MR. DINNEFORDhad become deeply interested in the work that was going on in Briar street, and made frequent visits to the mission house. Sometimes he took heart in the work, but oftener he suffered great discouragement of feeling. In one of his many conversations with Mr. Paulding he said,
“Looking as I do from the standpoint gained since I came here, I am inclined to say there is no hope. The enemy is too strong for us.”
“He is very strong,” returned the missionary, “but God is stronger, and our cause is his cause. We have planted his standard here in the very midst of the enemy's territory, and have not only held our ground for years, but gained some victories. If we had the people, the churches and the law-officers on our side, we could drive him out in a year. But we have no hope of this—at least not for a long time to come; and so, as wisely as we can, as earnestly as we can, and with the limited means at our control, we are fighting the foe and helping the weak, and gaining a little every year.”
“And you really think there is gain?”
“I know it,” answered the missionary, with a ringing confidence in his voice. “It is by comparisons that we are able to get at true results. Come with me into our school-room, next door.”
They passed from the office of the mission into the street.
“These buildings,” said Mr. Paulding, “erected by that true Christian charity which hopeth all things, stand upon the very site of one of the worst dens once to be found in this region. In them we have a chapel for worship, two large and well ventilated school-rooms, where from two to three hundred children that would not be admitted into any public school are taught daily, a hospital and dispensary and bathrooms. Let me show you the school. Then I will give you a measure of comparison.”
Mr. Dinneford went up to the school-rooms. He found them crowded with children, under the care of female teachers, who seemed to have but little trouble in keeping them in order. Such a congregation of boys and girls Mr. Dinneford had never seen before. It made his heart ache as he looked into some of their marred and pinched, faces, most of which bore signs of pain, suffering, want and evil. It moved him to tears when he heard them sing, led by one of the teachers, a tender hymn expressive of the Lord's love for poor neglected children.
“The Lord Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost,” said the missionary as they came down from the school-room, “and we are trying to do the same work. And that our labor is not all in vain will be evident when I show you what this work was in the beginning. You have seen a little of what it is now.”
They went back to the office of the missionary.
“It is nearly twenty years,” said Mr. Paulding, “since the organization of our mission. The question of what to do for the children became at once the absorbing one. The only building in which to open a Sunday-school that could be obtained was an old dilapidated frame house used as a receptacle for bones, rags, etc.; but so forbidding was its aspect, and so noisome the stench arising from the putrefying bones and rotting rags, that it was feared for the health of those who might occupy it. However it was agreed to try the effect of scraping, scrubbing, white-washing and a liberal use of chloride of lime. This was attended with such good effects that, notwithstanding the place was still offensive to the olfactories, the managers concluded to open in it our first Sabbath-school.
“No difficulty was experienced in gathering in a sufficient number of children to compose a school; for, excited by such a novel spectacle as a Sabbath-school in that region, they came in crowds. But such a Sabbath-school as that first one was beyond all doubt the rarest thing of the kind that any of those interested in its formation had ever witnessed. The jostling, tumbling, scratching, pinching, pulling of hair, little ones crying and larger ones punching each other's heads and swearing most profanely, altogether formed a scene of confusion and riot that disheartened the teachers in the start, and made them begin to think they had undertaken a hopeless task.
“As to the appearance of these young Ishmaelites, it was plain that they had rarely made the acquaintance of soap and water. Hands, feet and face exhibited a uniform crust of mud and filth. As it was necessary to obtain order, the superintendent, remembering that 'music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,' decided to try its effects on the untamed group before him; and giving out a line of a hymn adapted to the tune of 'Lily Dale,' he commenced to sing. The effect was instantaneous. It was like oil on troubled waters. The delighted youngsters listened to the first line, and then joined in with such hearty good-will that the old shanty rang again.
“The attempt to engage and lead them in prayer was, however, a matter of great difficulty. They seemed to regard the attitude of kneeling as very amusing, and were reluctant to commit themselves so far to the ridicule of their companions as to be caught in such a posture. After reading to them a portion of the Holy Scriptures and telling them of Jesus, they were dismissed, greatly pleased with their first visit to a Sabbath-school.
“As for ourselves, we had also received a lesson. We found—what indeed we had expected—that the poor children were very ignorant, but we also found what we did not expect—namely, such an acute intelligence and aptitude to receive instruction as admonished us of the danger of leaving them to grow up under evil influences to become master-spirits in crime and pests to society. Many of the faces that we had just seen were very expressive—indeed, painfully so. Some of them seemed to exhibit an unnatural and premature development of those passions whose absence makes childhood so attractive.
