Simon was by trade a carpenter, but he had received in the old land a good educational foundation; he had, moreover, a shrewd head for affairs, and so he turned his energies to business, and with conspicuous success.

For in addition to all his excellent qualities, Simon possessed as the most valuable part of his equipment a tidy, thrifty wife, who saved what her husband earned and kept guard over him on feast days, saved and kept guard so faithfully that before long Simon came to see the wisdom of her policy and became himself a shrewd and sober and well-doing Canadian, able to hold his own with the best of them.
His sobriety and steadiness Simon owed mostly to his thrifty wife, but his rapid transformation into Canadian citizenship he owed chiefly to his little daughter Margaret.

It was Margaret that taught him his English, as she conned over her lessons with him in the evenings.

It was Margaret who carried home from the little Methodist mission near by, the illustrated paper and the library book, and thus set him a-reading.

It was Margaret that brought both Simon and Lena, his wife, to the social gathering of the Sunday School and of the church.