and Mrs. Jim was brewing tea for me, for she never permitted even an
inquirer to come to her door without his cup of tea. I put a question
to Jim that fortunately set him to talking about prayer. I had expected
to draw out a fish story but I found him launching into an account of
his belief in prayer and his ventures in talking with His Father.
"What was the best catch you ever had, Jim?" I questioned him.
"It was last April and it come in direct answer to prayer," Jim
answered promptly and without the least embarrassment.
"In answer to prayer?" I said, and the tone of surprise was in my voice.
"Why not," said Jim. "You believe in prayer, I suppose, then why limit
it. I needed a big catch. I'd had to paint the house and there had
been many expenses and I had to have a big catch to tide things over.
You will remember that the Bible takes for granted folks will pray for
fish, for it says:
"'If ye ask for fish will he give you a stone.'
"No, the man that asks for fish and asks right gets fish and the man
that asks for bread gets bread. It doesn't matter what you want, prayer
will fetch it. You remember He said:
"'Ye shall ask _what ye will_ in my name and I will give it you.'
"I don't pretend to set myself up to judge of what the parsons should
or shouldn't do. I am more or less an ignorant man, so far as schools
go, though I have read a heap since I was converted, and what's more
important, I have looked and thought a good deal. And I've looked in
more'n one direction. Old Mr. Squibbs who used to live out to Heart's
Delight was an odd stick. His wife died and he took to livin' alone and
he got kinder warped. He built him a house with only one window and he
always had only the one view when he looked out. Thinks I, some folks
are like old Mr. Squibbs, they have only one window and looking out
o' that window they see only a few things and no wonder they're often
a little lackin' in the loft. But I've tried to keep all the windows
of my mind and soul open and to let the light in and to look out on
all sides. The result o' all this lookin' and a thinkin' is that some
parsons and some folks, parsons is folks, though they are commonly
reckoned in a different class, don't understand the nature o' prayer.
They take it the Lord has got kinder out o' touch with the doings of
His children, and it's up to them to let the Lord on to the situation.
I have heared some prayers in churches that sounded like a newspaper
recounting the happenings. Strikes me they must have a queer notion of
the Lord, to think He don't know what's happening to His own created
children.
"There's other prayers appear rather impudent. They tell the Lord just
what He ought to do. Who are we, poor creatures on the earth, who can't
see back of us, or before us, but a very little way and then only when
it's a clear sky, who are we that we should rise up in our conceit and
tell the Lord what He had better do. It's turning the boat round and
headin' it the wrong way. We are to ask Him what He wants us to do. We
are to come to Him not to give knowledge but to get wisdom.
"Parson Curtis called me impudent because I asked the Lord for a mess
o' fish, and a big mess, too. But I don't agree with the parson on this
matter. I don't know why we shouldn't ask Him for what we think we
need, but there's a right and a wrong way of asking. Mind you I didn't
presume to tell the Lord how to send them or where. I just left it in
His hands. I prayed something like this:
"'Kind Father, we were talking over blessings last night and I
mentioned a good many that You had sent us; and then when I'd finished
sayin' my thanksgivings, I asked that You make it possible for me to
find a mess o' fish and a good-sized one. Now I know You'll say no, if
it's best, and I'll not murmur or complain; but if it seems to You to
be best, You'll know the way to send them and when it's best. It's all
in Your hands and I'm not dictating to You, Father. But I want You to
know that we are needing fish and that I'm a-goin' to keep my eyes open
and my boat trim and my hooks and sinkers right and my nets all mended,
and I'll be waitin' for the Word.'
"That's just about the way I pray. I am not afraid to come boldly to
the throne of grace. He would never find fault with my grammar, for
doesn't He encourage the little folks to talk with Him. Sure, that's
just what it is talking with Him. When we talk to one another, it's
conversation; when we talk to ourselves, it's thinking; and when we
talk to God, it's praying.
"I never yet have told the Lord how to do anything, or how to fetch my
gifts. For since all things and all powers and all means are in His
hands, He doesn't need to be told. I most likely wouldn't know the best
way for transporting His gifts. I have to ask humbly and faithfully and
then to keep the doors open, so's whoever He sends will find me ready
and waitin' to receive.