“Hunger! ay, its traces were also plainly written there. It is painful to see the marks of hunger on the human face, but to see the cheeks of childhood blanched by famine, to behold the attenuated limbs and bright wolfish eyes, ah! that is a sight.
“The organization of a day-school came next. There were hundreds of children in the district close about the mission who were wholly without instruction. They were too dirty, vicious and disorderly to be admitted into any of the public schools; and unless some special means of education were provided, they must grow up in ignorance. It was therefore resolved to open a day-school, but to find a teacher with her heart in such a work was a difficulty hard to be met; moreover, it was thought by many unsafe for a lady to remain in this locality alone, even though a suitable one should offer. But one brave and self-devoted was found, and one Sunday it was announced to the children in the Sabbath-school that a day school would be opened in the same building at nine o'clock on Monday morning.
“About thirty neglected little ones from the lanes and alleys around the mission were found at the schoolroom door at the appointed hour. But when admitted, very few of them had any idea of the purpose for which they were collected. The efforts of the teacher to seat them proved a failure. The idea among them seemed to be that each should take some part in amusing the company. One would jump from the back of a bench upon which he had been seated, while others were creeping about the floor; another, who deemed himself a proficient in turning somersaults, would be trying his skill in this way, while his neighbor, equally ambitious, would show the teacher how he could stand on his head. Occasionally they would pause and listen to the singing of a hymn or the reading of a little story; then all would be confusion again; and thus the morning wore away. The first session having closed, the teacher retired to her home, feeling that a repetition of the scenes through which she had passed could scarcely be endured.
“Two o'clock found her again at the door, and the children soon gathered around her. Upon entering the schoolroom, most of them were induced to be seated, and a hymn was sung which they had learned in the Sabbath-school. When it was finished, the question was asked, 'Shall we pray?' With one accord they answered, 'Yes.' 'And will you be quiet?' They replied in the affirmative. All were then requested to be silent and cover their faces. In this posture they remained until the prayer was closed; and after resuming their seats, for some minutes order was preserved. This was the only encouraging circumstance of the day.
“For many weeks a stranger would scarcely have recognized a school in this disorderly gathering which day after day met in the old gloomy building. Very many difficulties which we may not name were met and conquered. Fights were of common occurrence. A description of one may give the reader an idea of what came frequently under our notice.
“A rough boy about fourteen years of age, over whom some influence had been gained, was chosen monitor one morning; and as he was a leader in all the mischief, it was hoped that putting him upon his honor would assist in keeping order. Talking aloud was forbidden. For a few minutes matters went on charmingly, until some one, tired of the restraint, broke silence. The monitor, feeling the importance of his position, and knowing of but one mode of redress, instantly struck him a violent blow upon the ear, causing him to scream with pain. In a moment the school was a scene of confusion, the friends of each boy taking sides, and before the cause of trouble could be ascertained most of the boys were piled upon each other in the middle of the room, creating sounds altogether indescribable. The teacher, realizing that she was alone, and not well understanding her influence, feared for a moment to interfere; but as matters were growing worse, something must be done. She made an effort to gain the ear of the monitor, and asked why he did so. He, confident of being in the right, answered,
“'Teacher, he didn't mind you; he spoke, and I licked him; and I'll do it again if he don't mind you.'
“His services were of course no longer required, although he had done his duty according to his understanding of the case.
“Thus it was at the beginning of this work nearly twenty years ago,” said the missionary. “Now we have an orderly school of over two hundred children, who, but for the opportunity here given, would grow up without even the rudiments of all education. Is not this a gain upon the enemy? Think of a school like this doing its work daily among these neglected little ones for nearly a score of years, and you will no longer feel as if nothing had been done—as if no headway had been gained. Think, too, of the Sabbath-school work in that time, and of the thousands of children who have had their memories filled with precious texts from the Bible, who have been told of the loving Saviour who came into the world and suffered and died for them, and of his tender love and perpetual care over his children, no matter how poor and vile and afar off from him they may be. It is impossible that the good seed of the word scattered here for so long a time should not have taken root in many hearts. We know that they have, and can point to scores of blessed instances—can take you to men and women, now good and virtuous people, who, but for our day-and Sabbath-schools, would, in all human probability, be now among the outcast, the vicious and the criminal.
“So much for what has been done among the children. Our work with men and women has not been so fruitful as might well be supposed, and yet great good has been accomplished even among the hardened, the desperate and the miserably vile and besotted. Bad as things are to-day—awful to see and to contemplate, shocking and disgraceful to a Christian community—they were nearly as bad again at the time this mission set up the standard of God and made battle in his name. Our work began as a simple religious movement, with street preaching.”
