hours while father, mother, or one of the children read in turn from some good old book, that was beyond our understanding. It gives me a chill to this day to see a cover of these old books, such as Boston’s Fourfold State, Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, for it was with these that my youthful soul was disciplined. The only seasons of relief came when it happened to be our turn to read. Then we felt immense and prided the young orator so as to forget the weariness of the volume. Then in the afternoon we had all to stand in a row and answer the questions of the Shorter Catechism. There were about one hundred and fifty in all, and our rule was to take half each Sunday and finish the next Sunday, and then start over again, and so year after year as the younger children grew up and joined the circle.

One of the few whippings which I got in my childhood was because one sunny Sabbath I ventured to slip out of the house and was seen by my father scampering around the yard in the joy of my ungodly liberty. I was speedily brought back and with great solemnity told that I would get my whipping next morning before breakfast, for it was not considered quite the thing to break the Sabbath by even a whipping. I believe I got the whipping that was coming to me the next morning, but I still remember how my older brother, who had a much wider experience and wiser head than I took me aside that day and told me that if ever I was again condemned to a whipping he knew a way of getting out of it. And then he told me with great secrecy to get up the next morning before daylight, about the time my father was accustomed to rise, to light the candle and go and sit down in a corner of the sitting room with the Bible before me and show proper spirit of penitence and seriousness, and he was quite sure my father would take the hint and let me off. I am sorry to say that I was enough of a hypocrite to practice this trick, and sure enough, one morning, when a whipping was coming to me, I stole out of my bed, and sitting down with a very demure and solemn face to practice my pretended devotions, I can still see in my imagination my quiet and silent father casting side glances at me from under his spectacles, as though to make quite sure that I was in earnest, and after finishing his devotions he quietly slipped away to his work and nothing more was said about the chastisement.

Looking back on these early influences I cannot say that I regret the somewhat stern mode in which my early life was shaped. It taught me a spirit of reverence and discipline for which I often have had cause to thank God since. It threw over my youthful spirit a natural horror for evil things which often afterwards safeguarded me when thrown amid the temptations of the world. And the religious knowledge, which was crammed into my mind even without understanding it, furnished me with forms of doctrine and statements of truth which afterwards became illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and proved to be precious vessels for holding the treasures of divine knowledge. In our later family history these severe restraints were withdrawn from the younger members, as a more liberal age threw its influence over our home, but I cannot say that the change was a beneficial one. I believe that the true principle of family training is a blending of thorough discipline with much loving, true Christian liberty.

My first definite religious crisis came at about the age of fourteen. Prior to this I had for a good while earnestly desired to study for the ministry. I think that this was rather a conviction of duty than a spiritual impulse. I knew that my parents had dedicated my elder brother, four years my senior, to the ministry. Indeed, they had done this before he was born, and he was always looked upon as the chosen one for this high honor. I may have occasion later to show the sorrow which this brought into his life. The desire and resolve grew up in my heart without the kindly cheerings of my parents. I still remember how my carnal heart rebelled against the ministry because of the restraints it would put upon me. Naturally I wanted to get many things which I felt a preacher ought not to have. One thing particularly I had a great fascination for, that was to shoot and hunt game, but then, I reasoned, if I were a minister it would not be the thing for me to be going hunting, and for a time my little soul waged a big battle over this. During the conflict I remember I had saved up a little money, from funds that I had earned by special work, and one day I stole off to the town and invested the whole of it in a shooting gun, and for a few days I had the time of my life. I used to steal out to the woods, concealing as best I could this forbidden idol and then smuggling it back to hide it in the garret. One day, however, my mother found it and there was a scene. Her own brother had lost his life through the accidental discharge of his gun, and I knew and should have remembered, that guns were things proscribed in our family. It was the day of judgment for me when that wicked weapon was brought down from its hiding place, my mother standing at a safe distance, wringing her hands and pouring out the vials of her wrath while I sat confounded and crushed. The next day my sentence was to march back to the town and take that gun to the place from whence it came, and with deep humiliation return it to the man from whom I had wickedly bought it, and see, not only the gun, but the good money that I had paid for it go too. That tragedy settled the question of the ministry. Soon after I quite decided to give up these side issues and prepare myself, if I could only find an open way, to be a minister of the Gospel. But as yet, the matter had not been mooted in the family. One day, however, my father in his quiet, grave way, with my mother sitting by, called my elder brother and myself into his presence, and began to explain how my elder brother had long been destined to the ministry, and the time had now come when he should begin his studies and go in special training. My father added that he had a little money, rescued from the wrecked business of many years before, which was now slowly coming in, and which would be sufficient to give an education to one of his boys, but not to both, and therefore, he quietly concluded, that it would be my duty to give place to my brother, while I would stay at home and help them on the farm, and he would go to college. I can still feel the lump that rose in my throat as I stammered out my consent to my brother’s being educated at the family expense, for I could clearly see that he had been foreordained to be a minister, at least by my father and mother, if not by the Lord; but I ventured to plead that they would consent to my getting my own education if I could. I asked no money, no help, but only my father’s blessing and consent, and I still remember the quiet, trembling tones with which he at last yielded and said, “God bless you my boy, even if I cannot help you.”

