the daughters of the family should have educational advantages as well as the sons. If anything she was more determined, since she felt that the sons would be in a better position to make their way in the world. Perhaps her true character can be best understood in connection with the mortgage, which for 30 years continued to be a skeleton in the family closet, seldom talked about, but a “hair shirt” which Father and Mother both wore. Father and Mother desperately wanted the mortgage paid, especially Mother. It hurt her pride; she hated it for what it was doing to her husband, making him old before his time. She was willing to slave and sacrifice to pay it off, but she was determined that the mortgage should not hinder the careers of her children. If possible she wanted to save the farm and the children, but if either had to be sacrificed, it should not be her children. They should have their chance. And this brings me to another phase of the story, to the one who must always be thought of as the true successor to Hugh, David and James MacMillan, namely Fred C. MacMillan, the oldest of six sons. Though destined not to have a family of his own, next to Father and Mother he must be credited as being responsible for the family’s ultimate position and progress in the world. In seeking to account for certain family traits, it is doubtless possible to say that while some are more or less strongly influenced by their forebears, of Fred it can truthfully be said that more fully than any of the other children, he inherited his Mother’s spirit in important respects. His Mother’s dream for the family was to become his dream to the extent that at great personal sacrifice, he took up the family burden where his father and mother were compelled to lay it down. While still a young man, scarcely out of his teens, as far as he was able, he assumed the burden of the mortgage. And along with his other burdens, he was able in time to remove this dark shadow from the old home. He too had his mother’s dream for the children and grandchildren, and through good fortune and bad, he has never ceased to pray that they should be all that Mother wished them to be. He even had his mother’s dream about the farm, namely, the farm itself was to be regarded by the family as a token of God’s favor, that 24
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