"Isn't Aunt Sue the dearest person you ever saw!" exclaimed Helen Fairmont as she and her visitor sank into a garden seat in the beautiful grounds surrounding Mrs. Armour's lovely home. "Nothing ever seems to be too much trouble for her, if she can make others happy."
"Yes," answered Mary Sutton, "I just felt like giving her a good hug when she told you her plan. It is really just for me that she is going to let you give the picnic here."
"Just for that very reason. It will be simply fine. O, she is so sweet! You see, two weeks ago, when you wrote that finally you could arrange to visit me for the summer, I was so full of the good news that I couldn't get to Aunt Sue's quickly enough to tell her about it,—somehow one always wants to tell Aunt Sue about things,—and she said she used to go to school with your mother, and was very fond of her, and she was all ready to like you, too, and that just the very minute you reached here, we were both to come over—I mean you and I were."
"O, dear," laughed Mary, "I think you'd better stop and take a good long breath, and get the we's and you's straightened."
"I don't care," Helen went chattering on. "You know what I mean, just what we've done. We, you and I,—is that right?—were to come to her house and choose what kind of entertainment we wanted her to give, so you might meet my friends."
"Who thought of the garden picnic?" inquired Mary, her face all animation. Then, not waiting for Helen's answer, she said, enthusiastically, "Isn't this a beautiful spot in which to have a picnic?"
The girls stopped talking long enough to look about at the pride of Mrs. Armour's heart, the lovely grounds round her home. They surrounded a fine old house of colonial type, for which they made a pretty setting. A double row of dignified and ancient elms flanked a pathway leading from the gate. The lawn on each side of the walk made one think of the answer the English gardener gave to the inquiry as to the cause of the velvety beauty of England's lawns. "Why, sir," said he, "we sows 'em, and we mows 'em, and we mows 'em, and we sows 'em." Mrs. Armour's lawn had the appearance of having undergone a like experience. At the back and sides of the house was a variety of shrubs and bushes whose blossoms in the spring made the place indescribably sweet. Mrs. Armour boasted that there were forty kinds of bushes, but her husband laughingly said that he had never been able to count more than thirty-nine and a half; "for you certainly couldn't call that Japanese dwarf a whole one!"
June roses ran riot in season. Later, more cultivated varieties, blooming regularly through the summer, took their part in providing fragrance. Sweet, old-fashioned garden plants and more valuable products, procured at much trouble and expense, helped to make a bower that might have satisfied even more fastidious eyes than those which reveled in them now.
Mrs. Armour's great delight was in using her garden, and she had given Helen the privilege of inviting all her young friends to picnic there the following Thursday evening.
"And, O Mary, you just can't imagine how pretty it is here with the Chinese lanterns swung from tree to tree, and the dainty tables scattered round!" Helen scarcely contain herself.
Mary laughed merrily. She was equally delighted but naturally she took everything in a more quiet manner. Smiling at Helen's exuberance of spirit, she asked, "What was it your aunt said about the sandwiches?"
"She wants to help us make them, and she was telling me she'd like me to cut them a little more carefully than I did the last time I helped her. You'd never think Aunt Sue has a hobby, would you?"
"No, I don't think I should."
"Well, she has. She's the most particular old darling about little things that you ever saw. Now those sandwiches I made I will admit were not cut very evenly, but, dear me! they tasted good enough. Tom Canton ate six. I told her so, but she said they should have looked good, too."
"Well, what's her hobby?"
"I just told you. It's trifles. She says life is made of them, and trifles with the rough edges polished off make beautiful lives. And she loves to quote such things as, 'Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.' She says trifles decide almost everything for us, and shape our characters. She says it is interesting to study how most big things grow from little ones.
"Helen, I think she's right." Mary's dark, thoughtful eyes looked into her friend's.
"O, I don't! It isn't trifles, trifles, that decide things and make the real difference. It is the big things. For instance, it is brother Tom's education in the school of technology that placed him in the responsible position we are all so proud of him for obtaining."
"Yes, but I heard him say himself that he just happened, by mistake, to leave one of his scribbled figures on your uncle's desk, and your uncle, picking it up by mistake, too, said that a boy who could do that should have a chance at the right training."
"Why, that's a fact, Mary mine," said Helen, in surprise. "I never thought of it in that way. Well, I won't agree that it happens so often. For example,"—glancing about for an idea, she caught sight of a young man, a former schoolmate, passing just in front of the Armour home,—"for example, I don't suppose it was a trifle that made Alson Jarvis turn out the kind of individual he has become lately. He used to be a fine boy, but I am afraid he is getting dissipated. He doesn't go with our crowd much now. I guess he is not invited the way he used to be before he began going with those South Town boys."
"I wish I could prove to you my side of the argument. Let's try your Aunt Sue's idea of studying how the big things come from little ones. Wouldn't it be interesting to find the cause of this one case? I would not be one bit surprised if it were just some little thing which was the pivot that turned him."
"All right," agreed Helen. "I don't believe your theory, but it would be fun, as you say, to try it. Will"—Will was her brother—"insists Al's not so black as he has been painted lately. We will get Will to find out for us if he can."
Then the talk drifted to the more absorbing subject of sandwiches and cakes.
At dinner-time the two girls confided to the accommodating Will their desire to find what had changed Al.
"Trying to pry into private closets, regardless of the kind of welcome their enclosed skeletons may accord you, are you?" said Will, banteringly.
Mary, not accustomed to his teasing, blushed, wondering if she had really been guilty of an indelicate presumption, but Helen spoke up quickly in their defense:—
"Now, Will you know perfectly well it is not any such thing. As a pledge of our good faith—does that sound nice and lawyer-like?" Will was studying law, and Helen, too, liked to tease occasionally—"I do affirm that if you will do that for us, I will do something nice for him, on your account."
"Then I certainly will. It is what I have been trying to convince you for a month that you ought to do."