"Then again, I seldom pray for an easy time or a smooth sea. I want to
be strong and I don't mind wrestling like Jacob with the strange one,
so long's I come out the winner. I don't mind if the sea is ruffled,
or the waves mount, or the wind lashes the sails, so long as I know He
has an eye on me and keeps me. I have found that if He sends me extra
work, He always sends along extra strength, and the blessed part of it
is that the strength comes at just about the time the work does.
"I pray sometimes for health for my body, but I am much more likely to
pray for the health of soul. For I dread sickness of soul, more'en I do
sickness of my body. It is far harder to get rid of selfishness than to
get over a stomach-ache. I'd rather see my little Clara sick with the
measles than to see her developing dishonesty."
"How long does it usually take the Lord to answer your prayers," I
asked, and not jocularly, but in the hope of finding out what results
had come to Jim as a result of his sincere prayers.
"How long does it take before it rains, do you know? Can you tell
when the frost will take my cabbages or the snow heap up my door-way?
Neither can I tell when the Lord will send what I ask. He knows better
than I do. He knows the value of delays, and how long to try my
patience. I wouldn't say He hurried, for the more I come to know of
Him, the more I find it true that He has taken time to do most things
He has done. You can get an idea of how He works by looking at this
earth that He took so long to fix up for us. As I've told you before,
I think the Lord loves to surprise us children and often He sends a
blessing when we are least expecting it and the answer comes on a dark,
stormy day when it's like a ray of sunshine breaking thru a cloud.
"I talk over all my needs with Him, but I don't devote all my praying
to myself. I've done quite a lot of praying for Rascal Moore, and some
day the Lord will surprise Rascal and me and he'll be converted. Of
course I pray for my own wife and my own little girl and I pray for Bob
McCartney and I also remember Spotty, my dog. If I had a cow, which
I haven't just now, I'd pray for her. They are God's offspring, and
they were planned by Him and they need His care to provide fresh green
and abundant water. It's a responsibility for which we need help, the
caring for the other children."
"You are wandering away from your fish story," I reminded him. "What
about that big catch? How did it happen?"
"It was very simple. I went out to the fishing grounds. It would have
been asking too much of the Lord to have demanded that He send them
ashore. I went where I'd be likely to find fish. And when I got to the
grounds, I heared a voice say, 'Let your nets down on the starboard
side.' And I did as He told me and I had the best catch of the season."
VI
LIVIN' ALONG
Several months had passed without a word from Harbor Jim, when one
morning going thru a batch of mail, that was given over to business
matters, I came upon a rather soiled envelope that was post-marked "St.
John's." I was quite sure that it was from Jim and I pushed aside the
communications from firms that offered me oil stock and a fortune and
the letters of others who were suing for favors of one kind and another
and turned with the relish of a boy to read the message from my friend.
I am willing that you should read it, but I have made some corrections
in spelling and a few in grammar, that you may read it about as he
would have read it aloud, about, I think, as he intended it to read.
"Dear One,
"It's a long time since we've seen you on the flakes. It's a long time
since we've read the word o' the Lord together beside the evening
lamp. I'm not thinking of coming to New York to see you. I know I have
been invited manys the time, but I'm not risking a leg yet in your
full streets. It's gettin' bad enough in St. John's with all the autos
a-whisking down Water St. It's a fine thing that we can send a message
up there to you. It was a kind Father that made it possible for us to
get acquainted with each other as well as with Him. I often think of
the Master's ideas on the subject. You remember He told us if we really
got acquainted with our brothers we should know the Father, and without
that acquaintance we couldn't really know Him.
"There ain't no great thing happened to tell of. I've just been livin'
along. Eatin' and sleepin' every day and fishin' most days. But I've
been prayin' every day and a receivin' of replies day by day. The
Lord's been with me all the way. Yes, just as much as though I could
write you of a great, sudden happening. There's a good many folks I
find who recognize the Lord's doings in the big, flashing things of
life and forget Him altogether except at them special times. It's
rare that I sit up with a corpse, which I often do, without hearing a
confession about the Lord's hand and the Lord's doing in the coming of
the stroke; but it's most likely that same man who is very conscious
and pitiful didn't have much thought or dealings with the Lord till his
sorrows come upon him.