“And with what effect?” asked Mr. Dinneford.
“With good effect, in a limited number of cases, I trust. In a degraded community like this there will always be some who had a different childhood from that of the crowds of young heathen who swarm its courts and alleys; some who in early life had religious training, and in whose memories were stored up holy things from Scripture; some who have tender and sweet recollection of a mother and home and family prayer and service in God's temples. In the hearts of such God's Spirit in moving could touch and quicken and flush with reviving life these old memories, and through them bring conviction of sin, and an intense desire to rise out of the horrible pit into which they had fallen and the clay wherein their feet were mired. Angels could come near to these by what of good and true was to be found half hidden, but not erased from their book of life, and so help in the work of their recovery and salvation.
“But, sir, beyond this class there is small hope, I fear, in preaching and praying. The great mass of these wretched beings have had little or no early religious instruction. There, are but few, if any, remains of things pure and good and holy stored away since childhood in their memories to be touched and quickened by the Spirit of God. And so we must approach them in another and more external way. We must begin with their physical evils, and lessen these as fast as possible; we must remove temptation from their doors, or get them as far as possible out of the reach of temptation, but in this work not neglecting the religious element as an agency, of untold power.
“Christ fed the hungry, and healed the sick, and clothed the naked, and had no respect unto the persons of men. And we, if we would lift up fallen humanity, must learn by his example. It is not by preaching and prayer and revival meetings that the true Christian philanthropist can hope to accomplish any great good among the people here, but by doing all in his power to change their sad external condition and raise them out of their suffering and degradation. Without some degree of external order and obedience to the laws of natural life, it is, I hold, next to impossible, to plant in the mind any seeds of spiritual truth. There is no ground there. The parable of the sower that went forth to sow illustrates this law. Only the seed that fell on good ground brought forth fruit. Our true work, then, among this heathen people, of whom the churches take so little care, is first to get the ground in order for the planting, of heavenly seed. Failing in this, our hope is small.”
“This mission has changed its attitude since the beginning,” said Mr. Dinneford.
“Yes. Good and earnest men wrought for years with the evil elements around them, trusting in God's Spirit to change the hearts of the vile and abandoned sinners among whom they preached and prayed. But there was little preparation of the ground, and few seeds got lodgment except in stony places, by the wayside and among thorns. Our work now is to prepare the ground, and in this work, slowly as it is progressing, we have great encouragement. Every year we can mark the signs of advancement. Every year we make some head against the enemy. Every year our hearts take courage and are refreshed by the smell of grasses and the odor of flowers and the sight of fruit-bearing plants in once barren and desolate places. The ground is surely being made ready for the sower.”
“I am glad to hear you speak so encouragingly,” returned Mr. Dinneford. “To me the case looked desperate—wellnigh hopeless. Anything worse than I have witnessed here seemed impossible.”
“It is only by comparisons, as I said before, that we can get at the true measure of change and progress,” answered the missionary. “Since we have been at work in earnest to improve the external life of this region, we have had much to encourage us. True, what we have done has made only a small impression on the evil that exists here; but the value of this impression lies in the fact that it shows what can be done with larger agencies. Double our effective force, and we can double the result. Increase it tenfold, and ten times as much can be done.”
“What is your idea of this work?” said Mr. Dinneford. “In other words, what do you think the best practical way to purify this region?”
“If you draw burning brands and embers close together, your fire grows stronger; if you scatter them apart, it will go out,” answered the missionary. “Moral and physical laws correspond to each other. Crowd bad men and women together, and they corrupt and deprave each other. Separate them, and you limit their evil power and make more possible for good the influence of better conditions. Let me give you an instance: A man and his wife who had lived in a wretched way in one of the poorest hovels in Briar street for two years, and who had become idle and intemperate, disappeared from among us about six months ago. None of their neighbors knew or cared much what had become of them. They had two children. Last week, as I was passing the corner of a street in the south-western part of the city in which stood a row of small new houses, a neatly-dressed woman came out of a store with a basket in her hand. I did not know her, but by the brightening look in her face I saw that she knew me.
“'Mr. Paulding,' she said, in a pleased way, holding out her hand; 'you don't know me,' she added, seeing the doubt in my face. 'I am Mrs.—.'
“'Impossible!' I could not help exclaiming.
“'But it's true, Mr. Paulding,' she averred, a glow of pleasure on her countenance. 'We've turned over a new leaf.'
