Departure From Home
DEPARTURE FROM HOME
The circumstances which led up to the departure of young Moody from home have been variously stated. He had come to the age of seventeen. In those days a boy of seventeen was supposed to be ready to enter upon the serious business of life. New ambitions were arising in Dwight's heart. Mr. Edward Kimball, who afterwards led the boy to the Lord, is perhaps as well informed of the circumstances of his life in Boston as any man now living. He gave the facts as he was familiar with them at the time of Mr. Moody's death.
"To tell the story correctly," said Mr. Kimball, "I must go back to Thanksgiving day forty-five years ago. A Thanksgiving family dinner party was assembled at the Moody home, which was on a farm a mile and a half from Northfield, Mass. At the table, among others, were Samuel and Lemuel Holton, of Boston, two uncles of the Moody children. Without any preliminary warning young Dwight, a boy of about seventeen, spoke up and said to his uncle Samuel: "Uncle, I want to come to Boston and have a place in your shoe store. Will you take me?" Despite the directness of the question, the uncle returned to Boston without giving his nephew an answer. When Mr. Holton asked advice in the matter from an older brother of Dwight, the brother told his uncle that perhaps he had better not take the boy, for in a short time Dwight would want to run his store.