"Now the Lord is in the Valley of the Dark Times and He's on the Bright
Height of Victory, but He's also along the Common Way, the level road
that makes up the every day's travel. That's what I used to forget and
that's what I'm beginning to remember and it makes heap a different in
your knowledge o' life itself and the joy you get outen it.
"There's countless folks know He never fails in time o' need, but I'm
one who finds that He never fails at any time and that every day is a
day o' need.
"It may be I've met the wrong kind o' folks some of the journey, but
I've found a good many that make a heap a trouble just out o' living.
They remind me o' Martha who got so fussed up doing common housework
she couldn't understand the need o' spiritual house-keeping at all.
Folks don't seem to have time enough to live their lives easily. They
start off with a hitch and they break down afore they get very far.
Seems though they thought there want goin' to be another life after
this one and they'd got to do all eternity's work in this little span
o' time. Don't seem reasonable and natural to expect a man to do the
work o' two worlds in one. The Lord don't expect it neither.
"The Lord Jesus had about the biggest task on hand that any man ever
had. His job was to save the world. He had only three years for His
ministry and if he had lived as some of the folks hereabouts are livin'
He would have so consumed Himself with worry and fret that He would a
died with a fever afore the first year was over. One thing I note as I
read His story is that He moved majestic like He had time to do what
needed to be done. I guess it's the things that we could get on with
out that take the most time and gender the most worry.
"There's always time enough to do what the Lord intended to be done
in this life, else He wouldn't have assigned it. He wouldn't run His
universe on a leisurely and comfortable plan, if He expected us to
wear ourselves out hustling. I take it He counts a thousand years
are as one day not only for Himself but as well for us children.
Thinkin' of His plan kinder takes the fever outen your veins, kinder
makes you understand what His Son meant about the peace that passeth
understandin'.
"Effie is the same as ever. She's just livin' along, same's I. The
children are doin' well at school. Bob McCartney was over night afore
last. His boy has got the rheumatics, but I guess tain't nothin'
permanent. The government is thinkin' o' takin' over the railroad
again. Our railroad has had a hard time and it's been found fault with
a good deal, but it's got an iron constitution and I guess it can stand
it. As I told you once, it's all the railroad we've got and it's a
powerful lot bettern no railroad.
"I am thinkin' often these days of little Peter. I can think now
without swallowin' hard and I'm beginnin' to get comfort instead of
trouble when I think. I have been thinking about the conditions o'
life over there. Sometime when your down here I'll talk with you about
the Heaven Home, but it would take too long to write it out and then
I don't knows you would be interested. Any how it would come out easy
with your kind o' questions. I like you, but I do think your about the
hardest questioner I ever knowed.
"Respectfully yours, that's how letters are signed when a man writes
you for fish or bait or somethin', but I don't see why it ain't proper
for a friend, for certain we ought to respect our friends, and the fact
we can respect 'em makes us the more sure their friends.
"Jim."
"P. S. I saw Bob McCartney last night. He was lookin' well and had his
behaviour (silk-hat) on. He had been to a party."
VII
THE HEAVEN HOME
When again the good fortune brought me to Newfoundland and led me out
to the fisherman's cottage, I did not forget Jim's promise to tell
me of his observations concerning the future life. We had, thru our
increasing friendship, come to understand each other. I had learned
when to keep silent and I knew Jim's moods and when to intrude would
be the height of ingratitude and when to enter would be the act of an
accepted friend.
The reading of the Book had been finished for the evening and there was
yet a half hour before my friend would count it his time to retire.
"How about the Heaven Home, I think that is what you called it," I
asked, and Jim, without parleying, was ready to speak freely in answer.
"Yes," he said, "I like the word home, as applied to it. I couldn't
think of Peter as wantin' to stay in a mansion. In the Comfort Chapter
in John, I've always read the word 'home' in place of 'mansion.' The
parsons tell me that there are some mistakes in the translatin' o' the
Good Book, and I am sure that it's a mistake here. There ain't enough
comfort in the thought of a mansion for most of us common run o' folks,
and it was for us that He come and told of this life and the life to
come.