“'So I should think from your appearance,' I replied. 'Where do you live?'
“'In the third house from the corner,' pointing to the neat row of small brick houses I have mentioned. 'Come and look at our new home. I want to tell you about it!'
“I was too much pleased to need a second invitation.
“'I've got as clean steps as my neighbors,' she said, with pride in her voice, 'and shades to my windows, and a bright door-knob. It wasn't so in Briar street. One had no heart there. Isn't this nice?'
“And she glanced around the little parlor we had entered.
“It was nice, compared to the dirty and disorderly place they had called their home in Briar street. The floor was covered with a new ingrain carpet. There were a small table and six cane-seat chairs in the room, shades at the windows, two or three small pictures on the walls and some trifling ornaments on the mantel. Everything was clean and the air of the room sweet.
“'This is my little Emma,' she said as a cleanly-dressed child came into the room; 'You remember she was in the school.'
“I did remember her as a ragged, dirty-faced child, forlorn and neglected, like most of the children about here. It was a wonderful transformation.
“'And now,' I said, 'tell me how all this has come about.'
“'Well, you see, Mr. Paulding,' she answered, 'there was no use in John and me trying to be anything down there. It was temptation on every hand, and we were weak and easily tempted. There was nothing to make us look up or to feel any pride. We lived like our neighbors, and you know what kind of a way that was.
“'One day John said to me, “Emma,” says he, “it's awful, the way we're living; we'd better be dead.” His voice was shaky-like, and it kind of made me feel bad. “I know it, John,” said I, “but what can we do?” “Go 'way from here,” he said. “But where?” I asked. “Anywhere. I'm not all played out yet;” and he held up his hand and shut it tight. “There's good stuff in me yet, and if you're willing to make a new start, I am.” I put my hand in his, and said, “God helping me, I will try, John.” He went off that very day and got a room in a decent neighborhood, and we moved in it before night. We had only one cart-load, and a wretched load of stuff it was. But I can't tell you how much better it looked when we got it into our new room, the walls of which were nicely papered, and the paint clean and white. I fixed up everything and made it as neat as possible. John was so pleased. “It feels something like old times,” he said. He had been knocking about a good while, picking up odd jobs and not half working, but he took heart now, quit drinking and went to work in good earnest, and was soon making ten dollars a week, every cent of which he brought home. He now gets sixteen dollars. We haven't made a back step since. But it wouldn't have been any use trying if we'd stayed in Briar street. Pride helped us a good deal in the beginning, sir. I was ashamed not to have my children looking as clean as my neighbors, and ashamed not to keep things neat and tidy-like. I didn't care anything about it in Briar street.'
“I give you this instance, true in nearly every particular,” said the missionary, “in order to show you how incurable is the evil condition of the people here; unless we can get the burning brands apart, they help to consume each other.”
“But how to get them apart? that is the difficult question,” said Mr. Dinneford.
“There are two ways,” was replied—“by forcing the human brands apart, and by interposing incombustible things between them. As we have no authority to apply force, and no means at hand for its exercise if we had the authority, our work has been in the other direction. We have been trying to get in among these burning brands elements that would stand the fire, and, so lessen the ardor of combustion.”
“How are you doing this?”
“By getting better houses for the people to live in. Improve the house, make it more sightly and convenient, and in most cases you will improve the person who lives in it. He will not kindle so easily, though he yet remain close to the burning brands.”
“And are you doing this?”
“A little has been done. Two or three years ago a building association was organized by a few gentlemen of means, with a view to the purchase of property in this district and the erection of small but good houses, to be rented at moderate cost to honest and industrious people. A number of such houses have already been built, and they are now occupied by tenants of a better class, whose influence on their neighbors is becoming more and more apparent every day. Brady street—once the worst place in all this district—has changed wonderfully. There is scarcely a house in the two blocks through which it runs that does not show some improvement since the association pulled down half a dozen of its worst frame tenements and put neat brick dwellings in their places. It is no uncommon thing now to see pavement sweeping and washing in front of some of the smallest and poorest of the houses in Brady street where two years ago the dirt would stick to your feet in passing. A clean muslin half curtain, a paper shade or a pot of growing plants will meet your eyes at a window here and there as you pass along. The thieves who once harbored in this street, and hid their plunder in cellars and garrets until it could be sold or pawned, have abandoned the locality. They could not live side by side with honest industry.”
