Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.Tommy Tracks.No one was more universally respected or more vigorously abused in Crossbourne than “Tommy Tracks,” as he was sneeringly called. His real name was Thomas Bradly. He was not a native of Crossbourne, but had resided in that town for some five years past at the time when our story opens. As he was a capital workman, and had two sons growing up into young men who were also very skilful hands, it was thought quite natural that he should have come to settle down in Crossbourne, where skilled labour was well remunerated. As to where he came from, some said one thing, some another. He was very reserved on the matter himself, and so people soon ceased to ask him about it.Thomas was undoubtedly an oddity, but his eccentricities were of a kind which did no one any harm, and only served to add force to his words and example. He was an earnest Christian, and as earnest an abstainer from all intoxicating drinks; and his family walked with him on the narrow gospel way, and in their adherence to temperance principles and practice. He was also superintendent of the church Sunday-school, and the very life of the Temperance Society and Band of Hope, of both which associations the vicar, who was himself an abstainer, was the president. Indeed, he was the clergyman’s right-hand in the carrying out of every good work in the place. He was something of a reader of such sterling and profitable works as came in his way, but his Bible was his chief study.His special characteristics were a clear head, a large stock of shrewd common sense, and an invincible love of truth and straightforwardness, so that he could hold his ground against any man in the place, William Foster the styptic not excepted. Not that Bradly was at all fond of an argument; he avoided one when he could do so consistently, preferring to do good by just sowing seeds of truth in his own humble way, leaving it to God to deal with the tares and weeds.One of his favourite modes of sowing was to carry along with him at all times a little bundle of religious and temperance tracts, and to offer these whenever he had an opportunity, commonly accompanying the offer with some quaint remark which would often overcome the reluctance to accept them, even in those who were opposed to his principles and practice. From this habit of his he was generally known among the working-classes of Crossbourne by the nickname of “Tommy Tracts,” or “Tracks,” as it was usually pronounced—an epithet first given in scorn, but afterwards generally used without any unkindly feeling. Indeed, he was rather proud of it than otherwise; nor could the taunts and gibes which not unfrequently accompanied it ever ruffle in the least his good-humoured self-possession.His family, which consisted of himself, his wife, their two sons, and a daughter, all grown up, and an invalid sister of his own, lived in a comfortable house on the outskirts of the town.This house he had built for himself out of the profits of his own industry. Like its owner, it was rather of an eccentric character, having been constructed on an original plan of his own, and, in consequence, differed from any other dwelling-house in the town. Of course, he was not left without abundance of comments on his architectural taste, many of them being anything but complimentary, and all of them outspoken. This moved him nothing. “Well, if the house pleases me,” he said to his critics, “I suppose it don’t matter much what fashion it’s of, so long as the chimney-pots is outside, and the fire-places in.” Not that there was anything grand or ambitious in its outward appearance, nor sufficiently peculiar to draw any special attention to it. It was rather wider in front than the ordinary working-men’s cottages, and had a stone parapet above the upper windows, running the whole length of the building, on which were painted, in large black letters, the words, “Bradly’s Temperance Hospital.”As might have been expected, this inscription brought on him a storm of ridicule and reproach, which he took very quietly; but if any one asked him in a civil way what he meant by the words, his reply used to be, “Any confirmed drunkard’s welcome to come to my house for advice gratis, and I’ll warrant to make a perfect cure of him, if he’ll only follow my prescription.” And when further asked what that prescription might be, he would reply, “Just this: let the patient sign the pledge, and keep it.” And many a poor drunkard, whom he had lured up to his house, and then pleaded and prayed with earnestly, had already proved the efficacy of this remedy.When blamed by foes or friends for misleading people by putting such words on his house, he would say—“Where’s the harm? Haven’t I as much right to call my house ‘Temperance Hospital’ as Ben Roberts has to call his public ‘The Staff of Life’? What hashis‘Staff of Life’ done? Why, to my certain knowledge, it has just proved a broken staff, and let down scores of working-men into the gutter. But my ‘Temperance Hospital’ has helped back many a poor fellowoutof the gutter, and set him on his feet again. It’s a free hospital, too, and we’re never full; we takes all patients as comes.”The inside of the house was as suggestive of Thomas’s principles and eccentricities of character as the outside.The front door opened into a long and narrow hall, lighted by a fan-light. As you entered, your eyes would naturally fall on the words, “Picture Gallery,” facing you, on the farther wall, just over the entrance to the kitchen. This “picture gallery” was simply the hall itself, which had something of the appearance of a photographer’s studio, the walls being partly covered with portraits large and small, interspersed with texts of Scripture, pledge-cards bearing the names of himself and family, and large engravings from theBritish Workman, coloured by one of his sons to give them greater effect. The photographs were chiefly likenesses of those who had been his own converts to total abstinence, with here and there the portrait of some well-known temperance advocate.To the left of the hall was the parlour or company sitting-room, which was adorned with portraits, or what were designed to be such, of the Queen and other members of the royal family. Over the fire-place was a handsome mirror, on either side of which were photographs of the vicar and his wife; and on the opposite side of the room stood a bookcase with glass doors, containing a small but judicious selection of volumes, religious, historical, biographical, and scientific: for Thomas Bradly was a reader in a humble way, and had a memory tenacious of anything that struck him. But the pride of this choice apartment was an enormous illustrated Bible, sumptuously bound, which lay on the middle of a round table that occupied the centre of the room.The kitchen, however, was the real daily living-place of the family. It had been built of unusually large dimensions, in order to accommodate a goodly number of temperance friends, or of the members of the Band of Hope, who occasionally met there. Over the doors and windows were large texts in blue, and over the ample fire-place, in specially large letters of the same colour, the words, “Do the next thing.”Many who called on Thomas Bradly, and saw this maxim for the first time, were rather puzzled to know what it meant. “Whatis‘the next thing’?” they would ask. “Why, it’s just this,” he would reply: “the next thing is the thing nearest to your hand. Just do the thing as comes nearest to hand, and be content to dothatafore you concern yourself about anything else. These words has saved me a vast of trouble and worry. I’ve read somewhere as ‘worry’ is one of the specially prominent troubles of our day. I think that’s true enough. Well, now, I’ve found my motto there—‘Do the next thing’—a capital remedy for worry. Sometimes I’ve come down of a morning knowing as I’d a whole lot of things to get done, and I’ve been strongly tempted to make a bundle of them, and do them all at once, or try, at any rate, to do three or four of ’em at the same time. But then I’ve just cast my eyes on them words, and I’ve said to myself, ‘All right, Thomas Bradly; you just go and do the next thing;’ and I’ve gone and done it, and after that I’ve done the next thing, and so on till I’ve got through the whole bundle.”Opposite the broad kitchen-range was a plate-rack well filled with serviceable chinaware, and which formed the upper part of a dresser or plain deal sideboard. Above the rack, and near the ceiling, were the words, “One step at a time.”This and the maxim over the fire-place he used to call his “two walking-sticks.” Thus, meeting a fellow-workman one day who had lately come to Crossbourne, about whose character for steadiness he had strong suspicions, and who seemed always in a hurry, and yet as if he could never fairly overtake his work—“James,” he said to him, “you should borrow my two walking-sticks.”“Walking-sticks!—what for?” asked the other.“Why, you’ll be falling one of these days if you hurry so; and my two walking-sticks would be a great help to you.” The other stared at him, quite unable to make out his meaning.“Walking-sticks, Tommy Tracks! You don’t seem to stand in need of them. I never see you with a stick in your hand.”“For all that I make use of them every day, James; and if you’ll step into my house any night I’ll show them to you: for I can’t spare them out of the kitchen, though I never go to my work without them.”“Some foolery or other!” exclaimed the man he addressed, roughly. Nevertheless his curiosity was excited, and he stopped Bradly at his door one evening, saying “he was come to see his two walking-sticks.”“Good—very good,” said the other. “Come in. There, sit you down by the table—and, missus, give us each a cup of tea. Now, you just look over the chimney-piece. There’s one of my walking-sticks: ‘Do the next thing.’ And, now, look over the dresser. There’s the other walking-stick: ‘One step at a time’. And I’ll just tell you how to use them. It don’t require any practice. When you’ve half-a-dozen things as wants doing, and can’t all be done at once, just you consider which of ’em all ought to be done first. That’s ‘the next thing.’ Go straight ahead at that, and don’t trouble a bit about the rest till that’s done. That’s one stick as’ll help you to walk through a deal of work with very little bustle and worry. And, James, just be content in all you do to be guided by the great Master as owns us all, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bought us for himself with his own blood. Just be willing to follow him, and let him lead you ‘one step at a time,’ and don’t want to see the place for the next step till you’ve put your foot where he tells you. You’ll find that a rare stout walking-stick. You may lean your whole weight on it, and it won’t give way; and it’ll help you in peace through the trials of this life, and on the road to a better.”Such was Thomas Bradly’s kitchen. Many a happy gathering was held there, and many a useful lesson learned in it.But, besides the rooms already mentioned, there was one adjoining the kitchen which was specially Thomas Bradly’s own. It was of considerable size, and was entered from the inside by a little door out of the kitchen. This door was commonly locked, and the key kept by Bradly himself. The more usual approach to it was from the outside. Its external appearance did not exactly contribute to the symmetry of the whole premises; but that was a matter of very small moment to its proprietor, who had added it on for a special purpose. The house itself was on the hill-side, on the outskirts of the town, as has been said. There was a little bit of garden in front and on either side, so that it could not be built close up to. At present it had no very near neighbours. A little gate in the low wall which skirted the garden, on the left hand as you faced the house, allowed any visitor to have access to the outer door of Bradly’s special room without going through the garden up the front way. On this outer door was painted in white letters, “Surgery.”“Do you mend broken bones, Tommy Tracks?” asked a working-man of not very temperate or moral habits soon after this word had been painted on the door. “If you do, I think we may perhaps give you a job before long, as it’ll be Crossbourne Wakes next Sunday week.”“No,” was Bradly’s reply; “I mend broken hearts, and put drunkards’ homes into their proper places when they’ve got out of joint.”“Indeed! You’ll be clever to do that, Tommy.”“Ah! You don’t know, Bill. P’raps you’ll come and try my skill yourself afore long.”The other turned away with a scornful laugh and a gibe; but the arrow had hit its mark. But, indeed, what Thomas Bradly said was true. Broken hearts and dislocated families had been set to rights in that room. There would appointments be kept by wretched used-up sots, who would never have been persuaded to ask for Bradly at the ordinary door of entrance; and there on his knees, with the poor conscience-stricken penitent bowed beside him, would Thomas pour out his simple but fervent supplications to Him who never “broke a bruised reed, nor quenched the smoking flax.” And mothers, too, the slaves of the drink-fiend, had found in that room liberty from their chains. Here, too, would the vicar preside over meetings of the Temperance and Band of Hope Committees.The room was snugly fitted up with a long deal table, as clean as constant scrubbing could make it, and boasted of a dozen windsor-chairs and two long benches. There were two cupboards also, one on each side of a small but brightly burnished grate. In one of these, pledge-books, cards for members, and temperance tracts and books were kept; in the other was a stock of Bibles, New Testaments, prayer-books, hymn-books, and general tracts. A few well-chosen coloured Scripture prints and illuminated texts adorned the walls; and everything in Bradly’s house was in the most perfect order. You would not find a chair awry, nor books lying loose about, nor so much as a crumpled bit of paper thrown on the floor of his “Surgery,” nor indeed anywhere about the premises.When a neighbour once said to him, “I see, Tommy Tracks, you hold with the saying, ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness,’”—“Nay, I don’t,” was his reply. “I read it another way: ‘Cleanliness is a part of godliness.’ I can’t understand a dirty or disorderly Christian—leastways, it’s very dishonouring to the Master; for dirt and untidiness and confusion are types and pictures of sin. A true Christian ought to be clean and tidy outside as well as in. Christ’s servants should look always cleaner and neater than any one else; for aren’t we told to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour inallthings? And don’t dirtiness and untidiness in Christians bring a reproach on religion? And then, if things are out of their place—all sixes and sevens—why, it’s just setting a trap for your feet. You’ll stumble, and lose your temper and your time, and fuss the life out of other people too, if things aren’t in their proper places, and you can’t lay hold of a thing just when you want it. It’s waste of precious time and precious peace, and them’s what Christians can’t afford to lose. Why, Jenny Bates, poor soul, used to lose her temper, and she’d scarce find it afore she lost it again, and just because she never had anything in decent order. And yet she were a godly woman; but her light kept dancing about, instead of shining steadily, as it ought to have done, just because she never knew where to put her hand on anything she wanted, and everything was in her way and in her husband’s way, except what they was looking for at the time. It’s a fine thing when you can stick by the rule, ‘A place for everything, and everything in its place.’”But now it is not to be supposed for a moment that a man like Thomas Bradly could escape without a great deal of persecution in such a place as Crossbourne. All sorts of hard names were heaped upon him by those who were most rebuked by a life so manifestly in contrast to their own. Many gnashed upon him with their teeth, and would have laid violent hands on him had they dared. Sundry little spiteful tricks also were played off upon him. Thus, one morning he found that the word “Surgery” had been obliterated from his private door, and the word “Tomfoolery” painted under it. He let this pass for a while unnoticed and unremedied, and then restored the original word; and as his friends and the police were on the watch, the outrage was not repeated. All open scoffs and insults he took very quietly, sometimes just remarking, when any one called him “canting hypocrite,” or the like, that “he was very thankful to say that it wasn’t true.”But besides this, he had an excellent way of his own in dealing with annoyances and persecutions, which turned them to the best account. At the back of a shelf, in one of the cupboards in his “Surgery,” he kept a small box, on the lid of which he had written the word “Pills.” When some word or act of special unkindness or bitterness had been his lot, he would scrupulously avoid all mention of it to his wife or children on his return home, but would retire into his “Surgery,” write on a small piece of paper the particulars of the act or insult, with the name of the doer or utterer, and put it into the box. Then, at the end of each month, he would lock himself into his room, take out the box, read over the papers, which were occasionally pretty numerous, and spread them out in prayer, like Hezekiah, before the Lord, asking him that these hard words and deeds might prove as medicine to his soul to keep him humble and watchful, and begging, at the same time, for the conversion and happiness of his persecutors. After this he would throw the papers into the fire, and come out to his family all smiles and cheerfulness, as though something specially pleasant and gratifying had just been happening to him—as indeed it had; for having cast his care on his Saviour, he had been getting a full measure of “the peace of God, which passeth understanding, to keep his heart and mind through Christ Jesus.”Nor would his nearest and dearest have ever known of this original way of dealing with his troubles, had not his wife accidentally come upon the “pill-box” one day, when he had sent her to replace a book in the cupboard for him. Well acquainted as she was with most of his oddities, she was utterly at a loss to comprehend the box and its contents. On opening the lid, she thought at first that the box contained veritable medicine; but seeing, on closer inspection, that there was nothing inside but little pieces of paper neatly rolled up, her curiosity was, not unnaturally, excited, and she unfolded half-a-dozen of them. What could they mean? There was writing on each strip, and it was in her husband’s hand. She read as follows: “Sneaking scoundrel. John Thompson”—“Jim Taylor set his dog at me”—“Hypocritical humbug; you take your glass on the sly. George Walters!”—and so on.She returned the papers to the box, and in the evening asked her husband, when they were alone, what it all meant. “Oh! So you’ve found me out, Mary,” he said, laughing. “Well, it means just this: I never bring any of these troubles indoors to you and the children; you’ve got quite enough of your own. So I keep them for the Lord to deal with; and when I’ve got a month’s stock, I just read them over. It’s as good as a medicine to see what people say of me. And then I throw ’em all into the fire, and they’re gone from me for ever; and when I’ve added a word of prayer for them as has done me the wrong, I come away with my heart as light as a feather.”It need hardly be said that Mrs Bradly was more than satisfied with this solution of the puzzle.