So the struggle began and I shall never cease to thank God that it was a hard one. Someone has said, “Many people succeed because success is thrust upon them, but the most successful lives are those that began without a penny.” Nothing under God was ever a greater blessing to me than the hard places which began with me nearly half a century ago, and have never yet ceased. For the first few months we took lessons in Greek, Latin and Higher Mathematics from our kind pastor who was a good scholar and anxious to help us in our purpose. I had already had a good, common school education. Then I secured a certificate by dint of hard work as a common school teacher, and at the early age of fifteen I found myself teaching a school of about forty boys and girls, one quarter of whom were grown men and women, while I looked even younger than my years. How much I would have given in those days for a few stray whiskers, or anything that would have made me look older. I often wonder how I ever was able to hold in control those rough country fellows, any one of whom could have thrashed me with his little finger, but I can now see that it was the hand of the Lord, and that He was pleased to give me a power and control that did not consist in brawn or bone. Of course, my object in teaching school was to earn money for my first session at college, and along with my duties as a teacher I was studying between times every spare moment to prepare myself for the opening examination of my college course.

But the strain of all this terrific work upon a young and yet undeveloped brain and body was impossible to sustain long, and one night there came a fearful crash, in which it seemed to me the very heavens were falling. After retiring to my bed I suddenly seemed to see a strange light blazing before my eyes and then my nerves gave way and I sprang from my bed, trembling and almost fainting, and immediately fell into a congestive chill of great violence that almost took my life. To add to the horror of that night there was a man in the house where I was boarding, suffering from delirium tremens and his horrible agonies, shrieks and curses seemed to add to my own distress the very horrors of hell itself. Next morning I was forced to ask for a leave of absence, and returned to my father’s house a physical wreck. The physician told me I must not look at a book for a year, that my whole system had collapsed and that I was in the greatest danger. Then began a period of mental and physical agony which no language can describe. I seemed possessed with the idea that at three o’clock on some day I was to die and every day as that hour drew near I became prostrated with a dreadful nervousness, watching in agonized suspense till it was passed, wondering that I was still alive. One day as the hour came near there fell upon me that awful sense of approaching death which could not be gainsaid. Fainting and terrified I called my father to my bed side, telling him I was dying. Worst of all I had no hope and no Christ. My whole religious training had left me without any Gospel. I had a God of great severity and a theology which provided in some mysterious way for that great change called regeneration or the new birth. O how I was waiting for that change to come to me and it had not yet come. O how my father prayed for me that day, and I fondly cried in utter despair for God to spare me just long enough to be saved. After a sense of sinking into bottomless depth constantly, rest came and the crisis was over for another day. I looked up at the clock and it was past three. It seemed to me then that God was just going to spare me for one day, and that I must strive and pray that day for salvation as a doomed man, who never would have another chance. O how I prayed and besought others to pray and almost feared to go to sleep that night lest I should lose a moment from this intense and tremendous search for God and eternal life. But the day passed and still I was not saved. It now seems strange that there was no voice there to tell me the simple way of faith, but I suppose it was the result of the old stern theology that looked upon salvation as the work of God’s sovereign work with which we have but little to do. Day after day passed. My life hanging on a thread, but I seemed encouraged with the idea that God would spare me long enough to find salvation if I only continued to seek it with all my heart. But how often since then has it been my delight to tell poor sinners that they do not need as the old lines say,

To knock and weep, and watch and wait,

for God is waiting and wondering we do not open the gate and enter in. Since then God has given to me these lines,

We do not need at Mercy’s gate
To “knock and weep, and watch and wait,”
For Mercy’s gifts are offered free,
And she has waited long for thee.