The girls told him why it was they were so anxious to know more of Alson's private affairs.
"I would like to prove that your Aunt Sue and I are right, you know," saidMary.
"Well," said Will, turning to his sister's guest, "don't let them prejudice you against Al. He is off the track just now, I know. The girls are not having much to do with him, but I have seen worse than he is." Will went off whistling. The next day he was ready with his report.
"Girls," he began, "Mary wins in the argument about trifles, and as a result I am feeling pretty mean about the business. I guess I am the trifle in the case."
Both girls laughed as they glanced at his six feet of length, and his great, broad shoulders.
"O, it is no laughing matter," he said, good-naturedly. "This is the way it happened: Washington's birthday, you know, everything in town was closed, and I thought, as Al was living in a boarding-house, I would better ask mother if I might bring him home the night before, and have him spend the day here with us; we were going to have a kind of celebration anyway, you know. So about seven o'clock that evening, just before I started for the travel lecture, I ran up to mother's room. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she would not include Al in the number of her guests, when I noticed that she looked pretty blue. I know she whisked away a tear so I should not get sight of it. I pretended I didn't see it but I said, 'Got some troubles, little mother?'"
Helen knew in just what a hearty, cheerful way he said it.
"'Not very many, dear,' she said; but I didn't feel like bothering her about anything then, and decided it would do just as well to bring Al home the following Saturday night and keep him over Sunday."
Will looked dubious.
"But it didn't do," he continued. "Having nothing to keep him busy that holiday, Al went off with a crowd he had always before refused to join—a pretty gay set, I am afraid. The man who had half promised him the position he had been slaving for during the past year happened to see him with those people, and the very next day he informed Al very curtly that, after due consideration, he found he had no place for him. Alson guessed why, and now he feels reckless, and says he might as well have the game as the name, might as well be really bad since he has to suffer anyway. He talked in a desperate sort of way this morning when he told me about it. Somehow I feel responsible for the whole thing, because I hesitated about asking mother."
Will looked thoughtfully across at the girls, whose faces expressed real sympathy. Suddenly Helen exclaimed:—
"The night before Washington's birthday, you say?"
"Yes."
"Mother was nearly crying alone in her room?"
"Yes."
"About seven o'clock?"
"Yes. Is this a cross-examination?"
"Then," said Helen, sitting upright and paying no attention to her brother's question, "it's all my fault."
"How?"
"Bridget was out that evening, and I had to stay home from the lecture to put away the dinner things and I said I did not see why I always had to do such disagreeable things. I did not see why all our relations were rich, and why we had to be always scrimping and missing everything. Of course I repented in a little while and apologized. It made mother feel pretty bad, I knew, but I did not think she minded it as much as that, though."
"It was a pretty serious mix-up all around, wasn't it, sister?" Will spoke consolingly, but he looked worried.
"Well," came Mary's soothing tones, "you must not take all the blame, for probably there were a great many more 'little nothings' that had something to do with it. Al must take his share, too."
"Yes, perhaps," said Will; "but we have to take the blame that belongs to us."
Helen was aghast at the enormous result of her few minutes' irritability. Such outbursts were not common with her. There was a catch in her voice as she said, "Poor Al!"
Mary went directly to the heart of the matter. "It is done," she said. "It is somebody's fault, of course, but what is to be done first to rectify it?"
"I don't know, I am sure," Helen answered, musingly. "I have not had a thought of anything but the garden picnic for the last two days, and I don't seem to have any idea but picnic in my head."
"O, good!" ejaculated Mary. The joy of the discoverer shone in her eyes."The picnic! That is just the thing. Ask him, of course."
Alson Jarvis had hidden the hurts of his schoolmates' recent slights under a nonchalant manner. Each one, while it cut deeply, seemed to aggravate him to greater wilfulness. Well bred as he was, took no real pleasure in the sports of the company of which he had made a part since the loss of the position he so desired, and for which he had worked so faithfully. He felt himself disgraced and barred from the old associates; so, from pure discouragement, he continued with the new.
Helen Fairmont's note of invitation came as a surprise. It ran:—
"DEAR ALSON: I am inviting, for Aunt Sue, a number of my friends to meet Miss Mary Sutton, my guest from Amosville. We are to have a garden picnic Thursday evening. I think you will enjoy meeting Miss Sutton, as she has the same love for golf you have, and I have already told her of the scores you made last summer. Yours sincerely,
He read it with pleasure. Then the accumulated unkindnesses of his old friends came before him. A spirit of resentment took hold of him. No, they had shown how little they cared for him. Why should he go among them again? There was plenty of other company he could enter. But why had she asked him if she did not want him? O, well, they were all alike anyway! Even if she had not already done so, Helen would pass him by sooner or later, like so many of the others. But Will Fairmont had stuck to him. Maybe he had got his sister to pity him. Al winced at the thought. "I am getting contemptible. Will Fairmont would not do that. O, well, I might as well be done with them all right now!" His eyes flashed defiantly. Then he caught sight of the little note.
"Friendly enough," he said. "Sounds as honest and sincere as her brother."Then he added: "I might give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. Yes,I will go, if for no other reason than that she is Will's sister."
He went. And he enjoyed himself thoroughly thanks partially to Mrs. Armour's knowledge of human nature. Where others saw only weakness, she found smarting hurts. She felt that he was on dangerous ground, that he was ashamed of himself, and that his self-pride and self-respect needed propping, and she immediately proceeded to prop them.
Helen's grief over her own unsuspected part in his career resulted in an especial effort to make the picnic a pleasure and success for him. With that kindly compliance which is more common in those about us than we sometimes think, the other young people accepted the idea of Alson's being one of them again, and he found himself, before the termination of the evening, on almost his old footing with them.
"Wasn't it a success all round?" said Mary that night. "I congratulate you,Helen, on your ability to extend real hospitality. It was just lovely."