No one was more universally respected or more vigorously abused in Crossbourne than “Tommy Tracks,” as he was sneeringly called. His real name was Thomas Bradly. He was not a native of Crossbourne, but had resided in that town for some five years past at the time when our story opens. As he was a capital workman, and had two sons growing up into young men who were also very skilful hands, it was thought quite natural that he should have come to settle down in Crossbourne, where skilled labour was well remunerated. As to where he came from, some said one thing, some another. He was very reserved on the matter himself, and so people soon ceased to ask him about it.

Thomas was undoubtedly an oddity, but his eccentricities were of a kind which did no one any harm, and only served to add force to his words and example. He was an earnest Christian, and as earnest an abstainer from all intoxicating drinks; and his family walked with him on the narrow gospel way, and in their adherence to temperance principles and practice. He was also superintendent of the church Sunday-school, and the very life of the Temperance Society and Band of Hope, of both which associations the vicar, who was himself an abstainer, was the president. Indeed, he was the clergyman’s right-hand in the carrying out of every good work in the place. He was something of a reader of such sterling and profitable works as came in his way, but his Bible was his chief study.

His special characteristics were a clear head, a large stock of shrewd common sense, and an invincible love of truth and straightforwardness, so that he could hold his ground against any man in the place, William Foster the styptic not excepted. Not that Bradly was at all fond of an argument; he avoided one when he could do so consistently, preferring to do good by just sowing seeds of truth in his own humble way, leaving it to God to deal with the tares and weeds.

One of his favourite modes of sowing was to carry along with him at all times a little bundle of religious and temperance tracts, and to offer these whenever he had an opportunity, commonly accompanying the offer with some quaint remark which would often overcome the reluctance to accept them, even in those who were opposed to his principles and practice. From this habit of his he was generally known among the working-classes of Crossbourne by the nickname of “Tommy Tracts,” or “Tracks,” as it was usually pronounced—an epithet first given in scorn, but afterwards generally used without any unkindly feeling. Indeed, he was rather proud of it than otherwise; nor could the taunts and gibes which not unfrequently accompanied it ever ruffle in the least his good-humoured self-possession.

His family, which consisted of himself, his wife, their two sons, and a daughter, all grown up, and an invalid sister of his own, lived in a comfortable house on the outskirts of the town.

This house he had built for himself out of the profits of his own industry. Like its owner, it was rather of an eccentric character, having been constructed on an original plan of his own, and, in consequence, differed from any other dwelling-house in the town. Of course, he was not left without abundance of comments on his architectural taste, many of them being anything but complimentary, and all of them outspoken. This moved him nothing. “Well, if the house pleases me,” he said to his critics, “I suppose it don’t matter much what fashion it’s of, so long as the chimney-pots is outside, and the fire-places in.” Not that there was anything grand or ambitious in its outward appearance, nor sufficiently peculiar to draw any special attention to it. It was rather wider in front than the ordinary working-men’s cottages, and had a stone parapet above the upper windows, running the whole length of the building, on which were painted, in large black letters, the words, “Bradly’s Temperance Hospital.”

As might have been expected, this inscription brought on him a storm of ridicule and reproach, which he took very quietly; but if any one asked him in a civil way what he meant by the words, his reply used to be, “Any confirmed drunkard’s welcome to come to my house for advice gratis, and I’ll warrant to make a perfect cure of him, if he’ll only follow my prescription.” And when further asked what that prescription might be, he would reply, “Just this: let the patient sign the pledge, and keep it.” And many a poor drunkard, whom he had lured up to his house, and then pleaded and prayed with earnestly, had already proved the efficacy of this remedy.

When blamed by foes or friends for misleading people by putting such words on his house, he would say—“Where’s the harm? Haven’t I as much right to call my house ‘Temperance Hospital’ as Ben Roberts has to call his public ‘The Staff of Life’? What hashis‘Staff of Life’ done? Why, to my certain knowledge, it has just proved a broken staff, and let down scores of working-men into the gutter. But my ‘Temperance Hospital’ has helped back many a poor fellowoutof the gutter, and set him on his feet again. It’s a free hospital, too, and we’re never full; we takes all patients as comes.”

The inside of the house was as suggestive of Thomas’s principles and eccentricities of character as the outside.

The front door opened into a long and narrow hall, lighted by a fan-light. As you entered, your eyes would naturally fall on the words, “Picture Gallery,” facing you, on the farther wall, just over the entrance to the kitchen. This “picture gallery” was simply the hall itself, which had something of the appearance of a photographer’s studio, the walls being partly covered with portraits large and small, interspersed with texts of Scripture, pledge-cards bearing the names of himself and family, and large engravings from theBritish Workman, coloured by one of his sons to give them greater effect. The photographs were chiefly likenesses of those who had been his own converts to total abstinence, with here and there the portrait of some well-known temperance advocate.

To the left of the hall was the parlour or company sitting-room, which was adorned with portraits, or what were designed to be such, of the Queen and other members of the royal family. Over the fire-place was a handsome mirror, on either side of which were photographs of the vicar and his wife; and on the opposite side of the room stood a bookcase with glass doors, containing a small but judicious selection of volumes, religious, historical, biographical, and scientific: for Thomas Bradly was a reader in a humble way, and had a memory tenacious of anything that struck him. But the pride of this choice apartment was an enormous illustrated Bible, sumptuously bound, which lay on the middle of a round table that occupied the centre of the room.

The kitchen, however, was the real daily living-place of the family. It had been built of unusually large dimensions, in order to accommodate a goodly number of temperance friends, or of the members of the Band of Hope, who occasionally met there. Over the doors and windows were large texts in blue, and over the ample fire-place, in specially large letters of the same colour, the words, “Do the next thing.”

Many who called on Thomas Bradly, and saw this maxim for the first time, were rather puzzled to know what it meant. “Whatis‘the next thing’?” they would ask. “Why, it’s just this,” he would reply: “the next thing is the thing nearest to your hand. Just do the thing as comes nearest to hand, and be content to dothatafore you concern yourself about anything else. These words has saved me a vast of trouble and worry. I’ve read somewhere as ‘worry’ is one of the specially prominent troubles of our day. I think that’s true enough. Well, now, I’ve found my motto there—‘Do the next thing’—a capital remedy for worry. Sometimes I’ve come down of a morning knowing as I’d a whole lot of things to get done, and I’ve been strongly tempted to make a bundle of them, and do them all at once, or try, at any rate, to do three or four of ’em at the same time. But then I’ve just cast my eyes on them words, and I’ve said to myself, ‘All right, Thomas Bradly; you just go and do the next thing;’ and I’ve gone and done it, and after that I’ve done the next thing, and so on till I’ve got through the whole bundle.”