“And all this change may be traced to the work of our building association, limited as are its means and half-hearted as are its operations. The worst of our population—the common herd of thieves, beggars and vile women who expose themselves shamelessly on the street—are beginning to feel less at home and more in danger of arrest and exposure. The burning brands are no longer in such close contact, and so the fires of evil are raging less fiercely. Let in the light, and the darkness flees. Establish the good, and evil shrinks away, weak and abashed.”
SOthe morning found them fast asleep. The man awoke first and felt the child against his bosom, soft and warm. It was some moments ere he understood what it meant. It seemed as if the wretched life he had been leading was all a horrible dream out of which he had awakened, and that the child sleeping in his bosom was his own tenderly-loved baby. But the sweet illusions faded away, and the hard, sorrowful truth stood out sternly before him.
Then Andy's eyes opened and looked into his face. There was nothing scared in the look-hardly an expression of surprise. But the man saw a mute appeal and a tender confidence that made his heart swell and yearn toward the homeless little one.
“Had a nice sleep?” he asked, in a tone of friendly encouragement.
Andy nodded his head, and then gazed curiously about the room.
“Want some breakfast?”
The hungry face lit up with a flash of pleasure.
“Of course you do, little one.”
The man was on his feet by this time, with his hand in his pocket, from which he drew a number of pennies. These he counted over carefully twice. The number was just ten. If there had been only himself to provide for, it would not have taken long to settle the question of expenditure. Five cents at an eating-shop where the caterer supplied himself from the hodge-podge of beggars' baskets would have given him a breakfast fit for a dog or pig, while the remaining five cents would have gone for fiery liquor to quench a burning thirst.
But another mouth had too be fed. All at once this poor degraded man had risen to a sense of responsibility, and was practicing the virtue of self-denial. A little child was leading him.
He had no toilette to make, no ablutions to practice. There was neither pail nor wash-basin in his miserable kennel. So, without any delay of preparation, he caught up the broken mug and went out, as forlorn a looking wretch as was to be seen in all that region. Almost every house that he passed was a grog-shop, and his nerves were all unstrung and his mouth and throat dry from a night's abstinence. But he was able to go by without a pause. In a few minutes he returned with a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a single dried sausage.
What a good breakfast the two made. Not for a long time had the man so enjoyed a meal. The sight of little Andy, as he ate with the fine relish of a hungry child, made his dry bread and sausage taste sweeter than anything that had passed his lips for weeks.
Something more than the food he had taken steadied the man's nerves and allayed his thirst. Love was beating back into his heart—love for this homeless wanderer, whose coming had supplied the lost links in the chain which bound him to the past and called up memories that had slept almost the sleep of death for years. Good resolutions began forming in his mind.
“It may be,” he said to himself as new and better impressions than he had known for a long time began to crowd upon him, “that God has led this baby here.”
The thought sent a strange thrill to his soul. He trembled with excess of feeling. He had once been a religious man; and with the old instinct of dependence on God, he clasped his hands together with a sudden, desperate energy, and looking up, cried, in a half-despairing, half-trustful voice,
“Lord, help me!”
No earnest cry like that ever goes up without an instant answer in the gift of divine strength. The man felt it in a stronger purpose and a quickening hope. He was conscious of a new power in himself.
“God being my helper,” he said in the silence of his heart, “I will be a man again.”
There was a long distance between him and a true manhood. The way back was over very rough and difficult places, and through dangers and temptations almost impossible to resist. Who would have faith in him? Who would help him in his great extremity? How was he to live? Not any longer by begging or petty theft. He must do honest work. There was no hope in anything else. If God were to be his helper, he must be honest, and work. To this conviction he had come.
But what was to be done with Andy while he was away trying to earn something? The child might get hurt in the street or wander off in his absence and never find his way back. The care he felt for the little one was pleasure compared to the thought of losing him.
As for Andy, the comfort of a good breakfast and the feeling that he had a home, mean as it was, and somebody to care for him, made his heart light and set his lips to music.
When before had the dreary walls of that poor hovel echoed to the happy voice of a light-hearted child? But there was another echo to the voice, and from walls as long a stranger to such sounds as these—the walls in the chambers of that poor man's memory. A wellnigh lost and ruined soul was listening to the far-off voices of children. Sunny-haired little ones were thronging about him; he was looking into their tender eyes; their soft arms were clinging to his neck; he was holding them tightly clasped to his bosom.
“Baby,” he said. It was the word that came most naturally to his lips.
Andy, who was sitting where a few sunbeams came in through a rent in the wall, with the warm light on his head, turned and looked into the bleared but friendly eyes gazing at him so earnestly.
