Various
Stories Worth Rereading
THE LITTLE PROTECTOR
He was such a little fellow, but he was desperately in earnest when he marched into the store that snowy morning. Straight up to the first clerk he went. "I want to see the 'prietor," he said.
The clerk wanted to smile, but the little face before her was so grave that she answered solemnly, "He is sitting at his desk."
The little fellow walked up to the man at the desk. Mr. Martin, the proprietor, turned around. "Good morning, little man. Did you want to see me?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. I want a wrap for my mama. I can make fires and pay for it."
"What is your name, my boy?"
"Paul May."
"Is your father living?"
"No, sir; he died when we lived in Louisville."
"How long have you lived here?"
"We haven't been here long. Mama was sick in Louisville, and the doctor told her to go away, and she would get well."
"Is she better?"
"Yes, sir. Last Sunday she wanted to go to church, but she didn't have any wrap, and she cried. She didn't think I saw her, but I did. She says I'm her little p'tector since papa died. I can make fires and pay for a wrap."
"But, little man, the store is steam-heated. I wonder if you could clean the snow off the walk."
"Yes, sir," Paul answered, quickly.
"Very well. I'll write your mama a note and explain our bargain."
When the note was written, Mr. Martin arose.
"Come, Paul, I will get the wrap," he said. At the counter he paused. "How large is your mother Paul?" he asked.
Paul glanced about him. "'Bout as large as her." he said, pointing toward a lady clerk.
"Miss Smith, please see if this fits you," requested Mr. Martin. Paul's eyes were shining.
Miss Smith put on the wrap and turned about for Paul to see it. "Do you like it?" she asked him.
"Yes, I do," he answered very emphatically.
The wrap was marked twelve dollars, but kind-hearted Mr. Martin said: "You may have it for five dollars, Paul. Take it to Pauline and have her take the price tag off," he added to Miss Smith. When she brought the bundle back to him, he put it in Paul's arms. "Take it to your mama, Paul. When the snow stops falling, come and sweep off the walk. I will pay you a dollar each time you clean it. We shall soon have enough to pay for the wrap."
"Yes, sir," answered Paul, gravely. He took the bundle and trudged out into the snow.
When he reached home, his mother looked in surprise at his bundle. "Where have you been, dear?"
"I went to town, mama," Paul answered. He put the note into her hand. She opened it and read:—
"MRS. MAY: This little man has bought a wrap for you. He says he is your protector. For his sake keep the wrap and let him work to pay for it. It will be a great pleasure to him. He has the making of a fine man in him. WILLIAM MARTIN."
Paul was astonished to see tears in his mothers eyes; he had thought she would be so happy, and she was crying. She put her arm about him and kissed him. Then she put on the wrap and told how pretty she thought it.
When the snow stopped falling, Paul went down to the store and cleaned the snow from the front walk. He did not know that Mr. Martin's hired man swept it again, for the little arms were not strong enough to sweep it quite clean.
The days passed, and one morning Paul had a very sore throat.
"You mustn't get up today, dear," his mother said. When she brought his breakfast, she found him crying. "What is making you cry? Is your throat hurting much?"
"No, mama. Don't you see it is snowing, and I can't go and clean the walk?" cried Paul.
"Shall I write a note to Mr. Martin and explain why you are not there?"
"Yes, please, mama. Who will take it?"
"I'll ask Bennie to leave it as he goes to school."
The note was written, and Bennie, a neighbor boy, promised to deliver it.
While Paul was eating his dinner, there was a knock at the door. Mrs. May answered it, and ushered in Mr. Martin.
"How is the sick boy?" he asked. He crossed the room and sat by Paul. He patted the boy's cheek, and then turned to the mother. "Mrs. May," he said, "my wife's mother is very old, but will not give up her home and live with us. She says she wants a home for her children to visit. She has recently lost a good housekeeper, and needs another. Since I met Paul the other day, I have been wondering if you would take the housekeeper's place. Mother would be glad to have you and Paul with her, and would make things easy for you, and pay you liberally."