Opposite the broad kitchen-range was a plate-rack well filled with serviceable chinaware, and which formed the upper part of a dresser or plain deal sideboard. Above the rack, and near the ceiling, were the words, “One step at a time.”

This and the maxim over the fire-place he used to call his “two walking-sticks.” Thus, meeting a fellow-workman one day who had lately come to Crossbourne, about whose character for steadiness he had strong suspicions, and who seemed always in a hurry, and yet as if he could never fairly overtake his work—

“James,” he said to him, “you should borrow my two walking-sticks.”

“Walking-sticks!—what for?” asked the other.

“Why, you’ll be falling one of these days if you hurry so; and my two walking-sticks would be a great help to you.” The other stared at him, quite unable to make out his meaning.

“Walking-sticks, Tommy Tracks! You don’t seem to stand in need of them. I never see you with a stick in your hand.”

“For all that I make use of them every day, James; and if you’ll step into my house any night I’ll show them to you: for I can’t spare them out of the kitchen, though I never go to my work without them.”

“Some foolery or other!” exclaimed the man he addressed, roughly. Nevertheless his curiosity was excited, and he stopped Bradly at his door one evening, saying “he was come to see his two walking-sticks.”

“Good—very good,” said the other. “Come in. There, sit you down by the table—and, missus, give us each a cup of tea. Now, you just look over the chimney-piece. There’s one of my walking-sticks: ‘Do the next thing.’ And, now, look over the dresser. There’s the other walking-stick: ‘One step at a time’. And I’ll just tell you how to use them. It don’t require any practice. When you’ve half-a-dozen things as wants doing, and can’t all be done at once, just you consider which of ’em all ought to be done first. That’s ‘the next thing.’ Go straight ahead at that, and don’t trouble a bit about the rest till that’s done. That’s one stick as’ll help you to walk through a deal of work with very little bustle and worry. And, James, just be content in all you do to be guided by the great Master as owns us all, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bought us for himself with his own blood. Just be willing to follow him, and let him lead you ‘one step at a time,’ and don’t want to see the place for the next step till you’ve put your foot where he tells you. You’ll find that a rare stout walking-stick. You may lean your whole weight on it, and it won’t give way; and it’ll help you in peace through the trials of this life, and on the road to a better.”

Such was Thomas Bradly’s kitchen. Many a happy gathering was held there, and many a useful lesson learned in it.

But, besides the rooms already mentioned, there was one adjoining the kitchen which was specially Thomas Bradly’s own. It was of considerable size, and was entered from the inside by a little door out of the kitchen. This door was commonly locked, and the key kept by Bradly himself. The more usual approach to it was from the outside. Its external appearance did not exactly contribute to the symmetry of the whole premises; but that was a matter of very small moment to its proprietor, who had added it on for a special purpose. The house itself was on the hill-side, on the outskirts of the town, as has been said. There was a little bit of garden in front and on either side, so that it could not be built close up to. At present it had no very near neighbours. A little gate in the low wall which skirted the garden, on the left hand as you faced the house, allowed any visitor to have access to the outer door of Bradly’s special room without going through the garden up the front way. On this outer door was painted in white letters, “Surgery.”

“Do you mend broken bones, Tommy Tracks?” asked a working-man of not very temperate or moral habits soon after this word had been painted on the door. “If you do, I think we may perhaps give you a job before long, as it’ll be Crossbourne Wakes next Sunday week.”

“No,” was Bradly’s reply; “I mend broken hearts, and put drunkards’ homes into their proper places when they’ve got out of joint.”

“Indeed! You’ll be clever to do that, Tommy.”

“Ah! You don’t know, Bill. P’raps you’ll come and try my skill yourself afore long.”

The other turned away with a scornful laugh and a gibe; but the arrow had hit its mark. But, indeed, what Thomas Bradly said was true. Broken hearts and dislocated families had been set to rights in that room. There would appointments be kept by wretched used-up sots, who would never have been persuaded to ask for Bradly at the ordinary door of entrance; and there on his knees, with the poor conscience-stricken penitent bowed beside him, would Thomas pour out his simple but fervent supplications to Him who never “broke a bruised reed, nor quenched the smoking flax.” And mothers, too, the slaves of the drink-fiend, had found in that room liberty from their chains. Here, too, would the vicar preside over meetings of the Temperance and Band of Hope Committees.

The room was snugly fitted up with a long deal table, as clean as constant scrubbing could make it, and boasted of a dozen windsor-chairs and two long benches. There were two cupboards also, one on each side of a small but brightly burnished grate. In one of these, pledge-books, cards for members, and temperance tracts and books were kept; in the other was a stock of Bibles, New Testaments, prayer-books, hymn-books, and general tracts. A few well-chosen coloured Scripture prints and illuminated texts adorned the walls; and everything in Bradly’s house was in the most perfect order. You would not find a chair awry, nor books lying loose about, nor so much as a crumpled bit of paper thrown on the floor of his “Surgery,” nor indeed anywhere about the premises.

When a neighbour once said to him, “I see, Tommy Tracks, you hold with the saying, ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness,’”—“Nay, I don’t,” was his reply. “I read it another way: ‘Cleanliness is a part of godliness.’ I can’t understand a dirty or disorderly Christian—leastways, it’s very dishonouring to the Master; for dirt and untidiness and confusion are types and pictures of sin. A true Christian ought to be clean and tidy outside as well as in. Christ’s servants should look always cleaner and neater than any one else; for aren’t we told to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour inallthings? And don’t dirtiness and untidiness in Christians bring a reproach on religion? And then, if things are out of their place—all sixes and sevens—why, it’s just setting a trap for your feet. You’ll stumble, and lose your temper and your time, and fuss the life out of other people too, if things aren’t in their proper places, and you can’t lay hold of a thing just when you want it. It’s waste of precious time and precious peace, and them’s what Christians can’t afford to lose. Why, Jenny Bates, poor soul, used to lose her temper, and she’d scarce find it afore she lost it again, and just because she never had anything in decent order. And yet she were a godly woman; but her light kept dancing about, instead of shining steadily, as it ought to have done, just because she never knew where to put her hand on anything she wanted, and everything was in her way and in her husband’s way, except what they was looking for at the time. It’s a fine thing when you can stick by the rule, ‘A place for everything, and everything in its place.’”

But now it is not to be supposed for a moment that a man like Thomas Bradly could escape without a great deal of persecution in such a place as Crossbourne. All sorts of hard names were heaped upon him by those who were most rebuked by a life so manifestly in contrast to their own. Many gnashed upon him with their teeth, and would have laid violent hands on him had they dared. Sundry little spiteful tricks also were played off upon him. Thus, one morning he found that the word “Surgery” had been obliterated from his private door, and the word “Tomfoolery” painted under it. He let this pass for a while unnoticed and unremedied, and then restored the original word; and as his friends and the police were on the watch, the outrage was not repeated. All open scoffs and insults he took very quietly, sometimes just remarking, when any one called him “canting hypocrite,” or the like, that “he was very thankful to say that it wasn’t true.”

But besides this, he had an excellent way of his own in dealing with annoyances and persecutions, which turned them to the best account. At the back of a shelf, in one of the cupboards in his “Surgery,” he kept a small box, on the lid of which he had written the word “Pills.” When some word or act of special unkindness or bitterness had been his lot, he would scrupulously avoid all mention of it to his wife or children on his return home, but would retire into his “Surgery,” write on a small piece of paper the particulars of the act or insult, with the name of the doer or utterer, and put it into the box. Then, at the end of each month, he would lock himself into his room, take out the box, read over the papers, which were occasionally pretty numerous, and spread them out in prayer, like Hezekiah, before the Lord, asking him that these hard words and deeds might prove as medicine to his soul to keep him humble and watchful, and begging, at the same time, for the conversion and happiness of his persecutors. After this he would throw the papers into the fire, and come out to his family all smiles and cheerfulness, as though something specially pleasant and gratifying had just been happening to him—as indeed it had; for having cast his care on his Saviour, he had been getting a full measure of “the peace of God, which passeth understanding, to keep his heart and mind through Christ Jesus.”

Nor would his nearest and dearest have ever known of this original way of dealing with his troubles, had not his wife accidentally come upon the “pill-box” one day, when he had sent her to replace a book in the cupboard for him. Well acquainted as she was with most of his oddities, she was utterly at a loss to comprehend the box and its contents. On opening the lid, she thought at first that the box contained veritable medicine; but seeing, on closer inspection, that there was nothing inside but little pieces of paper neatly rolled up, her curiosity was, not unnaturally, excited, and she unfolded half-a-dozen of them. What could they mean? There was writing on each strip, and it was in her husband’s hand. She read as follows: “Sneaking scoundrel. John Thompson”—“Jim Taylor set his dog at me”—“Hypocritical humbug; you take your glass on the sly. George Walters!”—and so on.

She returned the papers to the box, and in the evening asked her husband, when they were alone, what it all meant. “Oh! So you’ve found me out, Mary,” he said, laughing. “Well, it means just this: I never bring any of these troubles indoors to you and the children; you’ve got quite enough of your own. So I keep them for the Lord to deal with; and when I’ve got a month’s stock, I just read them over. It’s as good as a medicine to see what people say of me. And then I throw ’em all into the fire, and they’re gone from me for ever; and when I’ve added a word of prayer for them as has done me the wrong, I come away with my heart as light as a feather.”

It need hardly be said that Mrs Bradly was more than satisfied with this solution of the puzzle.