“I'm going out, baby. Will you stay here till I come back?”
“Yes,” answered the child, “I'll stay.”
“I won't be gone very long, and I'll bring you an apple and something good for dinner.”
Andy's face lit up and his eyes danced.
“Don't go out until I come back. Somebody might carry you off, and then I couldn't give you the nice red apple.”
“I'll stay right here,” said Andy, in a positive tone.
“And won't go into the street till I come back?”
“No, I won't.” Andy knit his brows and closed his lips firmly.
“All right, little one,” answered the man, in a cheery sort of voice that was so strange to his own ears that it seemed like the voice of somebody else.
Still, he could not feel satisfied. He was living in the midst of thieves to whom the most insignificant thing upon which they could lay their hands was booty. Children who had learned to be hard and cruel thronged the court, and he feared, if he left Andy alone in the hovel, that it would not only be robbed of its meagre furniture, but the child subjected to ill-treatment. He had always fastened the door on going out, but hesitated now about locking Andy in.
All things considered, it was safest, he felt, to lock the door. There was nothing in the room that could bring harm to the child—no fire or matches, no stairs to climb or windows out of which he could fall.
“I guess I'd better lock the door, hadn't I, so that nobody can carry off my little boy?” he asked of Andy.
Andy made no objections. He was ready for anything his kind friend might propose.
“And you mustn't cry or make a noise. The police might break in if you did.”
“All right,” said Andy, with the self-assertion of a boy of ten.
The man stroked the child's head and ran his fingers through his hair in a fond way; then, as one who tore himself from an object of attraction, went hastily out and locked the door.
And now was to begin a new life. Friendless, debased, repulsive in appearance, everything about him denoting the abandoned drunkard, this man started forth to get honest bread. Where should he go? What could he do? Who would give employment to an object like him? The odds were fearfully against him—no, not that, either. In outward respects, fearful enough were the odds, but on the other side agencies invisible to mortal sight were organizing for his safety. In to his purpose to lead a new life and help a poor homeless child God's strength was flowing. Angels were drawing near to a miserable wreck of humanity with hands outstretched to save. All heaven was coming to the rescue.
He was shuffling along in the direction of a market-house, hoping to earn a little by carrying home baskets, when he came face to face with an old friend of his better days, a man with whom he had once held close business relations.
“Mr. Hall!” exclaimed this man in a tone of sorrowful surprise, stopping and looking at him with an expression of deepest pity on his countenance. “This is dreadful!”
“You may well say that, Mr. Graham. It dreadful enough. No one knows that better than I do,” was answered, with a bitterness that his old friend felt to be genuine.
“Why, then, lead this terrible life a day longer?” asked the friend.
“I shall not lead it a day longer if God will help me,” was replied, with a genuineness of purpose that was felt by Mr. Graham.
“Give me your hand on that, Andrew Hall,” he exclaimed. Two hands closed in a tight grip.
“Where are you going now?” inquired the friend.
“I'm in search of something to do—something that will give me honest bread. Look at my hand.”
He held it up.
“It shakes, you see. I have not tasted liquor this morning. I could have bought it, but I did not.”
“Why?”
“I said, 'God being my helper, I will be a man again,' and I am trying.”
“Andrew Hall,” said his old friend, solemnly, as he laid his hand on his shoulder, “if you are really in earnest—if you do mean, in the help of God, to try—all will be well. But in his help alone is there any hope. Have you seen Mr. Paulding?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He has no faith in me. I have deceived him too often.”
“What ground of faith is there now?” asked Mr. Graham.
“This,” was the firm but hastily spoken answer. “Last night as I sat in the gloom of my dreary hovel, feeling so wretched that I wished I could die, a little child came in—a poor, motherless, homeless wanderer, almost a baby—and crept down to my heart, and he is lying there still, Mr. Graham, soft, and warm and precious, a sweet burden to bear. I bought him a supper and a breakfast of bread and milk with the money, I had saved for drink, and now, both for his sake and mine, I am out seeking for work. I have locked him in, so that no one can harm or carry him away while I earn enough to buy him his dinner, and maybe something better to wear, poor little homeless thing!”
There was a genuine earnestness and pathos about the man that could not be mistaken.
“I think,” said Mr. Graham, his voice not quite steady, “that God brought us together this morning. I know Mr. Paulding. Let us go first to the mission, and have some talk with him. You must have a bath and better, and cleaner clothes before you are in a condition to get employment.”
The bath and a suit of partly-worn but good clean clothes were supplied at the mission house.