"I shall be very glad to accept your offer, Mr. Martin. I am sorely in need of work. I taught in the public school in Louisville until my health failed. Since then I have had a hard struggle to get along," answered Mrs. May.
"I will give you mother's address. You can go out and arrange matters. Make haste and get well little protector," said Mr. Martin, as he rose to go.
When he had gone, the mother put her arms about her boy. "You are my protector," she said. "You brought me a wrap, and now you have helped me to get work to do."—Mrs. P. Binford, in the Visitor.
If I Ought To
There's a voice that's ever sounding.
With an echo oft rebounding,
In my heart a word propounding,
Loudly speaking, never still;
Till at last, my duty viewing,
Heart replies to charge renewing,
Let my willing change to doing,—
If I ought to, then I will.
MAX HILL
MOFFAT AND AFRICANER
Robert Moffat, the poor Scotch lad, who, by living on beggar's fare, managed to get an education in theology and medicine, must evermore stand as one of the great pioneers of Central African exploration. When on the last day of October, 1816, that memorable year in missions, he set sail for the Cape of Good Hope, he was only twenty years of age. But in all the qualities that assure both maturity and heroism, he was a full-grown man.
As not infrequently occurs, his greatest obstacles were found, not in the hopeless paganism of the degraded tribes of the Dark Continent, but in the apathy, if not antipathy, of the representatives of Christian governments. The British governor would have penned him up within the bounds of Cape Colony, lest he should complicate the relations of the settlers with the tribes of the interior. While fighting out this battle, he studied Dutch with a pious Hollander, that he might preach to the Boers and their servants.
Afterward, when permission was obtained, while traveling to the country of the Bechuanas, at the close of his first day's journey he stopped at a farmhouse and offered to preach to the people that evening. In the large kitchen, where the service was to be held, stood a long table, at the head of which sat the Boer, with his wife and six grown children. A large Bible lay on the table, and underneath the table half a dozen dogs. The Boer pointed to the Bible as the signal for Mr. Moffat to begin. But, after vainly waiting for others to come in, he asked how soon the working people were to be called.
"Working people?" impatiently cried the farmer.
"You don't mean the Hottentots,—the blacks! You are not waiting for them surely, or expecting to preach to them? You might as well preach to those dogs under that table!" A second time, and more angrily he spoke, repeating the offensive comparison.
Young as Mr. Moffat was, he was disconcerted only for a moment. Lifting his heart to God for guidance, the thought came into his mind to take a text suggested by the rude remarks of the Boer. So he opened the Bible to the fifteenth chapter of Matthew and read the twenty-seventh verse: "Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." Pausing a moment, he slowly repeated these words, with his eyes steadily fixed on the face of the Boer. Again pausing, a third time he quoted these appropriate words. Angrily the Boer cried out, "Well, well, bring them in." A crowd of blacks then thronged the kitchen, and Moffat preached to them all.
Ten years passed, and the missionary was passing that way again. Those work-people, who held him in the most grateful remembrance, seeing him, ran after him to thank him for telling them the way to Christ in that sermon.
His whole life in Africa was a witness to miracles of transformation. He had no scorn nor contempt for the sable sons of Africa. He found the most degraded of them open to the impressions of the gospel, and even the worst and unimpressionable among them were compelled to confess the power of that gospel to renew. One savage, cruel chief, who hated the missionaries, had a dog that chewed and swallowed a copy of the book of Psalms for the sake of the soft sheepskin in which it was bound. The enraged chief declared his dog to be henceforth worthless: "He would no more bite or tear, now that he had swallowed a Christian book."
This godly, devoted missionary preached and taught the warlike Bechuanas till they put away their clubs and knives, and farming utensils took the place of bows and arrows and spears. This strange change in African savages came to be talked over among the people. It was so wonderful that the other tribes could account for it only as an instance of supernatural magic. There was nothing they knew of that would lead men like the Bechuanas to bring war to an end, and no longer rob and kill.
Mr. Moffat was especially warned against the notorious Africaner, a chief whose name was the terror of the whole country. Some prophesied that he would be eaten by this monster; others were sure that he would be killed, and his skull turned into a drinking-cup, and his skin into the head of a drum. Nevertheless, the heroic young missionary went straight for the kraal of the cruel marauder and murderer. He was accompanied by Ebner, the missionary, who was not in favor in Africaner's court, and who soon had to flee, leaving Mr. Moffat alone with a bloodthirsty monarch and a people as treacherous as their chief.