Chapter Five.A Discussion.If there was one man more than another whom William Foster the sceptic both disliked and feared, it was “Tommy Tracks.” Not that he would have owned to such a fear for a moment. He tried to persuade himself that he despised him; but there was that about Bradly’s life and character which he was forced to respect, and before which his spirit within him bowed and quailed spite of himself.Thomas Bradly, though possessed of but a very moderate share of book-learning, was pretty well aware that it required no very deep line to reach the bottom of Foster’s acquirements; and so, while he preferred, as a rule, to avoid any open controversy with William, or any of his party, he never shrunk from a fair stand-up contest when he believed that his Master’s honour and the truth required it.One evening, a few days after the mysterious appearance of the little Bible in his own house, Foster, as he was coming home from his work, encountered Bradly at the open door of the blacksmith’s forge with a bundle of tracts in his hand.“Still trying to do us poor sinners good, I see,” sneered Foster.“Yes, if you’ll let me,” said the other, offering a tract.“None of your nonsensical rubbish for me,” was the angry reply, as the speaker turned away.“I never carries either nonsense or rubbish,” rejoined Thomas. “My tracts are all of ’em good solid sense; they are taken out of God’s holy Word, or are agreeable to the same.”“What! The Bible? What sensible man now believes in that Bible of yours? It’s a failure; it has been demonstrated to be a failure. All enlightened men, even many among your own Christians, are giving it up as a failure now,”—saying which in a tone of triumph, as he looked round on a little knot of working-men who were gathering about the smithy door, he seated himself on an upturned cart which was waiting to be repaired, and looked at his opponent for a reply.Thomas Bradly, nothing daunted, sat him down very deliberately on a large smooth stone on the opposite side of the doorway, and remarked quietly, “As to the Bible’s being a failure, I suppose that depends very much on experience. I’ve got an eight-day clock in our house. I bought it for a very good one, and gave a very good price for it, just before I set up housekeeping. A young fellow calls the other day, when I happened to be in, and he wants me to buy a new-fashioned sort of clock of him. ‘Well, if I do,’ says I, ‘what’ll you allow me for my old clock, then, as part payment?’ So he goes over and looks at it, and turns up his nose at it, and says, ‘’Tain’t worth the trouble of taking away: you shall have one of the right sort cheap; that clumsy, old-fashioned thing’ll never do you no good.’—‘Well,’ says I, ‘that’s just as people find. That old clock has served me well, and kept the best of time these five and twenty years, and it don’t show any signs of being worse for wear yet. So I’ll stick to the old clock still, if you please, and take my time by it as I’ve been used to do.’ And the old-fashioned Bible’s just like my old clock. You tell me as it’s proved to be a failure. I tellyouit isn’t a failure, for I’ve tried it, and proved it for more years than I’ve tried my clock, and it never yet failedme.”“Perhaps not, Tommy,” said Foster; “that’s what you call your experience; but for all that, it has proved a failure generally.”“How do you make out that, William? I can find you a score of families in Crossbourne as the Bible hasn’t failed, and their neighbours know it too.”“Ah! Very likely; but what I mean is this: it has proved a failure when its power and truth have come to be tested in other parts of the world—that’s the general and almost universal experience, in fact.”“Well, now, that’s strange,” replied Bradly, “to hear a man talk in that way in our days, when there’s scarce a language in the known world that the Bible hasn’t been turned into, so that all the wide world own it has been bringing light and peace into thousands of hearts and homes—there’s no contradicting that; and that’s a strange sort of failure—summat like old John Wrigley’s failure that folks were talking about; he failed by dying worth just half a million.”“Well, but when we men of science and observation say that the Bible is a failure, we mean that it hasn’t accomplished what it should have done supposing it to be a revelation from the Supreme Being.”“Ah, you are right there, William! I quite agree with you.”“Do you hear him, mates?” cried Foster triumphantly. “He owns he’s beaten.”“Not a bit of it,” cried Bradly. “What I grant you is this, and no more: the Bible hasn’t done all it should have done, and would have done. But why? Just because men wouldn’t let it: as our Saviour said when he was upon earth, ‘Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.’ That’s man’s fault, not the Bible’s.”“Ah, but if the Bible had really been a revelation from heaven, it ought to have converted all the world by this time, Tommy Tracks.”“What! Whether men would or no? Nay; that’s making men mere machines, without any will of their own. If men hear the Bible, and still choose to walk in wicked ways, who’s to blame? Certainly not the Bible.”“That won’t do, Tommy. What I mean is this: men of real science and knowledge declare that your Bible has proved to be a failure just because Christianity has not accomplished what the Bible professed that it would accomplish.”“Indeed!” said the other quietly; “how so? I think, William, you’re shifting your ground a bit. But what has the Bible claimed for the Christian religion which Christianity has not accomplished?”“Why, just look here, Tommy. There’s what you call the angels’ song, ‘Glory to God in the highest! And on earth peace, good-will towards men.’ That’s how it goes, I think. Now, Professor Tyndall, one of the greatest scientific men of the day, says that you’ve only to look at the wars that still go on between civilised nations to see that the angels’ song has not been fulfilled—that the gospel has failed to bring about universal peace. And so you see the Christian Bible has not accomplished what it professed to accomplish.”“Stop a bit—softly!” said the other; “let’s take one thing at a time. Professor Tyndall may understand a great deal about science, but it don’t follow that he knows much about the Bible. But now I’ll make bold to take the very wars that have been going on in your time and mine, and call them up to give evidence just the other way. Mind you, I’m not saying a word in favour of wars. I only wish people would be content to fight with my weapons, and no others; and that’s just simply with the Bible itself—‘the sword of the Spirit,’ as the Scripture calls it. But now, you just listen to this letter from a newspaper correspondent in the war between the Prussians and the French. I cut it out, and here it is:—“‘This afternoon I witnessed a very touching scene. A French soldier of the Thirty-third Line Regiment, belonging to the corps of General Frossard, had been made prisoner at the outposts. He is a native of Jouy-aux-Arches, where his wife and children now reside. On his way to Corny, where the head-quarters of the prince are now situated, he asked permission to be allowed to see his wife and children. Need I say that the request was immediately granted? The poor woman, half delirious with joy, asked to be allowed to accompany her husband at least to Corny. This was also acceded to. But then came the difficulty about the bairns. The woman was weak, and could not carry her baby, and at home there was no one to mind it. As for the little chap of five, he could toddle along by his father’s side. The difficulty was, however, overcome by a great big Pomeranian soldier, who volunteered to act as nurse. This man had been quartered close to the poor woman’s house; and the little ones knew him, for he had often played with them. When therefore, bidding the poor wife be of good cheer, he held out his big strong arms to the little infant, it came to him immediately, and nestling its tiny head upon his shoulders, seemed perfectly content. So did the Prussian soldier carry the Frenchman’s child. When I first saw the group, the wife was clasped in her husband’s embrace; the little boy clung to his father’s hand; while the Prussian soldier, with the baby in his arms, stalked along by their sides. Then the Frenchwoman told her husband how, when she had been ill and in want of food, the Prussian soldiers had shared their rations with her, had fetched wood and water, had lit the fire, and helped her in their own rough, kindly way; until at last those two men, who belonged to countries now arrayed against each other in bitterest hate—who perhaps a few days since fought the one against the other—embraced like brothers, while I, like a great big fool, stood by and cried like a baby. But I was not alone in my folly, if folly it be: several Prussian officers and soldiers followed my example, for we all had wives and children in far-off homes.’“Now, I ask you all, friends, to give me an honest answer: could such a thing have happened if those countries, France and Prussia, hadn’t both of ’em been enjoying the light that comes from the Bible—as Christian nations by profession, at any rate—for long years past? You’ve only to look at wars between nations that know nothing of the Bible to get an answer to that.”“You had him there, Tommy,” cried one of the auditory, considerably delighted at Foster’s evident discomfiture.But the latter returned to the charge, saying, “All very fine, Tommy Tracks; but you haven’t fully answered my objection.”“I know it,” was Bradly’s reply. “I understand that you deny that the Bible is a revelation from God because it has failed, (so you say) to do what it professes to do.”“Just so.”“Well, what does it profess to do?”“Doesn’t it profess to convert all the world?”“How soon?”“Before the Second Advent, as you call it.”“Show me, William, where it says so.”So saying, Bradly handed a little Bible to his opponent, who took it very reluctantly; while those around, being much interested, and at the same time amused, exclaimed,—“Ay, to be sure! Show it him, William; show it him!”“Not I,” said Foster, endeavouring to hide his annoyance and confusion by an assumption of scorn; “it’s not in my line to hunt for texts.”“True,” said Thomas quietly; “if it had been, you wouldn’t have made such a blunder.—He can’t find it, friends, for it ain’t written so in the Bible. Before the Lord comes again he’ll gather out his own people from all nations. But that’s not at all the same as converting all the world; that’s not to be tillafterhis coming again, according to the Bible. And this is just what’s happening now in different countries all over the world; exactly according to the teaching of the Bible, neither more nor less. So he hasn’t proved his point, friends; has he?”“No, no!” was the universal cry.But William Foster, though sorely angry, and conscious that his arrows had utterly failed of hitting their mark, was determined not to be driven ingloriously out of the field; his pride could not endure that. So, smothering his wrath, he turned again to Bradly and said,—“Here, give us one of your precious tracts, man.” The other immediately handed him one.“Now see, mates,” continued Foster, “what I’ve got here—‘The Power of Prayer.’ See how it begins ‘Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.’ And you believe that, Tommy Tracks?”“Yes,” was the reply; “I believe it; and more than that, Iknowit—I know that it’s true.”“And how do you know it?”“First and foremost, because the Bible says so; not those very words, indeed, but what means just the same: as, for instance, ‘The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.’ And, better still, I have it in our Saviour’s own words: ‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?’”“Well, now, let me tell you, friend Bradly, that it’s all a delusion.”“You’re at liberty, William, to tell me what you like; but I can tell you that it’s no such thing as a delusion, for I’ve proved it myself to be a blessed truth.”“What! You mean to say that your own prayers have been answered?”“I do mean to say so, William. There’s nothing like experience. I can tell you what I know myself. I’ve put the Lord to the proof over and over again, and he has never failed me. I’ve always had what I needed.”“Hear him!” cried Foster, derisively. “Why, it isn’t a week ago that I heard him myself tell John Rowe that he’d like to build another cottage on the bit of land he bought last year, only he couldn’t afford it just at present. And now he says he has only to pray for a thing, and he can get whatever he likes.—Why didn’t you pray for the money to build the new cottage, Tommy?”“Not so fast, William; a reasoning and scientific man like yourself ought to stick close to the truth. Now, I never said as I could get whatever I liked—though I might have said that too without being wrong; for when I’ve found out clearly what’s the Lord’s will, I can say with the old shepherd, ‘I can have what I please, because what pleases God pleases me.’ What I said was this: that I always got what Ineededwhen I prayed for a thing.”“Well, and where’s the difference?”“A vast deal of difference, William. I never pray for any of this world’s good things without putting in, ‘if God sees it best for me to have it.’ And then I know that, if it is really good for me, I shall get it, and that’ll be what I need; and if he sees as I’m better without it, he’ll give me contentment and peace, and often something much better than what I asked for, and which I never expected, and that’ll be giving me in answer to prayer what I need.”“Then it seems to me,” said the other, sneeringly, “that you may just as well let the prayer alone altogether, for you don’t really get what you would like, and you can’t be sure what it is you really want.”“Nay, not so, William Foster; my Bible says, ‘Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.’ I just go and do this, and over and over again I’ve got the thing I naturally liked; and it’s only been now and then, when God knew I should be better without the thing I fancied, that he kept it back. But then I always got something better for me instead, and the peace of God with it.”“And you call that getting answers to prayer from a heavenly Father?” said Foster derisively.“I do,” was Bradly’s reply. “My heavenly Father deals with me in the same way as I used to deal with my children when they was little, and for the same reason—because he loves me, and knows better than I do what’s good for me. When our Dick were a little thing, only just able to walk, he comes one evening close up to the table while I was shaving, and makes a snatch at my razor. I caught his little hand afore he could get hold; and says I, ‘No, Dick, you mustn’t have that; you’ll hurt yourself with it.’ Not that there was any harm in the razor itself, but it would have been harm to him, though he didn’t know it then. Well, Dick was just ready to cry; but he looks at me, and sees a smile on my face, and toddles off into the garden; and an hour after I went and took him a great blunt knife as he couldn’t hurt himself with, and he was soon as happy as a king, rooting about in the cabbage-bed with it. I did it because I loved him; and he came to understand that, after a bit. And that’s the way our heavenly Father deals with all his loving and obedient children.”There was a little murmur of approval when Bradly ceased, which was very distasteful to Foster, who began to move off, growling out that, “it was no use arguing with a man who was quite behind the age, and couldn’t appreciate nor understand the difficulties and conclusions of deeper thinkers.”“Just one word more, friends, on this subject,” said Bradly, not noticing his opponent’s last disparaging remarks. “William said, a little while ago, as it’s all fancy on my part when I gave him my own experience about answers to prayer. Well, if it’s fancy, it’s a very pleasant fancy, and a very profitable fancy too; and I should like him to tell me what his learned scientific authors, that he brags so much about, has to give me instead of it, if I take their word for it as it’s all fancy, and give over praying. Now, suppose I’m told as there’s a man living over at Sunnyside as is able and willing to give me everything I want, if I only ask him. I go to his door, and knock; but he don’t let me see him. I say through the keyhole, ‘I want a loaf of bread.’ He opens the door just so far as to make room for his hand, and there’s a loaf of bread in it for me. I go to him again, and tell him through the door as I wants some medicine to cure one of my children as is sick. The hand is put out with medicine in it, and the medicine makes a cure. I go again, and say I want a letter of recommendation for my son to get a place as porter on the railway. There’s no hand put out this time; but I hear a voice say, ‘Come every day for a week.’ So I go every day, and knock; and the last day the hand’s put out, and it gives me a letter to a gentleman, who puts my son into a situation twice as good as the one I asked for him. Now, suppose I’d gone on in this way for years, always getting what I asked for, or something better instead, do you think any one would ever persuade me as it were only fancy after all; that the friend I called on so often wasn’t my friend at all, that he’d never heard or listened to a word I said, and had never given me anything in all my life? Now, that’s just how the matter stands. It’s no use talking to a man as knows what effectual prayer is, about the constancy of the laws of nature, and such like. He knows better; he has put the Lord of nature and all its laws to the proof, and so may you too. I’ll just leave with you one text out of the Scripture as’ll weigh down a warehouseful of your sceptical and philosophical books; and it’s this: ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’”Not a word more was spoken on either side, and the party broke up.