"I'm sure it's a home. I think it must have in it things that match up
with what we got here. I don't see how we could feel at home without
something like tables and chairs. We had a parson one time who knew all
about it over there, accordin' to his tell. He told us about the crowns
and harps and the golden streets and the singin' that went on all the
day long. But I callate no Lander would care for such a life as that,
and if that's what it's like there's precious few of us 'uns over there.
"Now if it's a home as I think it must be since the Father has planned
it, there must be homelikeness there. There must be somethin' that
corresponds to tables and chairs and all the little things that go to
makin' up a real home, else how could a man be happy over there, who
had just left a happy home here. I'm not sayin' we shall always need
them things, but I am a sayin' that in the very next life we must have
things we are used to for a spell till we get to the point where we
don't need them, but somethin' else. Sounds sensible to me to think
that way.
"You remember that after the Lord was dead and Peter was plumb worn out
and discouraged; there didn't seem to be no hope nowheres; he decided
to go fishin'. I callate there are times when a man would rather go
salmon fishing than to do anything else in the world, provided he knows
what good salmon fishin' is. Now for these fishermen about the only
thing the Lord can do, if He wants to make 'em happy as He promised to
do, is to give 'em a chance at fishin'.
"I wouldn't be at all surprised some morning in Heaven to be trailin'
along the bank o' some good stream fishin' and lookin' up sudden to see
the Lord there a fishin' too.
"You smile, but why not? Do you think the Father is so foolish as to
drop us down in a strange place where we don't understand and we don't
know what to do. Does it appear to you that the Lord would take a
little fellow like Peter and send him around with a harp. I'll tell you
what Peter would want to do, he would want to jump rain barrels so as
he would know how to jump ice pans when he got older.
"What good would it do to take any little fellow outen the primary
school and put him right into college. It wouldn't do him or the
college one particle of good. It would be a sheer waste for everybody
concerned. I think the Father is wiser than that, and it's always
kinder amused me and somewhat disgusted me that the parsons have
imagined heaven to be so teetotally different from this life.
"I've seen so much of His wisdom here, I can't come to think that He's
working blind and foolish over there. Will I know little Peter, sure I
will, or it wouldn't be heaven. Then his new little body must look like
the present one, only stronger and it won't hurt it so much when he
pinches it.
"He'll get into the place that fits for him, not because he's sent,
but because he just naturally goes where he belongs. And as it is with
little Peter so it will be with every one. Perhaps by this time he has
seen the Christ, for the kingdom is always found quicker by a child
than by a grown man. Children see things that we older folks find it
hard to see."
"How about Rascal Moore?" I asked.
"Just now he's taken his cat and dog and he's gone to the woods.[2]
Mebbe there a stick will hit him and knock a little sense into him.
He's by no means hopeless. I've seen worse ones than he is get sense
afore they died. But you mean what would become of him if he went just
as he is. Well, there must be sufferin' for the likes o' him. You
can't, and I find the Lord Himself don't, seem to make a sinner into a
saint all of a sudden. He may wake him up sudden and start him, but it
takes time to get him rounded off. He'll go where he belongs just as
the others; and if for a while he belongs in an uncomfortable, painful
place why there's where he'll go. I never could see the sense in trying
to think that everybody would go right off to one same place and be in
heaven. There's too much difference in folks; there's the converted and
the unconverted; there's the sinners and the saints; and though you put
'em in the same place, it wouldn't be the same place for them. It don't
seem probable to me either that they can't never change their places
when they get over there. There's a good deal o' changin' here, so
there's likely to be over there.
"There are changes in the earth homes, there'll be changes in the
heaven homes. And it will be well so long as the changes are for the
better. I can't think that will always be the case, howsomever, for
it ain't the case here. But gradual I'm expectin' conditions will
improve and the handicaps are less over there. With the help o' Moses,
Isaiah and the prophets and saints we ought to get on at a fair pace. A
tremendous lot o' mothers is over there; they've been a goin' out one
by one for a terrible long spell, makes me dizzy when I get to thinkin'
o' some o' these subjects. Mothers don't loaf so long as there's chance
to help kids, an' I'm callating that they'll do some pretty good work
along lines o' convertin' over there.