"They did seem to have a good time, didn't they? Al Jarvis was on my conscience all the evening. Do you think he enjoyed himself?"
"Yes, I do, Helen."
"After what I did it was such a little return to make."
Simultaneously the girls laughed.
"Trifles again! They keep bobbing up, don't they? I suppose this is one of those of little consequence."
"'Time will tell,'" sententiously quoted Mary.
Time did tell. Years afterward two successful lawyers sat in an office, one congratulating the other on his brilliant speech of the day.
"It might never have been, Will," said Alson Jarvis, "if your aunt hadn't somehow, without a single definite word on the subject, shown me the broken road down which I had about decided to travel through It was at a party she had in her grounds one night long ago for your sister and Mary Sutton. Do you remember it?"
Did he? Will's heart glowed with pleasure and gratitude as he thought of the great result of Mary's little suggestion about inviting Al. How unlike this was the outcome of that miserable trifle which had played so important a part in the lawyer's experience.—Elisabeth Golden, in the Wellspring.
Finish Thy Work
No other hand thy special task can do,Though trivial it may seem to thee.Thou canst not shirkGod-given workAnd still be blest of Heaven, from sin be free.O idler in life's ripened harvest-field,Perform thy task, that rich thy work may yield!
Ah, sweet the thought that comes at set of sun,If finished is the work of that one day.But O the joyWithout alloy,Awaiting him who at life's close can say,"I'm ready, Father, to go home to thee;The work is finished which thou gavest me."
A College Scene
It was commencement day at college. The people were pouring into the church as I entered. Finding the choice seats already taken, I pressed onward, looking to the right and the left for a vacancy, and on the very front row I found one. Here a little girl moved along to make room for me, looking into my face with large gray eyes, whose brightness was softened by very long lashes. Her face was open and fresh as a newly blown rose. Again and again I found my eyes turning to the rose-like face, and each time the gray eyes moved, half-smiling, to meet mine. Evidently the child was ready to make friends with me. And when, with a bright smile, she returned my dropped handkerchief, we seemed fairly introduced.
"There is going to be a great crowd," she said to me.
"Yes," I replied; "people always like to see how schoolboys are made into men."
Her face beamed with pleasure and pride as she said: "My brother is going to graduate; he's going to speak. I have brought these flowers to throw at him."
They were not greenhouse favorites, but just old-fashioned domestic flowers, such as we associate with the dear grandmothers. "But," I thought, "they will seem sweet and beautiful to him, for his little sister's sake."
"That is my brother," she went on, pointing with her nosegay.
"The one with the light hair?" I asked.
"O, no;" she said, smiling and shaking her head in innocent reproof; "not that homely one with red hair; that handsome one with brown, wavy hair. His eyes look brown, too; but they are not, they are dark blue. There! he's got his hand up to his head now. You see him, don't you?"
In an eager way she looked from him to me, as if some important fate depended on my identifying her brother.
"I see him," I said. "He is a very good-looking brother."
"Yes, he is beautiful," she said, with artless delight, "and he's good, and he studies so hard. He has taken care of me ever since mama died. Here is his name on the program. He is not the valedictorian, but he has an honor for all that."
I saw in the little creature's familiarity with these technical college terms that she had closely identified herself with her brother's studies, hopes, and successes.
"He thought at first," she continued, "that he would write on 'The Romance of Monastic Life.'"
What a strange sound these long words had, whispered from her childish lips! Her interest in her brother's work had stamped them on the child's memory, and to her they were ordinary things.
"But then," she went on, "he decided that he would write on 'Historical Parallels,' and he has a real good oration, and says it beautifully. He has said it to me a great many times. I almost know it by heart. O, it begins so pretty and so grand! This is the way it begins," she added, encouraged by the interest she must have seen in my face: "'Amid the combinations of actors and forces that make up the great kaleidoscope of history, we often find a turn of Destiny's hand.'"
"Why, bless the baby!" I thought, looking down into her proud face. I cannot describe how very odd and elfish it did seem to have those sonorous words rolling out of the smiling mouth. The band striking up put an end to the quotation and to the confidences. As the exercises progressed and approached nearer and nearer the effort on which all her interest was concentrated, my little friend became excited and restless. Her eyes grew larger and brighter; two deep red spots glowed on her cheek. She touched up the flowers, manifestly making the offering ready for the shrine.
"Now it's his turn," she said, turning to me a face in which pride and delight and anxiety seemed equally mingled. But when the overture was played through, and his name was called, the child seemed, in her eagerness, to forget me and all the earth except him. She rose to her feet and leaned forward for a better view of her beloved as he mounted to the speaker's stand. I knew by her deep breathing that her heart was throbbing in her throat. I knew, too, by the way her brother came to the front, that he was trembling. The hands hung limp: his face was pallid, and the lips blue, as with cold. I felt anxious. The child, too, seemed to discern that things were not well with him. Something like fear showed in her face.
He made an automatic bow. Then a bewildered, struggling look came into his face, then a helpless look, and he stood staring vacantly, like a somnambulist, at the waiting audience. The moments of painful suspense went by, and he still stood as if struck down. I saw how it was; he had been seized with stage fright.
Alas, little sister! She turned her large, dismayed eves on me. "He's forgotten it," she said. Then a swift change came over her face, a strong, determined look; and on the funeral-like silence of the room broke the sweet child voice:—
"'Amid the combinations of actors and forces that make up the great kaleidoscope of history, we often find that a turn of Destiny's hand—'"
Everybody about us turned and looked. The breathless silence, the sweet, childish voice, the childish face, the long, unchildlike words, produced a weird effect.
But the help had come too late; the unhappy brother was already staggering in humiliation from the stage. The band quickly struck up, and waves of lively music were rolled out to cover the defeat.