If there was one man more than another whom William Foster the sceptic both disliked and feared, it was “Tommy Tracks.” Not that he would have owned to such a fear for a moment. He tried to persuade himself that he despised him; but there was that about Bradly’s life and character which he was forced to respect, and before which his spirit within him bowed and quailed spite of himself.

Thomas Bradly, though possessed of but a very moderate share of book-learning, was pretty well aware that it required no very deep line to reach the bottom of Foster’s acquirements; and so, while he preferred, as a rule, to avoid any open controversy with William, or any of his party, he never shrunk from a fair stand-up contest when he believed that his Master’s honour and the truth required it.

One evening, a few days after the mysterious appearance of the little Bible in his own house, Foster, as he was coming home from his work, encountered Bradly at the open door of the blacksmith’s forge with a bundle of tracts in his hand.

“Still trying to do us poor sinners good, I see,” sneered Foster.

“Yes, if you’ll let me,” said the other, offering a tract.

“None of your nonsensical rubbish for me,” was the angry reply, as the speaker turned away.

“I never carries either nonsense or rubbish,” rejoined Thomas. “My tracts are all of ’em good solid sense; they are taken out of God’s holy Word, or are agreeable to the same.”

“What! The Bible? What sensible man now believes in that Bible of yours? It’s a failure; it has been demonstrated to be a failure. All enlightened men, even many among your own Christians, are giving it up as a failure now,”—saying which in a tone of triumph, as he looked round on a little knot of working-men who were gathering about the smithy door, he seated himself on an upturned cart which was waiting to be repaired, and looked at his opponent for a reply.

Thomas Bradly, nothing daunted, sat him down very deliberately on a large smooth stone on the opposite side of the doorway, and remarked quietly, “As to the Bible’s being a failure, I suppose that depends very much on experience. I’ve got an eight-day clock in our house. I bought it for a very good one, and gave a very good price for it, just before I set up housekeeping. A young fellow calls the other day, when I happened to be in, and he wants me to buy a new-fashioned sort of clock of him. ‘Well, if I do,’ says I, ‘what’ll you allow me for my old clock, then, as part payment?’ So he goes over and looks at it, and turns up his nose at it, and says, ‘’Tain’t worth the trouble of taking away: you shall have one of the right sort cheap; that clumsy, old-fashioned thing’ll never do you no good.’—‘Well,’ says I, ‘that’s just as people find. That old clock has served me well, and kept the best of time these five and twenty years, and it don’t show any signs of being worse for wear yet. So I’ll stick to the old clock still, if you please, and take my time by it as I’ve been used to do.’ And the old-fashioned Bible’s just like my old clock. You tell me as it’s proved to be a failure. I tellyouit isn’t a failure, for I’ve tried it, and proved it for more years than I’ve tried my clock, and it never yet failedme.”

“Perhaps not, Tommy,” said Foster; “that’s what you call your experience; but for all that, it has proved a failure generally.”

“How do you make out that, William? I can find you a score of families in Crossbourne as the Bible hasn’t failed, and their neighbours know it too.”

“Ah! Very likely; but what I mean is this: it has proved a failure when its power and truth have come to be tested in other parts of the world—that’s the general and almost universal experience, in fact.”

“Well, now, that’s strange,” replied Bradly, “to hear a man talk in that way in our days, when there’s scarce a language in the known world that the Bible hasn’t been turned into, so that all the wide world own it has been bringing light and peace into thousands of hearts and homes—there’s no contradicting that; and that’s a strange sort of failure—summat like old John Wrigley’s failure that folks were talking about; he failed by dying worth just half a million.”

“Well, but when we men of science and observation say that the Bible is a failure, we mean that it hasn’t accomplished what it should have done supposing it to be a revelation from the Supreme Being.”

“Ah, you are right there, William! I quite agree with you.”

“Do you hear him, mates?” cried Foster triumphantly. “He owns he’s beaten.”

“Not a bit of it,” cried Bradly. “What I grant you is this, and no more: the Bible hasn’t done all it should have done, and would have done. But why? Just because men wouldn’t let it: as our Saviour said when he was upon earth, ‘Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life.’ That’s man’s fault, not the Bible’s.”

“Ah, but if the Bible had really been a revelation from heaven, it ought to have converted all the world by this time, Tommy Tracks.”

“What! Whether men would or no? Nay; that’s making men mere machines, without any will of their own. If men hear the Bible, and still choose to walk in wicked ways, who’s to blame? Certainly not the Bible.”

“That won’t do, Tommy. What I mean is this: men of real science and knowledge declare that your Bible has proved to be a failure just because Christianity has not accomplished what the Bible professed that it would accomplish.”

“Indeed!” said the other quietly; “how so? I think, William, you’re shifting your ground a bit. But what has the Bible claimed for the Christian religion which Christianity has not accomplished?”

“Why, just look here, Tommy. There’s what you call the angels’ song, ‘Glory to God in the highest! And on earth peace, good-will towards men.’ That’s how it goes, I think. Now, Professor Tyndall, one of the greatest scientific men of the day, says that you’ve only to look at the wars that still go on between civilised nations to see that the angels’ song has not been fulfilled—that the gospel has failed to bring about universal peace. And so you see the Christian Bible has not accomplished what it professed to accomplish.”

“Stop a bit—softly!” said the other; “let’s take one thing at a time. Professor Tyndall may understand a great deal about science, but it don’t follow that he knows much about the Bible. But now I’ll make bold to take the very wars that have been going on in your time and mine, and call them up to give evidence just the other way. Mind you, I’m not saying a word in favour of wars. I only wish people would be content to fight with my weapons, and no others; and that’s just simply with the Bible itself—‘the sword of the Spirit,’ as the Scripture calls it. But now, you just listen to this letter from a newspaper correspondent in the war between the Prussians and the French. I cut it out, and here it is:—

“‘This afternoon I witnessed a very touching scene. A French soldier of the Thirty-third Line Regiment, belonging to the corps of General Frossard, had been made prisoner at the outposts. He is a native of Jouy-aux-Arches, where his wife and children now reside. On his way to Corny, where the head-quarters of the prince are now situated, he asked permission to be allowed to see his wife and children. Need I say that the request was immediately granted? The poor woman, half delirious with joy, asked to be allowed to accompany her husband at least to Corny. This was also acceded to. But then came the difficulty about the bairns. The woman was weak, and could not carry her baby, and at home there was no one to mind it. As for the little chap of five, he could toddle along by his father’s side. The difficulty was, however, overcome by a great big Pomeranian soldier, who volunteered to act as nurse. This man had been quartered close to the poor woman’s house; and the little ones knew him, for he had often played with them. When therefore, bidding the poor wife be of good cheer, he held out his big strong arms to the little infant, it came to him immediately, and nestling its tiny head upon his shoulders, seemed perfectly content. So did the Prussian soldier carry the Frenchman’s child. When I first saw the group, the wife was clasped in her husband’s embrace; the little boy clung to his father’s hand; while the Prussian soldier, with the baby in his arms, stalked along by their sides. Then the Frenchwoman told her husband how, when she had been ill and in want of food, the Prussian soldiers had shared their rations with her, had fetched wood and water, had lit the fire, and helped her in their own rough, kindly way; until at last those two men, who belonged to countries now arrayed against each other in bitterest hate—who perhaps a few days since fought the one against the other—embraced like brothers, while I, like a great big fool, stood by and cried like a baby. But I was not alone in my folly, if folly it be: several Prussian officers and soldiers followed my example, for we all had wives and children in far-off homes.’

“Now, I ask you all, friends, to give me an honest answer: could such a thing have happened if those countries, France and Prussia, hadn’t both of ’em been enjoying the light that comes from the Bible—as Christian nations by profession, at any rate—for long years past? You’ve only to look at wars between nations that know nothing of the Bible to get an answer to that.”

“You had him there, Tommy,” cried one of the auditory, considerably delighted at Foster’s evident discomfiture.

But the latter returned to the charge, saying, “All very fine, Tommy Tracks; but you haven’t fully answered my objection.”

“I know it,” was Bradly’s reply. “I understand that you deny that the Bible is a revelation from God because it has failed, (so you say) to do what it professes to do.”

“Just so.”

“Well, what does it profess to do?”

“Doesn’t it profess to convert all the world?”

“How soon?”

“Before the Second Advent, as you call it.”

“Show me, William, where it says so.”

So saying, Bradly handed a little Bible to his opponent, who took it very reluctantly; while those around, being much interested, and at the same time amused, exclaimed,—

“Ay, to be sure! Show it him, William; show it him!”

“Not I,” said Foster, endeavouring to hide his annoyance and confusion by an assumption of scorn; “it’s not in my line to hunt for texts.”