“Now come with me, and I will find you something to do,” said the old friend.
But Andrew Hall stood hesitating.
“The little child—I told him I'd come back soon. He's locked up all alone, poor baby!”
He spoke with a quiver in his voice.
“Oh, true, true!” answered Mr. Graham; “the baby must be looked after;” and he explained to the missionary.
“I will go round with you and get the child,” said Mr. Paulding. “My wife will take care of him while you are away with Mr. Graham.”
They found little Andy sitting patiently on the floor. He did not know the friend who had given him a home and food and loving words, and looked at him half scared and doubting. But his voice made the child spring to his feet with a bound, and flushed his thin-face with the joy of a glad recognition.
Mrs. Paulding received him with a true motherly kindness, and soon a bath and clean clothing wrought as great a change in the child as they had done in the man.
“I want your help in saving him,” said Mr. Graham, aside, to the missionary. “He was once among our most respectable citizens, a good church-member, a good husband and father, a man of ability and large influence. Society lost much when it lost him. He is well worth saving, and we must do it if possible. God sent him this little child to touch his heart and flood it with old memories, and then he led me to come down here that I might meet and help him just when his good purposes made help needful and salvation possible. It is all of his loving care and wise providence of his tender mercy, which is over the poorest and weakest and most degraded of his children. Will you give him your special care?”
“It is the work I am here to do,” answered the missionary. “The Master came to seek and to save that which was lost, and I am his humble follower.”
“The child will have to be provided for,” said Mr. Graham. “It cannot, of course, be left with him. It needs a woman's care.”
“It will not do to separate them,” returned the missionary. “As you remarked just now, God sent him this little child to touch his heart and lead him back from the wilderness in which he has strayed. His safety depends on the touch of that hand. So long as he feels its clasp and its pull, he will walk in the new way wherein God is setting his feet. No, no; the child must be left with him—at least for the present. We will take care of it while he is at work during the day, and at night it can sleep in his arms, a protecting angel.”
“What kind of a place does he live in?” asked Mr. Graham.
“A dog might dwell there in comfort, but not a man,” replied the missionary.
Mr. Graham gave him money: “Provide a decent room. If more is required, let me know.”
He then went away, taking Mr. Hall with him.
“You will find the little one here when you come back,” said Mr. Paulding as he saw the anxious, questioning look that was cast toward Andy.
Clothed and in his right mind, but in no condition for work, was Andrew Hall. Mr. Graham soon noticed, as he walked by his side, that he was in a very nervous condition.
“What had you for breakfast this morning” he asked, the right thought coming into his mind.
“Not much. Some bread and a dried sausage.”
“Oh dear! that will never do! You must have something more nutritious—a good beefsteak and a cup of coffee to steady your nerves. Come.”
And in a few minutes they were in an eating-house. When they came out, Hall was a different man. Mr. Graham then took him to his store and set him to work to arrange and file a number of letters and papers, which occupied him for several hours. He saw that he had a good dinner and at five o'clock gave him a couple of dollars for his day's work, aid after many kind words of advice and assurance told him to come back in the morning, and he would find something else for him to do.
Swiftly as his feet would carry him, Andrew Hall made his way to the Briar street mission. He did not at first know the clean, handsome child that lifted his large brown eyes to his face as he came in, nor did the child know him until he spoke. Then a cry of pleasure broke from the baby's lips, and he ran to the arms reached out to clasp him.
“We'll go home now,” he said, as if anxious to regain possession of the child.
“Not back to Grubb's court,” was answered by Mr. Paulding. “If you are going to be a new man, you must have a new and better home, and I've found one for you just a little way from here. It's a nice clean room, and I'll take you there. The rent is six dollars a month, but you can easily pay that when you get fairly to work.”
The room was in the second story of a small house, better kept than most of its neighbors, and contained a comfortable bed, with other needed furniture, scanty, but clean and good. It was to Mr. Hall like the chamber of a prince compared with what he had known for a long time; and as he looked around him and comprehended something of the blessed change that was coming over his life, tears filled his eyes.
“Bring Andy around in the morning,” said the missionary as he turned to go. “Mrs. Paulding will take good care of him.”
That night, after undressing the child and putting on him the clean night-gown which good Mrs. Paulding had not forgotten, he said,
“And now Andy will say his prayers.”
Andy looked at him with wide-open, questioning eyes. Mr. Hall saw that he was not understood.
“You know, 'Now I lay me'?” he said.
“No, don't know it,” replied Andy.
“'Our Father,' then?”