"I expect to hear the baccaloo[3] over there and I'd rather hear a
baccaloo than a nightingale or a lark for it would seem more like home.
That's the big thing and the Lord ain't likely to disappoint me or any
one who is lookin' for a home over there.
"The heaven home is a good sight nearer than most folks think. The
journey is short and it's only our poor sight and our hearin' that has
made it so far away. I know Peter's often near me while I'm at work and
it's a comfortable feeling, not a scarey one to think he's liable to
be around most any time and I must be on my guard not to let slip any
string o' words that would be bad for him to hear. It chucks a fellow
up to feel that he must be on his best for the little fellow sees and
knows. I want to be such a father as he'll respect. It must be mighty
oncomfortable for some folks when they get over there, for some folks
don't do no growing after they lose their loved ones and how in sank
they expect to be fit company for their folks when they themselves get
over there is more'n I can tell.
"Because there's homes there don't in no way interfere with it's bein'
a beautiful place. It don't have to have golden harps to make it worth
while. There's probably rivers that are prettier than 'ourn, and there
must be pink calmia, fox-gloves and sweet william, pansies, tea-bushes
and a good many others that I don't happen to think of. There must be
places in heaven that look like Deer Lake, Gaff Topsail, Kelligrews and
Brigus. Mebbe there's places in heaven like New York, too, though from
what you say it will need some changin' to be kept as a heaven city.
"I don't want you to think that I'm a gump[4] because of these ideas,
but to me they've been a good deal of comfort and whenever I get to
doubting at all about things over there I just recall it's a home and I
settle back content."
[2] Gone to a lumber camp.
[3] A loon.
[4] A very foolish person.
VIII
CHRISTMAS WITH JIM'S FRIENDS
There was the calendar right before me on the wall, with figures big
enough to mentally hit me and hit hard, and I should have remembered
that the road of the year had turned toward Christmas. But before me
was an unfinished news article that even a hungry and insistent stomach
did not seem able to push to a conclusion. Beyond my desk out of the
window I looked now and then down upon the hurrying throng who were
making their way across City Hall Park to Brooklyn Bridge. It was the
hour when you do not know whether to call it day or night. It was
indescribable in another way,--it was either misting or raining. I
suppose a Scotchman would have called it mist and an Irishman rain. I
think that any one looking out that night would have found it hard to
see in the gray view anything suggestive of Christmas. I turned from
the wet view to my unfinished work only to be again interrupted.
A Western Union boy burst into my office with a telegram. It was from
St. John's and I wondered as I tore it open if anything had happened
to Harbor Jim. It was short and for once the operators had apparently
followed the author's spelling.
come fur chrismus cant take no fur an answer no how biggest
an best you or yourn hev ever seed come jim
A few days afterward a long letter came enforcing and elaborating the
invitation. Jim wrote that he was already at work upon a Christmas that
would eclipse anything New York had ever had. He had taken the idea out
of a city paper that I had sent him a year before and had developed it
and he wouldn't care to go forward with it, unless I could be there.
That is how it happened that a few days before Christmas, on the last
steamer that would get me there in time, I was steaming into St. John's
Harbor. Our boat was sheathed with ice and as in the morning we came
thru the Narrows there were knobs of ice floating around us. The hills
were white and the brown stone now and then stuck thru where the snow
had lost its footing.
Landing I found the people in furs and the sleighs making merry music
with their bells. A fellow agreed to drive me out to Jim's for two
dollars and a half and I went in his sleigh, he called it, but in New
England it would have more properly have been called a pung.
Jim almost literally wrapped me in his arms and outdid himself in the
cordiality of his welcome.
"How's fishing, Jim?" I asked when the first greetings were over and I
had my feet up in front of the stove.
"Fishin', why land o' Goshen, this ain't no time for fishin'. There
ain't but one thing on my mind an' that is Christmas. Don't you see
what we are a' doin'?"
A kettle of oil was on the stove and the dipping of half grown candles
had been recently finished. On the floor were half a hundred full grown
candles.