“True,” said Thomas quietly; “if it had been, you wouldn’t have made such a blunder.—He can’t find it, friends, for it ain’t written so in the Bible. Before the Lord comes again he’ll gather out his own people from all nations. But that’s not at all the same as converting all the world; that’s not to be tillafterhis coming again, according to the Bible. And this is just what’s happening now in different countries all over the world; exactly according to the teaching of the Bible, neither more nor less. So he hasn’t proved his point, friends; has he?”

“No, no!” was the universal cry.

But William Foster, though sorely angry, and conscious that his arrows had utterly failed of hitting their mark, was determined not to be driven ingloriously out of the field; his pride could not endure that. So, smothering his wrath, he turned again to Bradly and said,—

“Here, give us one of your precious tracts, man.” The other immediately handed him one.

“Now see, mates,” continued Foster, “what I’ve got here—‘The Power of Prayer.’ See how it begins ‘Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.’ And you believe that, Tommy Tracks?”

“Yes,” was the reply; “I believe it; and more than that, Iknowit—I know that it’s true.”

“And how do you know it?”

“First and foremost, because the Bible says so; not those very words, indeed, but what means just the same: as, for instance, ‘The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.’ And, better still, I have it in our Saviour’s own words: ‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?’”

“Well, now, let me tell you, friend Bradly, that it’s all a delusion.”

“You’re at liberty, William, to tell me what you like; but I can tell you that it’s no such thing as a delusion, for I’ve proved it myself to be a blessed truth.”

“What! You mean to say that your own prayers have been answered?”

“I do mean to say so, William. There’s nothing like experience. I can tell you what I know myself. I’ve put the Lord to the proof over and over again, and he has never failed me. I’ve always had what I needed.”

“Hear him!” cried Foster, derisively. “Why, it isn’t a week ago that I heard him myself tell John Rowe that he’d like to build another cottage on the bit of land he bought last year, only he couldn’t afford it just at present. And now he says he has only to pray for a thing, and he can get whatever he likes.—Why didn’t you pray for the money to build the new cottage, Tommy?”

“Not so fast, William; a reasoning and scientific man like yourself ought to stick close to the truth. Now, I never said as I could get whatever I liked—though I might have said that too without being wrong; for when I’ve found out clearly what’s the Lord’s will, I can say with the old shepherd, ‘I can have what I please, because what pleases God pleases me.’ What I said was this: that I always got what Ineededwhen I prayed for a thing.”

“Well, and where’s the difference?”

“A vast deal of difference, William. I never pray for any of this world’s good things without putting in, ‘if God sees it best for me to have it.’ And then I know that, if it is really good for me, I shall get it, and that’ll be what I need; and if he sees as I’m better without it, he’ll give me contentment and peace, and often something much better than what I asked for, and which I never expected, and that’ll be giving me in answer to prayer what I need.”

“Then it seems to me,” said the other, sneeringly, “that you may just as well let the prayer alone altogether, for you don’t really get what you would like, and you can’t be sure what it is you really want.”

“Nay, not so, William Foster; my Bible says, ‘Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.’ I just go and do this, and over and over again I’ve got the thing I naturally liked; and it’s only been now and then, when God knew I should be better without the thing I fancied, that he kept it back. But then I always got something better for me instead, and the peace of God with it.”

“And you call that getting answers to prayer from a heavenly Father?” said Foster derisively.

“I do,” was Bradly’s reply. “My heavenly Father deals with me in the same way as I used to deal with my children when they was little, and for the same reason—because he loves me, and knows better than I do what’s good for me. When our Dick were a little thing, only just able to walk, he comes one evening close up to the table while I was shaving, and makes a snatch at my razor. I caught his little hand afore he could get hold; and says I, ‘No, Dick, you mustn’t have that; you’ll hurt yourself with it.’ Not that there was any harm in the razor itself, but it would have been harm to him, though he didn’t know it then. Well, Dick was just ready to cry; but he looks at me, and sees a smile on my face, and toddles off into the garden; and an hour after I went and took him a great blunt knife as he couldn’t hurt himself with, and he was soon as happy as a king, rooting about in the cabbage-bed with it. I did it because I loved him; and he came to understand that, after a bit. And that’s the way our heavenly Father deals with all his loving and obedient children.”

There was a little murmur of approval when Bradly ceased, which was very distasteful to Foster, who began to move off, growling out that, “it was no use arguing with a man who was quite behind the age, and couldn’t appreciate nor understand the difficulties and conclusions of deeper thinkers.”

“Just one word more, friends, on this subject,” said Bradly, not noticing his opponent’s last disparaging remarks. “William said, a little while ago, as it’s all fancy on my part when I gave him my own experience about answers to prayer. Well, if it’s fancy, it’s a very pleasant fancy, and a very profitable fancy too; and I should like him to tell me what his learned scientific authors, that he brags so much about, has to give me instead of it, if I take their word for it as it’s all fancy, and give over praying. Now, suppose I’m told as there’s a man living over at Sunnyside as is able and willing to give me everything I want, if I only ask him. I go to his door, and knock; but he don’t let me see him. I say through the keyhole, ‘I want a loaf of bread.’ He opens the door just so far as to make room for his hand, and there’s a loaf of bread in it for me. I go to him again, and tell him through the door as I wants some medicine to cure one of my children as is sick. The hand is put out with medicine in it, and the medicine makes a cure. I go again, and say I want a letter of recommendation for my son to get a place as porter on the railway. There’s no hand put out this time; but I hear a voice say, ‘Come every day for a week.’ So I go every day, and knock; and the last day the hand’s put out, and it gives me a letter to a gentleman, who puts my son into a situation twice as good as the one I asked for him. Now, suppose I’d gone on in this way for years, always getting what I asked for, or something better instead, do you think any one would ever persuade me as it were only fancy after all; that the friend I called on so often wasn’t my friend at all, that he’d never heard or listened to a word I said, and had never given me anything in all my life? Now, that’s just how the matter stands. It’s no use talking to a man as knows what effectual prayer is, about the constancy of the laws of nature, and such like. He knows better; he has put the Lord of nature and all its laws to the proof, and so may you too. I’ll just leave with you one text out of the Scripture as’ll weigh down a warehouseful of your sceptical and philosophical books; and it’s this: ‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’”

Not a word more was spoken on either side, and the party broke up.