At length, one day I stumbled, in the library of my minister, upon an old Scotch book, called Marshall’s Gospel Mystery of Salvation, and as I turned over the leaves I came to a sentence which opened my eyes, and at the same time opened for me the gates of life eternal. In substance it was this, “The first good work you will ever perform is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Until you do this all your works, prayers, tears and resolves are vain. This very moment it is your privilege and your duty, and the very first duty above all others, to kneel down and take the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, and tell Him you believe according to His word, that He then saves you here and now. Believe this in spite of your doubts and fears and you will immediately pass into eternal life, will be justified from all your sins and receive a new heart and all the gracious operations of the Holy Spirit.” Light, why this was supernal light to me, and I threw myself on my knees and at once, looking up in the face of the Lord in spite of all my doubts and fears I said, “Lord Jesus, Thou has said, that him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. Thou knowest how long and how earnestly I have wanted to come, but I did not know how. Now I come the best I can and I believe because Thou hast commanded me to believe that Thou dost receive me, that Thou dost save me, and from this moment I am Thy child, forgiven and saved, simply because I have taken Thee at Thy word, and I now dare to look up in the face of God and say, Abba, Father, Thou art mine.”

In that moment there came to my heart the assurance that always comes to the believing soul, “he that believeth hath the witness in himself.” I had been seeking the witness without believing, but from the moment I dared to believe, the Spirit answered to the word and told me I was born of God.

The months that followed my conversion were very full of spiritual blessing. The promises of God burst upon my soul with a new and marvelous light, and words that had been empty sounds became divine revelations to my soul, and every one seemed especially for me. There was, perhaps, in my temperament a vein of imagination and it clothed the glowing promises of Isaiah and Jeremiah with a strange and glorious radiance and I can still remember the ecstasy with which I used to read, “I have sworn that I will never be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” When I heard through Christian’s talking of their failures and fears, I wondered if a time should ever come when I should lose this supreme joy of a “soul in its earliest love,” and I remember how I used to pray that rather than let me go back into the old life the Lord would take me at once to heaven. I remember one day especially, of which I still have the record, when I was about fifteen years of age, a day which I had wholly devoted to fasting and prayer, with a view to entering into a personal covenant with God in a very solemn and formal way. [The convenant is dated January 19, 1861, see Reading 2.1. Simpson was 17 at the time.] I had been reading Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul and had determined to follow his suggestions to young Christians to enter into such a covenant, and I wrote out at considerable length a detailed transcription, in which I gave myself wholly to God and to Him for every promised blessing, and especially for the grace and power to use my life for His service and glory. I remember a certain special blessing, which I included in my requests and specifications, and I have often wondered since how literally God has fulfilled them in me in His gracious providence through my life. Before the close of the day I signed and sealed this covenant just as literally as I would have done a human agreement and laid it away.

Two incidents of my Grammar school career are very vivid in my recollection. One was a providential escape from drowning. I had gone with one of my school mates to gather wild grapes on the banks of the river. After a while I was tempted by my companion to go in swimming, an art which I had never attempted and which the slightest reflection would have made me avoid. In a few moments the water had got beyond my depth, and with a sense of agony, which I never shall forget I found myself choking painfully under the surface. In that moment, I still recollect, how the whole of my life came before me in a vision and I can well understand the story told by drowning persons whose past histories seem photographed in an instant before their minds in the act of losing consciousness. I remember even seeing, as clearly as if I had read it from the printed page, the notice in the local paper, telling of my accidental drowning. But God mercifully saved me. My companion was not able to rescue me, but his shouts were heard by some men in a little boat a hundred yards away, and they pulled me out and lay me on the river bank when black in the face and about to sink for the last time. As I came back to consciousness afterwards, it seemed to me that a million years had passed since I was last on earth. I am sure that experience greatly deepened my spiritual earnestness.