But God had armed his servant with the spirit, not of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. He was a man of singular grace and tact. He quietly but firmly planted his foot in Africaner's realms, and began his work. He opened a school, began stated services of worship, and went about among the people, living simply, self-denyingly, and prayerfully.
Africaner himself was his first convert. The wild Namoqua warrior was turned into a gentle child. The change in this chief was a moral miracle. Wolfish rapacity, leonine ferocity, leopardish treachery, gave way before the meekness and mildness of the calf or kid. His sole aim and ambition had been to rob and to slay, to lead his people on expeditions for plunder and violence, but he now seemed absorbed by one passion, zeal for God and his missionary. He set his subjects to building a house for Mr. Moffat, made him a present of cows, became a regular and devout worshiper, mourned heartily over his past life, and habitually studied the Word of God. He could not do enough for the man who had led him to Jesus.
When the missionary's life hung in the balance with African fever, he nursed him through the crisis of delirium. When he had to visit Cape Town, Africaner went with him, knowing that a price had been set for years upon his own head as an outlaw and a public enemy. No marvel that when he made his appearance in Cape Colony, the people were astonished at the transformation! It was even more wonderful than when Saul, the arch-persecutor, was suddenly transformed into Paul, the apostle.
Mr. Moffat once said that during his entire residence among this people, he remembered no occasion on which he had been grieved with Africaner or found reason for complaint; and even his very faults leaned to the side of virtue. On his way to Cape Town with Mr. Moffat, a distance of six hundred miles, the whole road lay through a country which had been laid waste by this robber and his retainers. The Dutch farmers could not believe that this converted man was actually Africaner; and one of them, when he saw him, lifted his hands and exclaimed: "This is the eighth wonder of the world! Great God, what a miracle of thy power and grace!"
He who had long shed blood without cause would now with as little hesitation shed his own for Christ's sake. When he found his own death approaching, he gathered his people around him, and charged them, as Moses and Joshua did Israel: "We are not now what we once were, savages, but men professing to be taught according to the gospel. Let us, then, do accordingly." Then, with unspeakable tenderness and gentleness, he counseled them to live peaceably with all men, to engage in no undertaking without the advice of Christian guides, to remain together as one people, and to receive and welcome all missionaries as sent from God. Then he gave them his parting blessing.
His dying confession would have graced the lips of the apostle of the Gentiles: "I feel that I love God, and that he has done much for me, of which I am totally unworthy. My former life is stained with blood: but Jesus Christ has bought my pardon, and I shall live with him through an eternity. Beware of falling back into the same evils into which I have so often led you, but seek God, and he will be found of you, and direct you."
Having said this, Africaner fell asleep, himself having furnished one of the most unanswerable proofs that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.—Arthur T. Pierson, in "The Miracles of Missions," second series, copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York.
TWO TRIFLES
"Isn't Aunt Sue the dearest person you ever saw!" exclaimed Helen Fairmont as she and her visitor sank into a garden seat in the beautiful grounds surrounding Mrs. Armour's lovely home. "Nothing ever seems to be too much trouble for her, if she can make others happy."
"Yes," answered Mary Sutton, "I just felt like giving her a good hug when she told you her plan. It is really just for me that she is going to let you give the picnic here."
"Just for that very reason. It will be simply fine. O, she is so sweet! You see, two weeks ago, when you wrote that finally you could arrange to visit me for the summer, I was so full of the good news that I couldn't get to Aunt Sue's quickly enough to tell her about it,—somehow one always wants to tell Aunt Sue about things,—and she said she used to go to school with your mother, and was very fond of her, and she was all ready to like you, too, and that just the very minute you reached here, we were both to come over—I mean you and I were."
"O, dear," laughed Mary, "I think you'd better stop and take a good long breath, and get the we's and you's straightened."