Chapter Six.The Vicar of Crossbourne.Of all the true friends of “Tommy Tracks” none valued and loved him more than the Reverend Ernest Maltby, vicar of Crossbourne. There is a peculiar attraction in such men to one another, which cements their friendship all the more strongly from the very dissimilarity of their social positions. For each feels dependent on the other, and that the other possesses gifts or powers of which he himself is destitute. The refined Christian scholar, while in perfect spiritual accord with the man of rougher mould and scanty learning, feels that his humbler brother is able toget athis fellow-workmen for good, as being on the same level with them, in a way denied to himself. While, on the other hand, the man of inferior education and position is conscious that all real increase in knowledge is increase in power, and that his brother of higher-station and more extensive reading can grasp and deal effectually with topics of interest and importance, which could not be done justice to by his own less skilful and less intelligent handling. And thus, as each leans in a measure on the other, being in entire sympathy as they are on highest things, the force of their united action on the hearts and lives of others is powerful indeed. Such was the case in Crossbourne. The combined work of the vicar and Thomas Bradly, both for the salvation of souls and the rescue and reformation of the intemperate, was being felt by the enemies of the truth to be a work of power: they were therefore on the watch to hinder and mar that work by every means within their reach; for Satan will not lose any of his captives without setting his own agents on a most determined and vigorous resistance.The vicar himself was just the fitting man for his position. Gently yet not luxuriously nurtured, and early trained in habits of self-denial and consideration for the feelings of others, he had entered the ministry, not only with a due sense of the solemnity of his responsibilities, and under a conviction that he was truly called to his profession by the inward voice of the Holy Spirit, but also with a loving self-forgetfulness, while he sought earnestly the truest welfare of all committed to his charge. And when he passed, after some years’ experience in the ministerial Work, to the important post of vicar of Crossbourne, he had come to take a peculiar interest in the study of individual character, and to delight in gathering around him workers of various temperaments and habits of thought. Rugged enough were some of these in their general bearing and their way of expressing themselves; but he knew well, when he had broken through the outer surface, what a firm-grained material he had to work upon in the hearts of such, and how he would be sure to win from them, in due time, by force and consistency of character, respect and affection as abiding as they were sincere.It was his happiness also to be united to a wife like-minded with himself in views and work. On one point alone they had differed, and that was as to the mental training of their only child, a daughter.Clara Maltby was now eighteen. She had been brought up by the united teaching and example of both parents “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Naturally thoughtful and retiring, and fond of learning, she had mastered the lessons taught her in her earliest years with an ease which awoke in her mother’s heart an ambition that her child, when she grew old enough, should gain some intellectual distinction. And as Clara herself was never happier than when she had a book in her hand, all that her parents had to do was to choose for her such branches of study as she was best calculated to shine in. Nor did she disappoint her teachers, but threw herself into her lessons with an energy and interest which made it certain that she would rise to eminence among competitors for the prizes of learning proposed to her own sex. And thus it was that what might have been a rational thirst after knowledge, and have led to the acquirement of stores of information which would have made their possessor an ornament to her home and to the society in which she moved, grew into an absorbing passion.She came at length to live in and for her studies. All her other pursuits and occupations were made to be subordinate to these, and were by degrees completely swallowed up by them. Not that she was unaware that there were duties which she ought to fulfil in her home and in her father’s parish, which could not be done justice to without shortening her hours of study. She saw this plainly enough, and deplored her neglect; but she had come to persuade herself that success in her intellectual pursuits was the special end at which she was to aim for the present; and she believed that her mother, at any rate, held the same view.And yet her conscience was not at ease on the matter. Home and parish work which used to fall to her was either left undone or transferred to others. “Mother,” she would say, “I am so sorry not to be of more use; I ought to help you, and to take my share of work in the parish; but then you know how it is—you see that I have no time.” Once her class in the Sunday-school had been her delight, and the object of many an anxious thought and earnest prayer, while each individual scholar had a place in her heart and her supplications. But by degrees the preparation for the Sunday lessons became irksome and too much for her already overworked brain. She must make the Sabbath a day of absolute rest from all mental exertion, except such as was involved in a due attendance on the services in the house of God, which her conscience would not allow her to absent from.As for week-day work in the parish, such as taking her turn in visiting the girls’ day-school, undertaking a district as visitor, looking up and tending the sick and the sorrowful in conjunction with her father and mother, the excuse of “no time” was pleaded here also; so that she who was once welcomed in every home in the parish, and carried peace by her loving words and looks to many a troubled and weary heart, was now becoming daily more and more a stranger to those who used to love and value her. Indeed, she seldom now stirred from home, except when snatching for health’s sake a hasty walk, in which she would hurry from the vicarage and back again along roads where she was least likely to meet with interruption from the greetings of friends or neighbours.Light, purer light, the light of God’s truth, had indeed shone into her heart, but that light was suffering a gradual and deepening eclipse through the shadow cast by the idol of intellectual ambition, which had usurped for a while the place where once her Saviour reigned supreme. And the poor body was suffering, for the overstrained mind was sapping the vigour of all its powers. And then there came a resort to that remedy, the stimulant which spurs up the flagging energies to extraordinary and spasmodic exertion, only to leave the poor deluded victim more prostrate and exhausted than ever.The vicar had never been satisfied with his daughter’s course. Life, in his view, was too short and eternity too near to justify any one in pursuing even the most innocent and laudable object in such a manner as to unfit the soul for keeping steadily in view its highest interests, and to engross the mind and life so entirely as to shut all the doors of loving and Christian usefulness. While acknowledging the value of storing, cultivating, and enlarging the mind, he became daily more and more convinced that such mental improvement was becoming a special snare to the young and enthusiastic; beguiling them into the neglect of manifest duty, and into a refined and subtle self-worship, which, in the case of those who had set out on the narrow way, was changing the substance for a shadow, and destroying that peace which none can truly feel who rob their Saviour of the consecration of all that they have and are to his glory.But deeply as he deplored the change in his daughter’s habits, and her withdrawal from first one good work and then another, he had not fully realised how it had come about, and the mischief it was doing to the body, mind, and soul of the child he loved so dearly. It was only gradually that she had relinquished first one useful occupation, and then another; and circumstances seemed at the time to make such withdrawal necessary.Then, too, his wife’s reluctance to see that, after all, she had mistaken the path on which she should have encouraged her daughter to travel, had led her to make as light as possible of the evil effects, which were only too plain to others not so nearly interested in her child’s well-being. She could not bear to think that, after all, Clara’s pursuit of intellectual distinction was physically, morally, and spiritually a huge mistake, and that she was purchasing success at the cost of health and peace. “There was nothing seriously amiss with her,” she would tell her husband, when he expressed his misgivings and fears; “she only wanted a little change; that would set her up: there was no real cause for anxiety. It would never do for Clara to be behind the rest of the girls of her age in intellectual attainments: it would be doing her injustice, for she was so manifestly calculated to shine; and if God had given her the abilities and the tastes, surely they ought to be cultivated. She could return by-and-by to her work in the Sunday-school and the parish. And then, how much better it was that she should be acquiring really solid and useful knowledge, which would be always valuable to her, than be spending her energies on any of the worldly or frivolous pursuits which were entangling and spoiling so many well-disposed girls in our day.”Alas! The poor mother, whose own heart and conscience were not really satisfied with these reasonings, had forgotten, or failed to see, that the same devotion to study which kept her daughter out of the ensnaring ways of worldliness and frivolity, equally kept her from treading that path of shining usefulness along which all must walk who would fulfil the great purpose for which God has put us into this land of probation and preparation for our eternal home.Thomas Bradly saw plainly how matters were, and when the vicar hinted at his difficulties connected with his daughter’s pursuits, as they were talking together over Sunday-school and parochial work, spoke out his mind plainly and faithfully.“Well, Thomas,” said Mr Maltby, “you see a little how I am situated. My dear child is, I trust and believe, a true Christian; but I am free to confess that I am sadly disappointed at the turn which things have taken about her studies.”“I can well believe it, sir,” was Bradly’s reply, “and I feel for you with all my heart. And I’m disappointed myself about Miss Clara, and so’s scores more in the parish. The Sunday-school ain’t the same as it was—no, nor the parish neither, now that she don’t come among us as she used to do. But there’s a twist somewheres in people’s views about the education of young ladies in our day. ’Tain’t so much in my way, sir, it’s true, as it is in yours, to notice these things; but sometimes them as is standing a little way off gets a better view of how things really are than them as is quite close by.”“Quite so, Thomas,” said the other. “Tell me, then, candidly what you think about this matter.”“I’ll do so, sir, as I know you’ll not misunderstand me; and you know that I love you and yours with all my heart. Well, sir, it seems to me as they’re beginning at the wrong place altogether, in filling young ladies’ heads, as they do, with all sorts and sizes of knowledge.”“How do you mean, Thomas?”“Just this way, sir. I were in Sheffield for a day or two last June, and as I were a-staring in at one of the cutlers’ shops, I caught sight of a strange-looking article stuck upon a stand right in the middle of the window. It were all blades and points, like the porcupine as I used to read about at the national school when I were a boy. It was evidently meant for a knife; but who would ever think of buying such a thing as that, except merely as a curiosity? There must have been some fifty or sixty blades, and these were all sorts of shapes and sizes, just, I suppose, to show the skill of the workman as contrived to fasten such a lot of them together; but they would have been no earthly use to a man as wanted a real working article. Now, as far as I can see and hear, the young ladies in these days is being got up something like one of ’em fancy knives. It seems to be the great wish of these young ladies’ parents or friends to put into their heads a lot of learning of all sorts—so many languages, so many sciences, so many accomplishments, as they calls ’em, as thick as they can stand together. And what’s the end of it all? Why, folks wonder at ’em, no doubt, and say a great many fine things to ’em and about ’em; but they’re not turned out a real serviceable article, either for their homes or for the great Master’s work as he’d have them to do it.”“It is too true, dear friend,” said the vicar with a sigh.“Ay! And if I’m not too bold in speaking my mind,” proceeded the other, “that ain’t the worst of it. You’ll excuse my homely way of talking, sir, but I can’t help thinking of Timothy Pinches’ donkey-cart when I reads or hears of these young ladies with their science classes, and their Oxford and Cambridge local examinations, and their colleges, and what not. Timothy Pinches were an old neighbour of mine when I didn’t live in these parts—that were several years ago as I’m talking of. Now Timothy had a donkey, a quiet and serviceable animal enough, and he’d got a cart too, which would carry a tidy lot of things, yet at the same time it weren’t none of the strongest. He used to cart my coals for me, and do an odd job for me here and there. Well, one day I met Timothy with a strange load in his cart; there was a lot of iron nails and bars for the blacksmith, two or three bags of potatoes, a sack of flour, a bottle or two of vinegar, a great jar of treacle, a bale of calico for one of the shops, a cask of porter, and a sight of odds and ends besides. And they was packed and jammed so tight together, I could see as they were like to burst the sides of the cart through. ‘Timothy,’ says I, ‘you’ll never get on with that load; it’s too much for the donkey, and it’s too much for the cart.’ ‘All right,’ says he, ‘we’ll manage.’ ‘Nay,’ says I, ‘it’s too much for the poor beast; make two journeys of it, and you’ll do it comfortably.’ ‘Can’t afford the time,’ says he. But hecouldafford the time to keep the poor donkey often standing before the door of the public for an hour and more together. But just then he’d had an extra glass, and he wasn’t in a mood to be spoken with. So he gives the poor beast a fierce kick, and a pull at his jaw, by way of freshening him up, and the cart goes creaking on up a hill by a winding road. I could hear it as I went on by a footpath as took me a short cut into the road again. Then the noise stopped all of a sudden; and when I’d got to the end of the path, there was Timothy Pinches looking anything but wise or pleasant, and cart and donkey had both come to grief. The side of the cart was burst right out; the donkey had fallen down and cut his knees badly; the potatoes was rolling down the hill; the flour had some of it come out of the sack in a great heap, and the vinegar and treacle was running slowly through it. When I looked at poor Timothy’s face, and then at the break-down, I couldn’t help laughing at him; but I gave him a helping hand, and I hope he learnt a useful lesson. You see, sir, it don’t do to overtask a willing beast, nor to load a cart with more goods than it’s meant to carry, specially if it ain’t over strong. But they’re making this very mistake with many of the young ladies just now—I don’t mean anything disrespectful to them in likening them to a donkey-cart, but it’s true. These young ladies themselves are overtasking their constitutions which God gave them, and they’re loading their brains with more than them brains was designed to carry. The Lord hasn’t given them, as a rule, heads fit to bear the strain as men’s heads were made to stand. I’m sure of it; it’s the opinion, too, of Dr Richardson, who has the best right of any man, perhaps, to speak on this subject, as he’s studied it, I should think, as much or more than any man living. Now, sir, just look at your own dear child, Miss Clara,—why, it makes my heart sore every time I look at her; she ain’t got the right healthy look in her face; her mind has got more to bear than ever her Maker meant it to have; and there’s no reason, surely, why she shouldn’t be as cheerful as a lark and as bright as the flowers in May.”“Most true! Most true!” said the vicar sorrowfully. “I only wish Mrs Maltby and my daughter could see things in this light; but when I express my fears and misgivings on this subject, they tell me that I must not take a gloomy view of things, nor alarm myself needlessly. But perhaps, dear friend, you may be able to put in a word, I know your plain, homely good sense and observation will have weight with both mother and daughter.”“I’ll make bold to say a word or two to them on the subject,” replied Thomas Bradly, “when next I get an opportunity.”

Of all the true friends of “Tommy Tracks” none valued and loved him more than the Reverend Ernest Maltby, vicar of Crossbourne. There is a peculiar attraction in such men to one another, which cements their friendship all the more strongly from the very dissimilarity of their social positions. For each feels dependent on the other, and that the other possesses gifts or powers of which he himself is destitute. The refined Christian scholar, while in perfect spiritual accord with the man of rougher mould and scanty learning, feels that his humbler brother is able toget athis fellow-workmen for good, as being on the same level with them, in a way denied to himself. While, on the other hand, the man of inferior education and position is conscious that all real increase in knowledge is increase in power, and that his brother of higher-station and more extensive reading can grasp and deal effectually with topics of interest and importance, which could not be done justice to by his own less skilful and less intelligent handling. And thus, as each leans in a measure on the other, being in entire sympathy as they are on highest things, the force of their united action on the hearts and lives of others is powerful indeed. Such was the case in Crossbourne. The combined work of the vicar and Thomas Bradly, both for the salvation of souls and the rescue and reformation of the intemperate, was being felt by the enemies of the truth to be a work of power: they were therefore on the watch to hinder and mar that work by every means within their reach; for Satan will not lose any of his captives without setting his own agents on a most determined and vigorous resistance.

The vicar himself was just the fitting man for his position. Gently yet not luxuriously nurtured, and early trained in habits of self-denial and consideration for the feelings of others, he had entered the ministry, not only with a due sense of the solemnity of his responsibilities, and under a conviction that he was truly called to his profession by the inward voice of the Holy Spirit, but also with a loving self-forgetfulness, while he sought earnestly the truest welfare of all committed to his charge. And when he passed, after some years’ experience in the ministerial Work, to the important post of vicar of Crossbourne, he had come to take a peculiar interest in the study of individual character, and to delight in gathering around him workers of various temperaments and habits of thought. Rugged enough were some of these in their general bearing and their way of expressing themselves; but he knew well, when he had broken through the outer surface, what a firm-grained material he had to work upon in the hearts of such, and how he would be sure to win from them, in due time, by force and consistency of character, respect and affection as abiding as they were sincere.

It was his happiness also to be united to a wife like-minded with himself in views and work. On one point alone they had differed, and that was as to the mental training of their only child, a daughter.

