Our family enjoyed reading Clean Your Boots Sir? and found it to be interesting, inspirational and encouraging.  It was a short book that reminded me of another Lamplighter classic called A basket of Flowers but  this was more geared towards boys. This dear story is about a hard-working shoeshine boy named Robert Rightheart who lives in England during Victorian times. Robert supports his family after his Mother dies and his father becomes paralyzed. Robert follows the Lord very closely, studies God’s word and worships in song through singing old hymns…always seeking the Lord for wisdom and strength.  When he faces temptation he chooses to do the right thing, wanting to please the Lord rather than himself. This story, which I consider to be a one that builds faith and character,  will be one of my gems that I will keep in my library and hopefully have the opportunity to read to any child that the Lord sends our way.

Many things the history of Robert Righheart has taught us.  We should be fearless amid the scorn of companions for doing right, as he was on the day when they ridiculed him for giving the “old un” back his money.  We should honor our parents, as he did’ tenderly and unselfishly did he make up his little store and care for his poor paralyzed father.  We should be like him in his love and loyalty to the Savior, as witnessed in the first voyage out; and in fidelity to our employers, as manifested in his clerkship in the East India firm.. We need not leave the record of his history without resolves to be like him.  We may never don the uniform of a shoe-black boy, but we may all wear the garment of his goodly character, and bear about with us the same sword of the Spirit, the word of God.  (An excerpt from Clean Your Boots Sir?  pp. 117-118)