"I don't care," Helen went chattering on. "You know what I mean, just what we've done. We, you and I,—is that right?—were to come to her house and choose what kind of entertainment we wanted her to give, so you might meet my friends."
"Who thought of the garden picnic?" inquired Mary, her face all animation. Then, not waiting for Helen's answer, she said, enthusiastically, "Isn't this a beautiful spot in which to have a picnic?"
The girls stopped talking long enough to look about at the pride of Mrs. Armour's heart, the lovely grounds round her home. They surrounded a fine old house of colonial type, for which they made a pretty setting. A double row of dignified and ancient elms flanked a pathway leading from the gate. The lawn on each side of the walk made one think of the answer the English gardener gave to the inquiry as to the cause of the velvety beauty of England's lawns. "Why, sir," said he, "we sows 'em, and we mows 'em, and we mows 'em, and we sows 'em." Mrs. Armour's lawn had the appearance of having undergone a like experience. At the back and sides of the house was a variety of shrubs and bushes whose blossoms in the spring made the place indescribably sweet. Mrs. Armour boasted that there were forty kinds of bushes, but her husband laughingly said that he had never been able to count more than thirty-nine and a half; "for you certainly couldn't call that Japanese dwarf a whole one!"
June roses ran riot in season. Later, more cultivated varieties, blooming regularly through the summer, took their part in providing fragrance. Sweet, old-fashioned garden plants and more valuable products, procured at much trouble and expense, helped to make a bower that might have satisfied even more fastidious eyes than those which reveled in them now.
Mrs. Armour's great delight was in using her garden, and she had given Helen the privilege of inviting all her young friends to picnic there the following Thursday evening.
"And, O Mary, you just can't imagine how pretty it is here with the Chinese lanterns swung from tree to tree, and the dainty tables scattered round!" Helen scarcely contain herself.
Mary laughed merrily. She was equally delighted but naturally she took everything in a more quiet manner. Smiling at Helen's exuberance of spirit, she asked, "What was it your aunt said about the sandwiches?"
"She wants to help us make them, and she was telling me she'd like me to cut them a little more carefully than I did the last time I helped her. You'd never think Aunt Sue has a hobby, would you?"
"No, I don't think I should."
"Well, she has. She's the most particular old darling about little things that you ever saw. Now those sandwiches I made I will admit were not cut very evenly, but, dear me! they tasted good enough. Tom Canton ate six. I told her so, but she said they should have looked good, too."
"Well, what's her hobby?"
"I just told you. It's trifles. She says life is made of them, and trifles with the rough edges polished off make beautiful lives. And she loves to quote such things as, 'Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.' She says trifles decide almost everything for us, and shape our characters. She says it is interesting to study how most big things grow from little ones.
"Helen, I think she's right." Mary's dark, thoughtful eyes looked into her friend's.
"O, I don't! It isn't trifles, trifles, that decide things and make the real difference. It is the big things. For instance, it is brother Tom's education in the school of technology that placed him in the responsible position we are all so proud of him for obtaining."
"Yes, but I heard him say himself that he just happened, by mistake, to leave one of his scribbled figures on your uncle's desk, and your uncle, picking it up by mistake, too, said that a boy who could do that should have a chance at the right training."
"Why, that's a fact, Mary mine," said Helen, in surprise. "I never thought of it in that way. Well, I won't agree that it happens so often. For example,"—glancing about for an idea, she caught sight of a young man, a former schoolmate, passing just in front of the Armour home,—"for example, I don't suppose it was a trifle that made Alson Jarvis turn out the kind of individual he has become lately. He used to be a fine boy, but I am afraid he is getting dissipated. He doesn't go with our crowd much now. I guess he is not invited the way he used to be before he began going with those South Town boys."
"I wish I could prove to you my side of the argument. Let's try your Aunt Sue's idea of studying how the big things come from little ones. Wouldn't it be interesting to find the cause of this one case? I would not be one bit surprised if it were just some little thing which was the pivot that turned him."
"All right," agreed Helen. "I don't believe your theory, but it would be fun, as you say, to try it. Will"—Will was her brother—"insists Al's not so black as he has been painted lately. We will get Will to find out for us if he can."