Clara Maltby was now eighteen. She had been brought up by the united teaching and example of both parents “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Naturally thoughtful and retiring, and fond of learning, she had mastered the lessons taught her in her earliest years with an ease which awoke in her mother’s heart an ambition that her child, when she grew old enough, should gain some intellectual distinction. And as Clara herself was never happier than when she had a book in her hand, all that her parents had to do was to choose for her such branches of study as she was best calculated to shine in. Nor did she disappoint her teachers, but threw herself into her lessons with an energy and interest which made it certain that she would rise to eminence among competitors for the prizes of learning proposed to her own sex. And thus it was that what might have been a rational thirst after knowledge, and have led to the acquirement of stores of information which would have made their possessor an ornament to her home and to the society in which she moved, grew into an absorbing passion.

She came at length to live in and for her studies. All her other pursuits and occupations were made to be subordinate to these, and were by degrees completely swallowed up by them. Not that she was unaware that there were duties which she ought to fulfil in her home and in her father’s parish, which could not be done justice to without shortening her hours of study. She saw this plainly enough, and deplored her neglect; but she had come to persuade herself that success in her intellectual pursuits was the special end at which she was to aim for the present; and she believed that her mother, at any rate, held the same view.

And yet her conscience was not at ease on the matter. Home and parish work which used to fall to her was either left undone or transferred to others. “Mother,” she would say, “I am so sorry not to be of more use; I ought to help you, and to take my share of work in the parish; but then you know how it is—you see that I have no time.” Once her class in the Sunday-school had been her delight, and the object of many an anxious thought and earnest prayer, while each individual scholar had a place in her heart and her supplications. But by degrees the preparation for the Sunday lessons became irksome and too much for her already overworked brain. She must make the Sabbath a day of absolute rest from all mental exertion, except such as was involved in a due attendance on the services in the house of God, which her conscience would not allow her to absent from.

As for week-day work in the parish, such as taking her turn in visiting the girls’ day-school, undertaking a district as visitor, looking up and tending the sick and the sorrowful in conjunction with her father and mother, the excuse of “no time” was pleaded here also; so that she who was once welcomed in every home in the parish, and carried peace by her loving words and looks to many a troubled and weary heart, was now becoming daily more and more a stranger to those who used to love and value her. Indeed, she seldom now stirred from home, except when snatching for health’s sake a hasty walk, in which she would hurry from the vicarage and back again along roads where she was least likely to meet with interruption from the greetings of friends or neighbours.

Light, purer light, the light of God’s truth, had indeed shone into her heart, but that light was suffering a gradual and deepening eclipse through the shadow cast by the idol of intellectual ambition, which had usurped for a while the place where once her Saviour reigned supreme. And the poor body was suffering, for the overstrained mind was sapping the vigour of all its powers. And then there came a resort to that remedy, the stimulant which spurs up the flagging energies to extraordinary and spasmodic exertion, only to leave the poor deluded victim more prostrate and exhausted than ever.

The vicar had never been satisfied with his daughter’s course. Life, in his view, was too short and eternity too near to justify any one in pursuing even the most innocent and laudable object in such a manner as to unfit the soul for keeping steadily in view its highest interests, and to engross the mind and life so entirely as to shut all the doors of loving and Christian usefulness. While acknowledging the value of storing, cultivating, and enlarging the mind, he became daily more and more convinced that such mental improvement was becoming a special snare to the young and enthusiastic; beguiling them into the neglect of manifest duty, and into a refined and subtle self-worship, which, in the case of those who had set out on the narrow way, was changing the substance for a shadow, and destroying that peace which none can truly feel who rob their Saviour of the consecration of all that they have and are to his glory.

But deeply as he deplored the change in his daughter’s habits, and her withdrawal from first one good work and then another, he had not fully realised how it had come about, and the mischief it was doing to the body, mind, and soul of the child he loved so dearly. It was only gradually that she had relinquished first one useful occupation, and then another; and circumstances seemed at the time to make such withdrawal necessary.

Then, too, his wife’s reluctance to see that, after all, she had mistaken the path on which she should have encouraged her daughter to travel, had led her to make as light as possible of the evil effects, which were only too plain to others not so nearly interested in her child’s well-being. She could not bear to think that, after all, Clara’s pursuit of intellectual distinction was physically, morally, and spiritually a huge mistake, and that she was purchasing success at the cost of health and peace. “There was nothing seriously amiss with her,” she would tell her husband, when he expressed his misgivings and fears; “she only wanted a little change; that would set her up: there was no real cause for anxiety. It would never do for Clara to be behind the rest of the girls of her age in intellectual attainments: it would be doing her injustice, for she was so manifestly calculated to shine; and if God had given her the abilities and the tastes, surely they ought to be cultivated. She could return by-and-by to her work in the Sunday-school and the parish. And then, how much better it was that she should be acquiring really solid and useful knowledge, which would be always valuable to her, than be spending her energies on any of the worldly or frivolous pursuits which were entangling and spoiling so many well-disposed girls in our day.”

Alas! The poor mother, whose own heart and conscience were not really satisfied with these reasonings, had forgotten, or failed to see, that the same devotion to study which kept her daughter out of the ensnaring ways of worldliness and frivolity, equally kept her from treading that path of shining usefulness along which all must walk who would fulfil the great purpose for which God has put us into this land of probation and preparation for our eternal home.

Thomas Bradly saw plainly how matters were, and when the vicar hinted at his difficulties connected with his daughter’s pursuits, as they were talking together over Sunday-school and parochial work, spoke out his mind plainly and faithfully.

“Well, Thomas,” said Mr Maltby, “you see a little how I am situated. My dear child is, I trust and believe, a true Christian; but I am free to confess that I am sadly disappointed at the turn which things have taken about her studies.”

“I can well believe it, sir,” was Bradly’s reply, “and I feel for you with all my heart. And I’m disappointed myself about Miss Clara, and so’s scores more in the parish. The Sunday-school ain’t the same as it was—no, nor the parish neither, now that she don’t come among us as she used to do. But there’s a twist somewheres in people’s views about the education of young ladies in our day. ’Tain’t so much in my way, sir, it’s true, as it is in yours, to notice these things; but sometimes them as is standing a little way off gets a better view of how things really are than them as is quite close by.”

“Quite so, Thomas,” said the other. “Tell me, then, candidly what you think about this matter.”

“I’ll do so, sir, as I know you’ll not misunderstand me; and you know that I love you and yours with all my heart. Well, sir, it seems to me as they’re beginning at the wrong place altogether, in filling young ladies’ heads, as they do, with all sorts and sizes of knowledge.”

“How do you mean, Thomas?”

“Just this way, sir. I were in Sheffield for a day or two last June, and as I were a-staring in at one of the cutlers’ shops, I caught sight of a strange-looking article stuck upon a stand right in the middle of the window. It were all blades and points, like the porcupine as I used to read about at the national school when I were a boy. It was evidently meant for a knife; but who would ever think of buying such a thing as that, except merely as a curiosity? There must have been some fifty or sixty blades, and these were all sorts of shapes and sizes, just, I suppose, to show the skill of the workman as contrived to fasten such a lot of them together; but they would have been no earthly use to a man as wanted a real working article. Now, as far as I can see and hear, the young ladies in these days is being got up something like one of ’em fancy knives. It seems to be the great wish of these young ladies’ parents or friends to put into their heads a lot of learning of all sorts—so many languages, so many sciences, so many accomplishments, as they calls ’em, as thick as they can stand together. And what’s the end of it all? Why, folks wonder at ’em, no doubt, and say a great many fine things to ’em and about ’em; but they’re not turned out a real serviceable article, either for their homes or for the great Master’s work as he’d have them to do it.”

“It is too true, dear friend,” said the vicar with a sigh.

“Ay! And if I’m not too bold in speaking my mind,” proceeded the other, “that ain’t the worst of it. You’ll excuse my homely way of talking, sir, but I can’t help thinking of Timothy Pinches’ donkey-cart when I reads or hears of these young ladies with their science classes, and their Oxford and Cambridge local examinations, and their colleges, and what not. Timothy Pinches were an old neighbour of mine when I didn’t live in these parts—that were several years ago as I’m talking of. Now Timothy had a donkey, a quiet and serviceable animal enough, and he’d got a cart too, which would carry a tidy lot of things, yet at the same time it weren’t none of the strongest. He used to cart my coals for me, and do an odd job for me here and there. Well, one day I met Timothy with a strange load in his cart; there was a lot of iron nails and bars for the blacksmith, two or three bags of potatoes, a sack of flour, a bottle or two of vinegar, a great jar of treacle, a bale of calico for one of the shops, a cask of porter, and a sight of odds and ends besides. And they was packed and jammed so tight together, I could see as they were like to burst the sides of the cart through. ‘Timothy,’ says I, ‘you’ll never get on with that load; it’s too much for the donkey, and it’s too much for the cart.’ ‘All right,’ says he, ‘we’ll manage.’ ‘Nay,’ says I, ‘it’s too much for the poor beast; make two journeys of it, and you’ll do it comfortably.’ ‘Can’t afford the time,’ says he. But hecouldafford the time to keep the poor donkey often standing before the door of the public for an hour and more together. But just then he’d had an extra glass, and he wasn’t in a mood to be spoken with. So he gives the poor beast a fierce kick, and a pull at his jaw, by way of freshening him up, and the cart goes creaking on up a hill by a winding road. I could hear it as I went on by a footpath as took me a short cut into the road again. Then the noise stopped all of a sudden; and when I’d got to the end of the path, there was Timothy Pinches looking anything but wise or pleasant, and cart and donkey had both come to grief. The side of the cart was burst right out; the donkey had fallen down and cut his knees badly; the potatoes was rolling down the hill; the flour had some of it come out of the sack in a great heap, and the vinegar and treacle was running slowly through it. When I looked at poor Timothy’s face, and then at the break-down, I couldn’t help laughing at him; but I gave him a helping hand, and I hope he learnt a useful lesson. You see, sir, it don’t do to overtask a willing beast, nor to load a cart with more goods than it’s meant to carry, specially if it ain’t over strong. But they’re making this very mistake with many of the young ladies just now—I don’t mean anything disrespectful to them in likening them to a donkey-cart, but it’s true. These young ladies themselves are overtasking their constitutions which God gave them, and they’re loading their brains with more than them brains was designed to carry. The Lord hasn’t given them, as a rule, heads fit to bear the strain as men’s heads were made to stand. I’m sure of it; it’s the opinion, too, of Dr Richardson, who has the best right of any man, perhaps, to speak on this subject, as he’s studied it, I should think, as much or more than any man living. Now, sir, just look at your own dear child, Miss Clara,—why, it makes my heart sore every time I look at her; she ain’t got the right healthy look in her face; her mind has got more to bear than ever her Maker meant it to have; and there’s no reason, surely, why she shouldn’t be as cheerful as a lark and as bright as the flowers in May.”

“Most true! Most true!” said the vicar sorrowfully. “I only wish Mrs Maltby and my daughter could see things in this light; but when I express my fears and misgivings on this subject, they tell me that I must not take a gloomy view of things, nor alarm myself needlessly. But perhaps, dear friend, you may be able to put in a word, I know your plain, homely good sense and observation will have weight with both mother and daughter.”

“I’ll make bold to say a word or two to them on the subject,” replied Thomas Bradly, “when next I get an opportunity.”

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