I gave the sister a glance in which I meant to show the intense sympathy which I felt, but she did not see. Her eyes, swimming with tears, were on her brother's face. I put my arm around her. She was too absorbed to feel the caress, and before I could appreciate her purpose she was on her way to the shame-stricken young man, sitting with a face like a statue's. When he saw her by his side, the set face relaxed, and a quick mist came into his eyes. The young men got closer together to make room for her. She sat down beside him, laid her flowers upon his knee, and slipped her hand into his. I could not keep my eyes from her sweet, pitying face. I saw her whisper to him, he bending a little to catch her word. Later, I found out that she was asking him if he knew his "piece" now, and that he answered yes.
When the young man next on the list had spoken, and the band was playing, the child, to the brother's great surprise, made her way up the platform steps, and pressed through the throng of professors, trustees, and distinguished visitors, to the president.
"If you please, sir," she said, with a little courtesy, "will you and the trustees let my brother try again? He knows his 'piece' now."
For a moment, the president stared at her through his gold-bowed spectacles, and then, appreciating the child's petition, he smiled on her, and went down and spoke to the young man who had failed.
So it happened that when the band had again ceased playing, it was briefly announced that Mr. Duane would now deliver his oration, "Historic Parallels."
"'Amid the combinations of actors and forces that——'" This the little sister whispered to him as he arose to answer the summons.
A ripple of heightened and expectant interest passed over the audience, and then all sat stone-still as if fearing to breathe lest the speaker might again take fright. No danger. The hero in the youth was aroused. He went at his "piece" with a set purpose to conquer, to redeem himself, and to bring back the smile into the child's tear-stained face. I watched the face during the speaking. The wide eyes, the parted lips, the whole rapt being, said the breathless audience was forgotten, that her spirit was moving with his.
And when the address was ended, with the ardent abandon of one who catches enthusiasm, in the realization that he is fighting down a wrong judgment and conquering a sympathy, the effect was really thrilling. That dignified audience broke into rapturous applause; bouquets intended for the valedictorian rained like a tempest. And the child who had helped save the day, that one beaming little face, in its pride and gladness, is something to be forever remembered.—Our Dumb Animals.
"It may be a folly, but you would not think of calling extravagance a sin?" asked a young man of his minister.
"I do not care to offend you by harsh terms, but if we agree that it is a folly, that is reason enough for wishing to be wiser."
"But it is very easy to spend money when one is with others, and one does not like to be called 'tight.'"
"John," said the minister, "I do not propose to argue with you, but I want to tell you two stories, both of them true, recent, and out of my own experience. They will illustrate the reason why, knowing you as well as I do, having baptized you and received you into the church, I cannot view without concern your growing extravagance, and the company into which it leads you, and the interests from which it tends to separate you.
"A few months ago a young man came to this city, and spent his first days here under my own roof. I have known his father for many years, an earnest, faithful man, who has denied himself for that boy, and prayed for him, and done everything that a father ought.
"I chance to remember a word which his father spoke to me a number of years ago, when the boy was a young lad, and was recovering from a sickness that made it seem possible he would need a change of climate. I happen to remember meeting his father, who told me of this, and how he was arranging in his own mind to change his business, to make any sacrifice, to move to the ends of the earth, if necessary, for that boy's sake.
"The boy is not a bad boy. But he had not been in my home an hour before he asked me for the address of a tailor, and when his new suit came,—a suit which I thought he might very well have waited to earn,—it was silk-lined throughout. I do not believe the suit which his father wears as he passes the plate in church every Sunday is silk-lined.
"I knew what the boy was to earn, and could estimate what he could afford, and I knew that he could not buy that suit out of his own earnings.
"I had a letter from his father a few days ago. Shall I read it to you? It is very short. It reads as follows:—
"'MY DEAR FRIEND: I hope you will never know how hard it is for me to write to you to say that you must not under any circumstances lend money to my dear boy.'
"And those last three words make it the more pathetic.
"The second story, too, is recent. Another boy, from another State, came to this city, and for the first few Sundays attended our church. We tried to interest him in good things; we liked him, and did our best for him. I saw little in him to disturb me, except that he was spending more money than I could think he earned. Recently I received a letter from his father. It is longer, and I will not read it, but will tell you the substance of it. He wrote saying that his son was employed in a business where, with economy, he ought to be able to make a living from the start, and with hope for advancement, but that from the first week he had written home for money. Not only so, but the father had all too good reason to believe that the boy was still leaving bills unpaid. The father wrote to ask me whether he could not arrange with some one connected with the church to receive the boy's money from home week by week, and see that it was applied to the uses for which it was sent. He added that he would be glad to consider himself a contributor to the church during the period of this arrangement.
"I had little hope that any arrangement of this kind would help matters, but I took it as indicating that the boy needed looking after, and I sent at once to look him up. Where do you think we found him?—In jail.
"These are not imaginary stories, nor are they of a remote past. And I see other young men for whom I am anxious. Wear the coat a little longer, but pay for it out of your own money. Be considered 'tight' if necessary, but live within your means. It is good sense; more than that, it is good religion.
"And now I will answer your question, or rather, you may answer it: Is extravagance merely a folly, or is it also a sin? What do you think?"—Youth's Companion.
Near one of the tiny schoolhouses of the West is a carefully tended mound, the object of the tenderest interest on the part of a man known far and wide as "Preacher Jim," a rough, unministerial-looking person, who yet has reached the hearts and lives of many of the men and women in that region, and has led them to know the Master whom he serves in his humble fashion.
Twenty years ago Preacher Jim was a different man. Rough and untaught, his only skill was shown by the dexterity with which he manipulated the cards that secured to him his livelihood. Then, as now, he was widely known, but in those days his title was "Gambler Jim."
It was during a long, tiresome trip across the Rockies that a clergyman and his wife, having undressed their little boy and tucked him snugly into his berth, repaired to the observation-car in order to watch the November heavens.
An hour passed swiftly; then suddenly a rough-looking fellow made his way toward the group of which the clergyman was one.