Then the talk drifted to the more absorbing subject of sandwiches and cakes.
At dinner-time the two girls confided to the accommodating Will their desire to find what had changed Al.
"Trying to pry into private closets, regardless of the kind of welcome their enclosed skeletons may accord you, are you?" said Will, banteringly.
Mary, not accustomed to his teasing, blushed, wondering if she had really been guilty of an indelicate presumption, but Helen spoke up quickly in their defense:—
"Now, Will you know perfectly well it is not any such thing. As a pledge of our good faith—does that sound nice and lawyer-like?" Will was studying law, and Helen, too, liked to tease occasionally—"I do affirm that if you will do that for us, I will do something nice for him, on your account."
"Then I certainly will. It is what I have been trying to convince you for a month that you ought to do."
The girls told him why it was they were so anxious to know more of Alson's private affairs.
"I would like to prove that your Aunt Sue and I are right, you know," said
Mary.
"Well," said Will, turning to his sister's guest, "don't let them prejudice you against Al. He is off the track just now, I know. The girls are not having much to do with him, but I have seen worse than he is." Will went off whistling. The next day he was ready with his report.
"Girls," he began, "Mary wins in the argument about trifles, and as a result I am feeling pretty mean about the business. I guess I am the trifle in the case."
Both girls laughed as they glanced at his six feet of length, and his great, broad shoulders.
"O, it is no laughing matter," he said, good-naturedly. "This is the way it happened: Washington's birthday, you know, everything in town was closed, and I thought, as Al was living in a boarding-house, I would better ask mother if I might bring him home the night before, and have him spend the day here with us; we were going to have a kind of celebration anyway, you know. So about seven o'clock that evening, just before I started for the travel lecture, I ran up to mother's room. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if she would not include Al in the number of her guests, when I noticed that she looked pretty blue. I know she whisked away a tear so I should not get sight of it. I pretended I didn't see it but I said, 'Got some troubles, little mother?'"
Helen knew in just what a hearty, cheerful way he said it.
"'Not very many, dear,' she said; but I didn't feel like bothering her about anything then, and decided it would do just as well to bring Al home the following Saturday night and keep him over Sunday."
Will looked dubious.
"But it didn't do," he continued. "Having nothing to keep him busy that holiday, Al went off with a crowd he had always before refused to join—a pretty gay set, I am afraid. The man who had half promised him the position he had been slaving for during the past year happened to see him with those people, and the very next day he informed Al very curtly that, after due consideration, he found he had no place for him. Alson guessed why, and now he feels reckless, and says he might as well have the game as the name, might as well be really bad since he has to suffer anyway. He talked in a desperate sort of way this morning when he told me about it. Somehow I feel responsible for the whole thing, because I hesitated about asking mother."
Will looked thoughtfully across at the girls, whose faces expressed real sympathy. Suddenly Helen exclaimed:—
"The night before Washington's birthday, you say?"
"Yes."
"Mother was nearly crying alone in her room?"
"Yes."
"About seven o'clock?"
"Yes. Is this a cross-examination?"
"Then," said Helen, sitting upright and paying no attention to her brother's question, "it's all my fault."
"How?"
"Bridget was out that evening, and I had to stay home from the lecture to put away the dinner things and I said I did not see why I always had to do such disagreeable things. I did not see why all our relations were rich, and why we had to be always scrimping and missing everything. Of course I repented in a little while and apologized. It made mother feel pretty bad, I knew, but I did not think she minded it as much as that, though."
"It was a pretty serious mix-up all around, wasn't it, sister?" Will spoke consolingly, but he looked worried.
"Well," came Mary's soothing tones, "you must not take all the blame, for probably there were a great many more 'little nothings' that had something to do with it. Al must take his share, too."
"Yes, perhaps," said Will; "but we have to take the blame that belongs to us."
Helen was aghast at the enormous result of her few minutes' irritability. Such outbursts were not common with her. There was a catch in her voice as she said, "Poor Al!"
Mary went directly to the heart of the matter. "It is done," she said. "It is somebody's fault, of course, but what is to be done first to rectify it?"
