The world's great men usually enter incognito. Emerson was wont to put his hand reverently upon the head of any urchin that might come his way. "Who knows," said he, "but I may be patting the head of a future president." The tough youngsters who gathered in Jessie's backyard on a summer afternoon to play the ancient equivalent of hide-n-seek or kick-the-can would not have shoved Jessie's youngest boy around quite so freely if they had had a touch of second sight to let them see that they were taking liberties with the greatest king Israel was ever to know. But their blindness made possible many a glorious day of fun for the boys in the neighborhood, and it also guaranteed to David an uninhibited and normal childhood. Such are the ways of God when He prepares His saints and heroes: He leaves them unrecognized by the world until the day of their "showing unto Israel." (p. 11)

Jane Simpson, the mother heard that cry and smiled, and when they told her the child was a boy she may have wept a little, too, but her tears were tears of happiness, and not of sorrow. Her first baby had been a boy, and when he was just old enough to toddle over the floor and to say "mama" and "papa," he had died, and the light had gone out of her heart, and not even the presence of her other children could bring it back again. So she had prayed that God might send her another son to take the place of the one who had gone, and her faith would have nothing less than that he become a minister or a missionary, though with good Scottish caution she had made her prayer plenty broad, "if the Lord so wills, and he lives to grow up, and is so inclined." It would not do to be too specific with the sovereign God, but after all, He might listen to a suggestion. (p. 12)

Right here we may as well see what history has been at long pains to teach us, that if you get a good mother it will not do to be too particular about your father; you cannot have everything. Give the boy a superior mother, and he will make the grade somehow. The women know this well enough, though they are not saying so in front of the men. Hannah looks down at the floor modestly and says nothing, but she searches for her own features in Samuel-and finds them there. And Manoah's wife, and the mother of Zebedee's children, and Monica, and Suzanna Wesley; what do all these teach us but the same thing every scientist knows, that greatness follows the maternal line? The men have impressive voices, they look knowing, and claim credit for every sign of intelligence in their offspring, but their masculine pride takes a terrible beating from biology.

There can be no doubt about it, Dr. A. B. Simpson, boy and man, can never be explained apart from his mother, Jane Clark Simpson. She gave him wings. High strung and temperamental, with more than a dash of high romance, she had a soul too large for her small body. Straight from mother to son, following the laws of life, went this great soul, sensitive, poetic, beauty-loving, lofty. (pp. 13-14)