"Anybody here got a kid what's dressed in a red nightgown and sings like a bird?" he demanded, awkwardly.
The father and mother sprang excitedly to their feet, gasping in fear. The man nodded reassuringly.
"The' ain't nothing the matter of him," he said, with yet deeper embarrassment. "The matter's with—us. You're a parson, ain't you? The kid, he's been singin' to us—an' talkin'. If you don't mind, we'd take it mighty good of you to come with me. Not you, ma'am. The kid's all safe, an' the parson'll bring him back in a little while."
With a word to his wife, the minister followed his guide toward the front of the train, and on through car after car until thirteen of them had been traversed. As the two men opened the door of the smoking compartment, they stopped to look and listen.
Up on one of the tables stood the tiny boy, his face flushed, his voice shrill and sweet.
"Isyou ready?" he cried, insistently. "My papa says the Bridegroom is Jesus, an' he wants everybody to be ready when he comes, just 'cause he loves you." Then, with a childish sweetness, came the song which had evidently made the deepest impression upon the child's mind: "Are you ready for the Bridegroom when he comes?"
"He's sung it over 'n' over," whispered the clergyman's companion, "'nd I couldn't stan' no more. He said you'd pray, parson."
As the two approached, the boy lifted his sweet, serious eyes to his father's.
"They want to get ready," he said, simply. And, his boy snuggled childishly in his arms, the minister prayed, as he never had prayed before, for the men gathered about the child.
It was only a few moments before the clergyman bore the child back to the sleeping-car, where the mother anxiously awaited his coming. Then he returned to talk with the men, four of whom that night decided to "get ready," and among them was, of course, the man who sought out the father of the child, Gambler Jim.
To this day it remains a mystery how the child succeeded in reaching the smoking-car unnoticed and unhindered.
As for the little fellow himself, his work was early done, for a few weeks later, upon the return trip through the mountains, he was suddenly stricken with a swift and terrible disease, and the parents tenderly laid the little form under the sod near the schoolhouse where Preacher Jim now tells so often the story, which never grows old.—Youth's Companion.
Christ Is Coming
Little children, Christ is coming,Coming through the flaming sky,To convey his trusting childrenTo their glorious home on high
Do you love the Lord's appearing?Are you waiting for the dayWhen with all his shining angelsHe will come in grand array?
All who keep the ten commandmentsWill rejoice his face to see;But the wicked, filled with anguish,From his presence then will flee
Now while yet probation lingers,Now while mercy's voice is heard,Haste to give your heart to Jesus,Seek to understand his Word
Quickly help to spread the message,You to Christ some soul may turn.Though the multitudes his goodnessAnd his tender love may spurn.
Little children, Christ is coming,Even God's beloved Son;When in glory he descendeth,Will he say to you, "Well done"?
"Grandmother, do you know where I can find a little bit of wire?" asked Marjorie, running from the shed, where an amateur circus was in preparation.
Grandmother went to a little closet in the room and disappeared a moment, coming out presently with the wire.
"O, yes! and Fred wanted me to ask if you had a large safety-pin." Marjorie looked a little wistful, as if she did not quite like to bother grandmother.
There was another trip made to the closet, and the safety-pin was inMarjorie's hand.
"You are a pretty nice grandma," she said, over her shoulder, as she ran out.
Not very long after, Marjorie came into the kitchen again. This time she stood beside the sink, where grandmother was washing dishes, and twisted her little toes in her sandals, but seemed afraid to speak.
"Fred wants to know"—began grandmother, laughing.
"Yes'm," said Marjorie, blushing.
"If I can't find him a piece of strong string?" finished grandmother.
"O, no—it's a little brass tack!" declared Marjorie, soberly.
She was a patient, loving grandmother, and she went to the little closet again. Marjorie could hardly believe her eyes when she saw the tacks, for there were three!
"He—said—" she began slowly, and stopped.
"You ought to tell him to come and say it himself," and grandmother laughed; "but we will forgive him this time. Was it 'Thank you,' he said?"
"He feels 'Thank you' awfully, I'm sure," said Marjorie, politely, "but what he said was that if wasn't too much bother—well, he could use a kind of hook thing."
Her grandmother produced a long iron hook, and Marjorie looked at her wonderingly. "Are you a fairy?" she asked, timidly. "You must have a wand and just make things."
Grandmother laughed. "Come here," she said. And she opened the little dark closet, and from the shelf took a long wooden box. This she brought to the table, and when she opened it, Marjorie gave a little cry of delight. It seemed to her that there was a little of everything in it. There were bits of string, pins, colored paper, bobbins, balls, pieces of felt, and every sort of useful thing generally thrown away.
"When I knew my grandchildren were coming here to spend the summer," she said, "I began on this box, and whenever I find anything astray that would naturally be thrown out I just put it in."
"Do you want me to help save, too?" asked Marjorie, who thought the story should have a moral.
"You must start a handy box of your own when you go back, and keep it in the nursery. You don't know how many times a day you will be able to help the others out. A little darning yarn, an odd thimble, a bit of soft linen, and all the things that clutter and would be thrown away, go to fill up a handy box. You can be the good fairy of the nursery."
"It is just wonderful!" said Marjorie. "If I had a little—just a little wooden box, I would begin today, and when I go home I can have a larger one."
Grandmother smiled, and brought out a smaller wooden box, just the right size. From that moment Marjorie was a collector, and her usefulness began.—Mira Jenks Stafford, in Youth's Companion.
My parents and their six children, including myself, lived in Flintville, Wisconsin, near the Suamico River and Pond, where a great number of logs had been floated in for lumber. On the opposite side from us were woods, where wintergreen berries were plentiful. One pleasant Sunday morning in October, 1857, one of our playmates came to ask mother if we, my older sister, a younger brother, and I, might go with her to pick some of these berries.