"I don't know, I am sure," Helen answered, musingly. "I have not had a thought of anything but the garden picnic for the last two days, and I don't seem to have any idea but picnic in my head."
"O, good!" ejaculated Mary. The joy of the discoverer shone in her eyes.
"The picnic! That is just the thing. Ask him, of course."
Alson Jarvis had hidden the hurts of his schoolmates' recent slights under a nonchalant manner. Each one, while it cut deeply, seemed to aggravate him to greater wilfulness. Well bred as he was, took no real pleasure in the sports of the company of which he had made a part since the loss of the position he so desired, and for which he had worked so faithfully. He felt himself disgraced and barred from the old associates; so, from pure discouragement, he continued with the new.
Helen Fairmont's note of invitation came as a surprise. It ran:—
"DEAR ALSON: I am inviting, for Aunt Sue, a number of my friends to meet Miss Mary Sutton, my guest from Amosville. We are to have a garden picnic Thursday evening. I think you will enjoy meeting Miss Sutton, as she has the same love for golf you have, and I have already told her of the scores you made last summer. Yours sincerely,
"HELEN FAIRMONT."
He read it with pleasure. Then the accumulated unkindnesses of his old friends came before him. A spirit of resentment took hold of him. No, they had shown how little they cared for him. Why should he go among them again? There was plenty of other company he could enter. But why had she asked him if she did not want him? O, well, they were all alike anyway! Even if she had not already done so, Helen would pass him by sooner or later, like so many of the others. But Will Fairmont had stuck to him. Maybe he had got his sister to pity him. Al winced at the thought. "I am getting contemptible. Will Fairmont would not do that. O, well, I might as well be done with them all right now!" His eyes flashed defiantly. Then he caught sight of the little note.
"Friendly enough," he said. "Sounds as honest and sincere as her brother."
Then he added: "I might give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose. Yes,
I will go, if for no other reason than that she is Will's sister."
He went. And he enjoyed himself thoroughly thanks partially to Mrs. Armour's knowledge of human nature. Where others saw only weakness, she found smarting hurts. She felt that he was on dangerous ground, that he was ashamed of himself, and that his self-pride and self-respect needed propping, and she immediately proceeded to prop them.
Helen's grief over her own unsuspected part in his career resulted in an especial effort to make the picnic a pleasure and success for him. With that kindly compliance which is more common in those about us than we sometimes think, the other young people accepted the idea of Alson's being one of them again, and he found himself, before the termination of the evening, on almost his old footing with them.
"Wasn't it a success all round?" said Mary that night. "I congratulate you,
Helen, on your ability to extend real hospitality. It was just lovely."
"They did seem to have a good time, didn't they? Al Jarvis was on my conscience all the evening. Do you think he enjoyed himself?"
"Yes, I do, Helen."
"After what I did it was such a little return to make."
Simultaneously the girls laughed.
"Trifles again! They keep bobbing up, don't they? I suppose this is one of those of little consequence."
"'Time will tell,'" sententiously quoted Mary.
Time did tell. Years afterward two successful lawyers sat in an office, one congratulating the other on his brilliant speech of the day.
"It might never have been, Will," said Alson Jarvis, "if your aunt hadn't somehow, without a single definite word on the subject, shown me the broken road down which I had about decided to travel through It was at a party she had in her grounds one night long ago for your sister and Mary Sutton. Do you remember it?"
Did he? Will's heart glowed with pleasure and gratitude as he thought of the great result of Mary's little suggestion about inviting Al. How unlike this was the outcome of that miserable trifle which had played so important a part in the lawyer's experience.—Elisabeth Golden, in the Wellspring.
Finish Thy Work
No other hand thy special task can do,
Though trivial it may seem to thee.
Thou canst not shirk
God-given work
And still be blest of Heaven, from sin be free.
O idler in life's ripened harvest-field,
Perform thy task, that rich thy work may yield!
Ah, sweet the thought that comes at set of sun,
If finished is the work of that one day.
But O the joy
Without alloy,
Awaiting him who at life's close can say,
"I'm ready, Father, to go home to thee;
The work is finished which thou gavest me."
MRS. M A LOPER.