The other incident was less grave. I was usually very ambitious to win all the prizes possible, and it was my good fortune to secure a very large and handsomely bound book, a sort of cyclopedia. My chum, who had been defeated in the examination, had set his heart on getting that book from me, and finally succeeded by arousing my cupidity to get possession of an old violin belonging to him, and on which he used to practice his wiles on my too responsive heart, until, at last, I consented to exchange my splendid prize for his old fiddle. I took it home afterwards and made night hideous during the following summer, and myself a general nuisance, without ever succeeding in playing anything worth listening to. But there was a latent vein of music somewhere in my nature, which the strange sounds that I was able to extort from the catgut seemed to satisfy if they did not edify anybody else.

My childhood and youth were strangely sheltered and guarded by divine providence. I recall with a sacred awe and thankfulness the many times in which my life was preserved. I have already referred to my narrow escape from death by drowning. On another occasion, while climbing up on the scaffolding of a building in the course of erection, I stepped upon a loose board and slipped and fell. Instinctively throwing out my hands I caught hold of timber and held desperately for some time, calling for assistance. When just about to let go through exhaustion, my father, who was some distance away, rushed to my aid and caught me just before I fell. The fall would have either maimed or killed me. Another time I was thrown headlong over my horse’s head, as he stumbled and falling under me, and when I came to consciousness I found him bending over me, with his nose close to my face, as though he would have spoken and encouraged me. Many times was I delivered from danger, and I believe God was keeping my life for Himself in some gracious way. Especially do I praise Him for the longsuffering kindness in which He bore the backslidings of my youth, and the spirit of selfish ambition which to so great an extent controlled my life.

At length the time came for me to leave home and commence my college course in Knox College and the University of Toronto. A special course had been arranged for students for the ministry, by which they took certain classes in Knox College and certain lectures in the University. It would be of little interest to recite the ordinary experiences of a college student, and it is only necessary to sketch a few of the special pictures that come back to memory from these early years. My deep religious impressions still continued and they kept me from the temptations of city life. There was a sort of horror associated with the saloon, or a house of infamy, which put an effectual barrier across my sensitive heart, and such things never appealed to me. But I was thrown with a roommate in the first year of my college course, whose influence over my heart was most disastrous. He was a much older man and although a theological student and a very bright and attractive fellow was a man of convivial tastes and habits. It was his favourite custom once or twice a week to have what he called an oyster supper in our room, and to invite one or two of his friends, who happened to be medical students, and whose habits were worse than his. On these occasions both beer and whiskey would be brought in, and the orgie would go on until very late at night with laugh and song and story, and many a jest that was neither pure nor reverent. I had not firmness nor experience sufficient to suppress these entertainments, and I was compelled to be a witness and in some measure a partaker, although, the coarse amusement was always distasteful to all my spiritual life. My roommate was cynical and utterly unspiritual. At the same time he had a fine literary taste and was fond of poetry, which he was always reading or repeating. There was a certain attraction about him, and altogether his influence over me was bad. I did not cease to pray, or to walk in some measure with God, but the sweetness and preciousness of my early piety was already withered. I am sorry to say that I did not recover my lost blessing until I had been the minister of the Gospel for more than ten years. I do not mean to imply that I went into open sin or turned away from God, but my religious life was chiefly that of duty, with little joy or fellowship, and my motives were intensely ambitious and worldly. In a word my heart was unsanctified and I had not yet learned the secret of the indwelling Christ and the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

At the same time there must have been a strong current of faith, and a real habit of prayer in my college life, for God did many things for me, which were directly supernatural and to me at the time very wonderful. My careful savings had only been sufficient to take me through the first year of college, and for the following years my way was unprovided. But there was a system of scholarships or bursaries consisting of considerable amounts of money, which were given to the successful student in a competitive examination. I set my heart on winning some of these scholarships, not merely for the honor, but for the pecuniary value, which would be almost sufficient to meet what was lacking in my living expenses.