Mother said we might go if we would go down the river and cross the bridge. She knew that we had crossed the pond several times on the logs, but the water was unusually high for that time of the year, and there was danger in crossing that way. We promised to cross by the bridge, really intending when we left home to do so. Mother let my two younger sisters, one four and the other six years old, go with us.
We left the house as happy as could be. My mother smiled as she stood in the door and watched us go. She had always trusted us, and we seldom disobeyed her. But this time we had our playmate with us, and the had been in the habit of having her own way. As she was a little older than we were, we thought that what she said or did was all right.
We had gone but a short distance when this girl, whose name was Louise, suggested that we run across the logs, and get to the berries so much the sooner. We reminded her of what our mother had told us; but she said, "Your mother does not know how snug the logs are piled in, and that it would be such fun, and no danger, to cross on them."
We began to look at the matter in the same way, and after playing a few minutes, we started across. I took one of my little sisters, and Louise was going to take the younger one; but, as she was about to start, her brother, whom she had not seen for some time, drove up and took her home with him. My brother, thinking he could take our little sister across, started with her, but I called to him to go back and wait for me to do it; for I was then about half-way over. The stream was not wide, and he thought he could take her over as well as I.
Just as I started back, O, what a sight met my eyes! I saw my little sister slip off the log into the water. I ran to catch her, but was not quick enough. As I reached for her, my brother and I both rolled from the log into the water with her. Then my sister, who had been standing on the bank to see if we got over safely, came to our rescue; but we were so frightened that we caught hold of her, and, instead of her pulling us out, we pulled her in with us.
By that time our screams had reached our mother's ears, and she came running to see what the trouble was. She saw only one of us, as the others were under water, or nearly so, and, supposing there was only one in the water, she came on the logs to help. By the time she got to us, the logs were under motion, so that she could not stand on them; and she, too, fell into the water.
The six-year-old sister, whom I had taken across, saw it all and made an attempt to come to us. Mother called to her to go back. She turned back, and reached the shore all right. Just as mother spoke, she felt something come against her feet. She raised her foot with the weight, and caught the dress of little Emeline, who was sinking for the last time. Mother managed to hold her till help came.
It being Sunday, nearly every man that lived near was away from home. Fortunately, a Mr. Flint, who had company visiting him, was at home. The men were eating their dinner when a woman who had seen us in the water rushed into the dining-room and told them that Mr. Tripp's family were in the mill-pond drowning. They rushed from the table, tipping it over and breaking some dishes.
When they reached us, the logs and water were so disturbed that nothing could be done for us until boards were brought to lay on the logs. During this time I had caught hold of a log that was crowded between others, so I could pull myself up without rolling, but could get no farther. My sister Sarah and brother Willard were helped ashore. Emeline, whom mother had been trying hard to hold up, was taken out, but showed no signs of life. She was laid on a log while they helped mother out.
As soon as mother saw Emeline, she told the men to turn her on her stomach. They then saw that there was life. She was quickly taken to the house, and cared for by an old lady we called Aunt Betsey, who had come to help.
While taking mother to shore, the nine men who had come to our rescue fell into the water. They all had to walk on the same long board to get to shore. The boards having been placed so very quickly, it was not noticed, until too late, that one was unsafe. The men were near enough to shore where they fell in, so that they could touch bottom, and were not long in getting out.
Mother had to be taken home, where she was cared for by the best help we could procure. It was impossible to get a doctor where we lived in those days. Little Emeline and mother were watched over all night, and at sunrise the next morning they were pronounced out of danger.
The men who fell in got off with only an unpleasant wetting. The water was quite cold; the pond froze over the following night. They did not start for home that day, as they were intending to do, but spent the rest of the day drying their clothing.
About noon our father, who had been away for three days, came home. When he heard the story of our disaster, he wept, and thanked God for sparing our lives.
All this happened because we did not obey our mother; and we children never forgot the lesson.
Likes and Dislikes
I had a little talk today—An argument with Dan and Ike:First Dan, he said 'twas not his wayTo do the things he didn't like.
And Ike, he said that Dan was wrong;That only cowards dodged and hid.Because it made him brave and strong,The things he didn't like, he did!
But then I showed to Ike and DanAn easy way between the two:I always try, as best I can,To like the things I have to do.
—Arthur Guiterman, in Youth's Companion.
The work of David Livingstone in Africa was so far that of a missionary-explorer and general that the field of his labor is too broad to permit us to trace individual harvests. No one man can quickly scatter seed over so wide an area. But there is one marvelous story connected with his death, the like of which has never been written on the scroll of human history. All the ages may safely be challenged to furnish its parallel.
On the night of his death he called for Susi, his faithful servant, and, after some tender ministries had been rendered to the dying man, Livingstone said: "All right; you may go out now," and Susi reluctantly left him alone. At four o'clock the next morning, May 1, Susi and Chuma, with four other devoted attendants, anxiously entered that grass hut at Ilala. The candle was still burning, but the greater light of life had gone out. Their great master, as they called him, was on his knees, his body stretched forward, his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. With silent awe, they stood apart and watched him, lest they should invade the privacy of prayer. But he did not stir; there was not even the motion of breathing, but a suspicious rigidity of inaction. Then one of them, Matthew, softly came near and gently laid his hands upon Livingstone's cheeks. It was enough; the chill of death was there. The great father of Africa's dark children was dead, and they were orphans. The most refined and cultured Englishmen would have been perplexed as to what course to take. They were surrounded by superstitious and unsympathetic savages, to whom the unburied remains of the dead man would be an object of dread. His native land was six thousand miles away, and even the coast was fifteen hundred. A grave responsibility rested upon these simple-minded sons of the Dark Continent, to which few of the wisest would have been equal. Those remains, with his valuable journals, instruments, and personal effects, must be carried to Zanzibar. But the body must first be preserved from decay, and they had no skill nor facilities for embalming; and if preserved, there were no means of transportation—no roads nor carts. No beasts of burden being available, the body must be borne on the shoulders of human beings; and, as no strangers could be trusted, they must themselves undertake the journey and the sacred charge.