The child knit his brow. It was plain that he did not understand what his good friend meant.
“You've said your prayers?”
Andy shook his head in a bewildered way.
“Never said your prayers!” exclaimed Mr. Hall, in a voice so full of surprise and pain that Andy grew half frightened.
“Poor baby!” was said, pityingly, a moment after. Then the question, “Wouldn't you like to say your prayers?” brought the quick answer, “Yes.”
“Kneel down, then, right here.” Andy knelt, looking up almost wonderingly into the face that bent over him.
“We have a good Father in heaven,” said Mr. Hall, with tender reverence in his tone, pointing upward as he spoke, “He loves us and takes care of us. He brought you to me, and told me to love you and take care of you for him, and I'm going to do it. Now, I want you to say a little prayer to this good and kind Father before you go to bed. Will you?”
“Yes, I will,” came the ready answer.
“Say it over after me. 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'”
Andy repeated the words, his little hands clasped together, and followed through the verse which thousands of little children in thousands of Christian homes were saying at the very same hour.
There was a subdued expression on the child's face as he rose from his knees; and when Mr. Hall lifted him from the floor to lay him in bed, he drew his arms about his neck and hugged him tightly.
How beautiful the child looked as he lay with shut eyes, the long brown lashes fringing his flushed cheeks, that seemed already to have gained a healthy roundness! The soft breath came through his parted lips, about which still lingered the smile of peace that rested there after his first prayer was said; his little hands lay upon his breast.
As Mr. Hall sat gazing at this picture there came a rap on his door. Then the missionary entered. Neither of the men spoke for some moments. Mr. Paulding comprehended the scene, and felt its sweet and holy influence.
“Blessed childhood!” he said, breaking the silence. “Innocent childhood! The nearer we come to it, the nearer we get to heaven.” Then, after a pause, he added, “And heaven is our only hope, Mr. Hall.”
“I have no hope but in God's strength,” was answered, in a tone of solemn earnestness.
“God is our refuge, our rock of defence, our hiding-place, our sure protector. If we trust in him, we shall dwell in safety,” said the mission. “I am glad to hear you speak of hoping in God. He will give you strength if you lean upon him, and there is not power enough in all hell to drag you down if you put forth this God-given strength. But remember, my friend, that you must use it as if it were your own. You must resist. God's strength outside of our will and effort is of no use to any of us in temptation. But looking to our Lord and Saviour in humble yet earnest prayer for help in the hour of trial and need if we put forth our strength in resistance of evil, small though it be, then into our weak efforts will come an influx of divine power that shall surely give us the victory. Have you a Bible?”
Mr. Hall shook his head.
“I have brought you one;” and the missionary drew a small Bible from his pocket. “No man is safe without a Bible.”
“Oh, I am glad! I was just wishing for a Bible,” said Hall as he reached out his hand to receive the precious book.
“If you read it every night and morning—if you treasure its holy precepts in your memory, and call them up in times of trial, or when evil enticements are in your way—God can come near to your soul to succor and to save, for the words of the holy book are his words, and he is present in them. If we take them into our thoughts, reverently seeking to obey them, we make a dwelling-place for the Lord, so that he can abide with us; and in his presence there is safety.”
“And nowhere else,” responded Hall, speaking from a deep sense of personal helplessness.
“Nowhere else,” echoed the missionary. “And herein lies the hope or the despair of men. It is pitiful, it is heart-aching, to see the vain but wild and earnest efforts made by the slaves of intemperance to get free from their cruel bondage. Thousands rend their fetters every year after some desperate struggle, and escape. But, alas! how many are captured and taken back into slavery! Appetite springs upon them in some unguarded moment, and in their weakness there is none to succor. They do not go to the Strong for strength, but trust in themselves, and are cast down. Few are ever redeemed from the slavery of intemperance but those who pray to God and humbly seek his aid. And so long as they depend on him, they are safe. He will be as a wall of fire about them.”
As the missionary talked, the face of Mr. Hall underwent a remarkable change. It grew solemn and very thoughtful. His hands drew together and the fingers clasped. At the last words of Mr. Paulding a deep groan came from his heart; and lifting his gaze upward, he cried out,
“Lord, save me, or I perish!”
“Let us pray,” said the missionary, and the two men knelt together, one with bowed head and crouching body, the other with face uplifted, tenderly talking to Him who had come down to the lowliest and the vilest that he might make them pure as the angels, about the poor prodigal now coming back to his Father's house.
After the prayer, Mr. paulding read a chapter from the Bible aloud, and then, after words of hope and comfort, went away.