One of them required the writing of an essay on the subject of baptism, and after much hard study, and I am glad to say very much prayer, I wrote an essay proving to my own satisfaction that children ought to be baptized, and that baptism should be by sprinkling and not by immersion. Through God’s great goodness I won the prize, but in later years I had to take back all the arguments and doctrinal opinions, which I so stoutly maintained in my youthful wisdom. My next venture was for a much larger prize, amounting to $120 and for which an essay was to be written on the difficult historical and philosophical subject, “The Preparation of the World for the First Coming of Christ and the Setting up of His Kingdom.” While I studied hard and long for the materials of this paper, I deferred the final composition until the very last moment. I am afraid that my mind has always had a habit of working in this way, namely, of leaving its supreme efforts until the cumulative force of constant thought and recollection has crystallized the subject into its most intense form. And so I found myself within two days of the final moment for giving in the papers and the entire article yet to be written out in its final form from the crude first copy, which had been prepared. The task proved to be a longer and harder one than I dreamed, and when the last day had ended and the paper had to be given in by the following morning at nine o’clock, there was still seven or eight hours work to be done. Of course, the night that followed was a sleepless one. Toiling at my desk and literally tearing along like a race horse for the goal, I wrote and wrote and wrote, until my hand grew almost paralyzed, and I had to get another to write for me while I dictated. But soon my brain began to fail me and I found myself literally falling asleep in my chair. Then I did something for the first and last time in my life, which I can understand professional men doing until they fall under the power of the most dangerous opiates. I sent out to a drug store for something that would keep me awake for six or seven hours at any cost, and as I sipped it through the night my brain was held to its tremendous task; and as the light broke on the winter morning that followed the last sentences were finished and the paper folded and sealed and sent by a special messenger to my professor, while I threw myself on my bed and slept as if I would never wake. Some weeks passed during which I prayed much for my strenuously prepared paper. I found there were about a dozen competitors, many of them students in advanced years of the course. Naturally there seemed little hope of my success, but something told me that God was going to see me through. At length the morning came when it was announced that the name of the successful candidate should be declared. But I could not stay in the class room, I was too much excited to stand the strain, and I slipped away into the college yard to a lonely place where I threw myself on my knees and had the matter out with God, and before I rose from my knees, I dared to believe somehow that God had heard my prayer and given me my prize, which was so essential to the continuance of my study. Then I spilled back into the class room and sat down in my place. I instantly noticed that every eye was turned on me with a strange expression which I could not understand. Nothing was said about the prize during the lecture hour. It had all been said just before I came in. But at the close my professor called me to his room and congratulated me on my success, and I learned for the first time that, while I was out praying in the yard, he had told the class that the prize had come to me. This explained their strange glances at me as I went in. I mention this instance especially to show how God all through my life has taught me, at least has been trying to make me understand, that before any great blessing could come to me I must first believe for it in blind and naked faith. I am quite sure that the blessing of believing for that prize was more to me than its great pecuniary value, which enabled me to continue my study for the next two years.

During the summer vacation, after my second year, as I was a theological student, I was sent out to preach in mission churches and stations. In this way I also earned a little money, besides gaining a much more valuable experience in practical work. But I remember well the look of surprise with which the grave men of the congregations, where I preached, would gaze at me as I entered the pulpit. I was extremely young and looked so much younger than I really was, that I do not wonder now that they looked aghast at the child that was presuming to preach to them from the high pulpit, where he stood in fear and trembling.

0The greatest trials of all these days was my preaching for the first time in the church in which I had been brought up, and in the presence of my father and my mother. In some way the Lord helped me to get through, but I never once dared to meet their eyes. In those days preaching was an awful business, for we knew nothing of trusting the Lord for utterance. The manuscript was written in full and the preacher committed it to memory and recited it verbatim. On this occasion I walked the woods for days beforehand, repeating to the trees and squirrels the periods and paragraphs which I had so carefully composed. The misfortune sometimes was that the forgetting of a word would blot out from the frightened brain of the poor preacher all the matter that followed. One of the most pathetic stories of Professor Wilson Tales, is that of the student minister, a poor wight, who like me had presumed to preach before his minister and parents, and then I am happy to say, unlike me, had stuck in the middle of his discourse and after trying vainly to recall his sentences and murmuring over and over again, “My brethren, my brethren,” finally stuck his fingers in his hair and tearing, like one half mad, fled from the pulpit in the church and was never seen in those parts again.

My social and religious surroundings were not of the helpful kind. The church and college life with which I was associated, was not deeply spiritual, but cold and conventional. There was no teaching about the deeper work of the Holy Spirit and the life of consecration, and I rose no higher than the level about me. When I entered later upon my regular ministry, I knew but little of the Holy Ghost and the life of faith and holiness, and while conscientious and orthodox in my pastoral work and preaching, and really earnest in my spirit, yet I fear, I was seeking to build up a successful church, very much in the same spirit as my people were trying to build up a successful business.

Source of Information: A.B. Simpson, My Own Story