These humble children of the forest were grandly equal to the occasion, and they resolved among themselves to carry the body to the seashore, and not give it into other hands until they could surrender it to his countrymen. Moreover, to insure safety to the remains and security to the bearers, it must be done with secrecy. They would gladly have kept secret even their master's death, but the fact could not be concealed. God, however, disposed Chitambo and his subjects to permit these servants of the great missionary to prepare his emaciated body for its last journey, in a hut built for the purpose, on the outskirts of the village.
Now watch these black men as they rudely embalm the body of him who had been to them a savior. They tenderly open the chest and take out the heart and viscera. These they, with a poetic and pathetic sense of fitness, reserve for his beloved Africa. The heart that for thirty-three years had beat for her welfare must be buried in her bosom. And so one of the Nassik boys, Jacob Wainright, read the simple service of burial, and under the moula-tree at Ilala that heart was deposited, and that tree, carved with a simple inscription, became his monument. Then the body was prepared for its long journey; the cavity was filled with salt, brandy poured into the mouth, and the corpse laid out in the sun for fourteen days, and so was reduced to the condition of a mummy, Afterward it was thrust into a hollow cylinder of bark. Over this was sewed a covering of canvas. The whole package was securely lashed to a pole, and so at last was ready to be borne between two men upon their shoulders.
As yet the enterprise was scarcely begun, and the most difficult part of their task was before them. The sea was far away, and the path lay through a territory where nearly every fifty miles would bring them to a new tribe, to face new difficulties.
Nevertheless, Susi and Chuma took up their precious burden, and, looking to Livingstone's God for help, began the most remarkable funeral march on record. They followed the track their master had marked with his footsteps when he penetrated to Lake Bangweolo, passing to the south of Lake Lumbi, which is a continuation of Tanganyika, then crossing to Unyanyembe, where it was found out that they were carrying a dead body. Shelter was hard to get, or even food; and at Kasekera they could get nothing for which they asked, except on condition that they would bury the remains they were carrying.
Now indeed their love and generalship were put to a new test. But again they were equal to the emergency. They made up another package like the precious burden, only it contained branches instead of human bones; and this, with mock solemnity, they bore on their shoulders to a safe distance, scattered the contents far and wide in the brushwood, and came back without the bundle. Meanwhile others of their party had repacked the remains, doubling them up into the semblance of a bale of cotton cloth, and so they once more managed to procure what they needed and go on with their charge.
The true story of that nine months' march has never been written, and it never will be, for the full data cannot be supplied. But here is material waiting for some coming English Homer or Milton to crystallize into one of the world's noblest epics; and it deserves the master hand of a great poet artist to do it justice.
See these black men, whom some scientific philosophers would place at one remove from the gorilla, run all manner of risks, by day and night, for forty weeks; now going around by circuitous route to resort to strategem to get their precious burden through the country; sometimes forced to fight their foes in order to carry out their holy mission. Follow them as they ford the rivers and travel trackless deserts; facing torrid heat and drenching tropical storms; daring perils from wild beasts and relentless wild men; exposing themselves to the fatal fever, and burying several of their little band on the way. Yet on they went, patient and persevering, never fainting nor halting, until love and gratitude had done all that could be done, and they laid down at the feet of the British consul, on the twelfth of March, 1874, all that was left of Scotland's great hero.
When, a little more than a month later, the coffin of Livingstone was landed in England, April 15, it was felt that no less a shrine than Britain's greatest burial-place could fitly hold such precious dust. But so improbable and incredible did it seem that a few rude Africans could actually have done this splendid deed, at such a cost of time and such risk, that not until the fractured bones of the arm, which the lion crushed at Jabotsa thirty years before, identified the body, was certain that this was Livingstone's corpse. And then, on the eighteenth of April, 1874, such a funeral cortege entered the great abbey of Britain's illustrious dead as few warriors or heroes or princes ever drew to that mausoleum.
The faithful body-servants who had religiously brought home every relic of the person or property of the great missionary explorer were accorded places of honor. And well they might be. No triumphal procession of earth's mightiest conqueror ever equaled for sublimity that lonely journey through Africa's forests. An example of tenderness, gratitude, devotion, heroism, equal to this, the world had never seen. The exquisite inventiveness of a love that lavished tears as water on the feet of Jesus, and made tresses of hair a towel, and broke the alabaster flask for his anointing; the feminine tenderness that lifted his mangled body from the cross and wrapped it in new linen, with costly spices, and laid it in a virgin tomb, have at length been surpassed by the ingenious devotion of the cursed sons of Canaan.
The grandeur and pathos of that burial scene, amid the stately columns and arches of England's famous Abbey, pale in luster when contrasted with that simpler scene near Ilala, when, in God's greater cathedral of nature, whose columns and arches are the trees, whose surpliced choir are the singing birds, whose organ is the moaning wind, the grassy carpet was lifted, and dark hands laid Livingstone's heart to rest, In that great cortege that moved up the nave no truer nobleman was found than that black man, Susi, who in illness had nursed the Blantyre hero, had laid his heart in Africa's bosom, and whose hand was now upon his pall.
Let those who doubt and deride Christian missions to the degraded children of Africa, who tell us that it is not worth while to sacrifice precious lives for the sake of these doubly lost millions of the Dark Continent,—let such tell us whether it is not worth while, at any cost, to seek out and save men with whom such Christian heroism is possible.
Burn on, thou humble candle, burn within thy hut of grass,Though few may be the pilgrim feet that through Ilala pass;God's hand hath lit thee, long to shine, and shed thy holy lightTill the new day-dawn pour its beams o'er Afric's long midnight.
—Arthur T. Pierson, in "The Miracles of Missions," second series.
