He had the good taste to spend well the money he devoted to pleasure; yet it was not books or pictures or music, acquired late in life, that gave to him and to his wife the power to grow in harmony with their surroundings.

It was the high life of prayer and effort that they lived that made it possible for God--the God of art as truly as the God of prayer--to teach them.
It is not at the best a cultured place, this backwoods town.

There was many a slip in grammar, many a broad uncouth accent, heard daily in Ann's drawing-room; but what mental life the town had came to centre in that room.

Gradually reflecting neighbours began to learn that there was a beneficent force other than intellectual at work there.
Young men who needed interest and pleasure, the poor who needed warmth and food, came together to that room, and met there the drunkard in his sober intervals, the gamester when he cared to play for mere pastime; yes, and others, the more evil, were made welcome there.

It was not forgotten that Toyner had been a wicked man and that Ann's father had been a murderer.
It was a strange effort this, to increase virtue in the virtuous, not by separation from, but by friendship with, the unrepentant.