A lean, awkward boy came to the door of the principal of a celebrated school one morning, and asked to see him. The servant eyed his mean clothes, and thinking he looked more like a beggar than anything else, told him to go around to the kitchen. The boy did as he was bidden, and soon appeared at the back door.
"I should like to see Mr. Slade," said he.
"You want a breakfast, more like," said the servant girl, "and I can give you that without troubling him."
"Thank you," said the boy; "I should like to see Mr. Slade, if he can see me."
"Some old clothes maybe you want," remarked the servant again, eying the boy's patched clothes. "I guess he has none to spare; he gives away a sight." And, without minding the boy's request, she went about her work.
"May I see Mr. Slade?" again asked the boy, after finishing his bread and butter.
"Well, he is in the library; if he must be disturbed, he must. He does like to be alone sometimes," said the girl in a peevish tone.
She seemed to think it very foolish to admit such a fellow into her master's presence. However, she wiped her hands, and bade him follow. Opening the library door, she said:—
"Here's somebody, sir, who is dreadful anxious to see you, and so I let him in."
I do not know how the boy introduced himself, or now he opened the business, but I know that, after talking awhile, the principal put aside the volume that he was studying, and took up some Greek books, and began to examine the boy. The examination lasted for some time. Every question the principal asked was answered promptly.
"Upon my word," exclaimed the principal, "you do well!" looking at the boy from head to foot over his spectacles. "Why, my boy, where did you pick up so much?"
"In my spare moments," answered the boy.
Here was a poor, hard-working boy, with few opportunities for schooling, yet almost fitted for college by simply improving his spare moments.
Truly are spare moments the "gold-dust of time"! How precious they should be regarded! What account can you give for your spare moments? What can you show for them? Look and see. This boy can tell you how very much can be laid up by improving them; and there are many, very many other boys, I am afraid, in jail and in the house of correction, in the forecastle of a whaleship, in the gambling-house, in the tippling-shop, who, if you should ask them when they began their sinful course, might answer, "In my spare moments." "In my spare moments I gambled for marbles." "In my spare moments I began to swear and drink." "It was in my spare moments that I began to steal chestnuts from the old woman's stand." "It was in my spare moments that I gathered with wicked associates."
Then be very careful how you spend your spare moments. The tempter always hunts you out in small seasons like these; when you are not busy, he gets into your hearts, if he possibly can, in just such gaps. There he hides himself, planning all sorts of mischief Take care of your spare moments.—Selected.
[Right and generous deeds are not always rewarded nor always recognized; but the doing of them is our duty, even diough they pass unnoticed. Sometimes, however, a noble, unselfish, manly act is met by a reward that betrays, on the part of the giver, the same praiseworthy spirit as that which prompted the act. Do right, be courteous, be noble, though man may never express his appreciation. The God of right will, in his own good time, give the reward.]
I shall never forget a lesson I once received. We saw a boy named Watson driving a cow to pasture. In the evening he drove her back again, we did not know where. This was continued several weeks.
The boys attending the school were nearly all sons of wealthy parents, and some of them were dunces enough to look with disdain on a student who had to drive a cow. With admirable good nature Watson bore all their attempts to annoy him.
"I suppose, Watson," said Jackson, another boy, one day, "I suppose your father intends to make a milkman of you?"
"Why not?" asked Watson.
"O, nothing! Only don't leave much water in the cans after you rinse them, that's all."
The boys laughed, and Watson, not in the least mortified, replied:—
"Never fear. If ever I am a milkman, I'll give good measure and good milk."
The day after this conversation, there was a public examination, at which ladies and gentlemen from the neighboring towns were present, and prizes were awarded by the principal of our school. Both Watson and Jackson received a creditable number; for, in respect to scholarship, they were about equal. After the ceremony of distribution, the principal remarked that there was one prize, consisting of a gold medal, which was rarely awarded, not so much on account of its great cost, as because the instances were rare which rendered its bestowal proper. It was the prize of heroism. The last medal was awarded about three years ago to a boy in the first class, who rescued a poor girl from drowning.
The principal then said that, with the permission of the company, he would relate a short anecdote:—
"Not long ago some boys were flying a kite in the street, just as a poor lad on horseback rode by on his way to the mill. The horse took fright and threw the boy, injuring him so badly that he was carried home, and confined some weeks to his bed. Of the boys who had unintentionally caused the disaster, none followed to learn the fate of the wounded lad. There was one boy, however, who witnessed the accident from a distance, who not only went to make inquiries, but stayed to render service.
"This boy soon learned that the wounded boy was the grandson of a poor widow, whose sole support consisted in selling the milk of a cow, of which she was the owner. She was old and lame, and her grandson, on whom she depended to drive her cow to the pasture, was now helpless with his bruises. 'Never mind,' said the friendly boy, 'I will drive the cow.'
"But his kindness did not stop there. Money was wanted to get articles from the apothecary. 'I have money that my mother sent me to buy boots with,' said he, 'but I can do without them for a while.' 'O, no,' said the old woman, 'I can't consent to that; but here is a pair of heavy boots that I bought for Thomas, who can't wear them. If you would only buy these, we should get on nicely.' The boy bought the boots, clumsy as they were, and has worn them up to this time.
"Well, when it was discovered by the other boys at the school that our student was in the habit of driving a cow, he was assailed every day with laughter and ridicule. His cowhide boots in particular were made matter of mirth. But he kept on cheerfully and bravely, day after day, never shunning observation, driving the widow's cow and wearing his thick boots. He never explained why he drove the cow; for he was not inclined to make a boast of his charitable motives. It was by mere accident that his kindness and self-denial were discovered by his teacher.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, Was there not true heroism in this boy's conduct? Nay, Master Watson, do not get out of sight behind the blackboard. You were not afraid of ridicule; you must not be afraid of praise."
As Watson, with blushing cheeks, came forward, a round of applause spoke the general approbation, and the medal was presented to him amid the cheers of the audience.—The Children's Own.