Why Mrs Grove thought Mr Green might need an opening for anything he
had to say to Mr Snow did not appear, as he did not avail himself of
it. It was Mr Snow who spoke first, after a short silence.
"Going to give up business and settle down. Eh?"
"I have thought of it. I don't believe I should enjoy life half as well
if I did, however."
"How much do you enjoy it now?" inquired Mr Snow.
"Well, not a great deal, that is a fact; but as well as folks generally
do, I reckon. But, after all, I do believe to keep hard to work is
about as good a way as any to take comfort in the world."
Mr Green took a many-bladed knife from his pocket, and plucking a twig
from the root of a young cedar, began fashioning it into an instrument
slender and smooth.
"That is about the conclusion I have come to," repeated he; "and I
expect I will have to keep to work if I mean to get the good of life."
"There are a good many kinds of work to be done in the world," suggested
Mr Snow.
Mr Green gave him a glance curious and inquiring.
"Well, I suppose there are a good many ways of working in the world, but
it all comes to the same thing pretty much, I guess. Folks work to get
a living, and then to accumulate property. Some do it in a large way,
and some in a small way, but the end is the same."
"Suppose you should go to work to spend your money now?" suggested Mr
Snow, again.
"Well, I've done a little in that way, too, and I have about come to the
conclusion that that don't pay as well as the making of it, as far as
the comfort it gives. I ain't a very rich man, not near so rich as
folks think; but I had got a kind of sick of doing the same thing all
the time, and so I thought I would try something else a spell. So I
rather drew up, though I ain't out of business yet, by a great deal. I
thought I would try and see if I could make a home, so I built. But a
house ain't a home--not by a great sight. I have got as handsome a
place as anybody need wish to have, but I would rather live in a hotel
any day than have the bother of it. I don't more than half believe I
shall ever live there long at a time."
He paused, and whittled with great earnestness.
"It seems a kind of aggravating, now, don't it, when a man has worked
hard half his life and more to make property, that he shouldn't be able
to enjoy it when he has got it."
"What do you suppose is the reason?" asked Mr Snow, gravely, but with
rather a preoccupied air. He was wondering how it was that Mr Green
should have been betrayed into giving his dreary confidences to a
comparative stranger.
"Well, I don't know," replied Mr Green, meditatively. "I suppose, for
one thing, I have been so long in the mill that I can't get out of the
old jog easily. I should have begun sooner, or have taken work and
pleasure by turns as I went along. I don't take much comfort in what
seems to please most folks."
There was a pause; Mr Snow had nothing to say in reply, however, and in
a little Mr Green went on:
"I haven't any very near relations; cousins and cousin's children are
the nearest. I have helped them some, and would rather do it than not,
and they are willing enough to be helped, but they don't seem very near
to me. I enjoy well enough going to see them once in a while, but it
don't amount to much all they care about me; and, to tell the truth, it
ain't much I care about them. If I had a family of my own, it would be
different. Women folks and young folk enjoy spending money, and I
suppose I would have enjoyed seeing them do it. But I have about come
to the conclusion that I should have seen to that long ago."
Without moving or turning his head, he gave his new friend a look out of
the corner of his eyes that it might have surprised him a little to see;
but Mr Snow saw nothing at the moment. To wonder as to why this new
acquaintance should bestow his confidence on him, was succeeding a
feeling of pity for him--a desire to help him--and he was considering
the propriety of improving the opportunity given to drop a "word in
season" for his benefit. Not that he had much confidence in his own
skill at this sort of thing. It is to be feared the deacon looked on
this way of witnessing for the truth as a cross to be borne rather than
as a privilege to be enjoyed. He was readier with good deeds than with
good words, and while he hesitated, Mr Green went on:
"How folks can hang round with nothing particular to do is what I can't
understand. I never should get used to it, I know. I've made
considerable property, and I expect I have enjoyed the making more than
I ever shall enjoy the spending of it."
"I shouldn't wonder if you had," said Mr Snow, gravely.
"I _have_ thought of going right slap into political life. I might have
got into the Legislature, time and again; and I don't doubt but I might
find my way to Congress by spending something handsome. That might be
as good a way to let off the steam as any. When a man gets into
politics, he don't seem to mind much else. He has got to drive right
through. I don't know how well it pays."
"In the way of comfort, I'm afraid it _don't_ pay," said Mr Snow.
"I expect not. I don't more than half think it would pay _me_.
Politics have got to be considerably mixed up in our country. I don't
believe I should ever get to see my way clear to go all lengths; and I
don't believe it would amount to anything if I could. Besides, if a man
expects to get very far along in _that_ road, he has got to take a fair
start in good season. I learnt to read and cypher in the old log
school-house at home, and my mother taught me the catechism on Sunday
afternoons, and that is about all the book-learning I ever got. I
shouldn't hardly have an even chance with some of those college-bred
chaps, though there are _some_ things I know as well as the best of
them, I reckon. Have you ever been out West?"
"I was there once a good many years ago. I had a great notion of going
to settle there when I was a young man. I am glad I didn't, though."
"Money ain't to be made there anything like as fast as it used to be,"
said Mr Green. "But there is chance enough, if a man has a head for
it. I have seen some cool business done there at one time and another."
The chances in favour of Mr Snow's "word in season" were becoming
fewer, he saw plainly, as Mr Green wandered off from his
dissatisfaction to the varied remembrances of his business-life; so,
with a great effort, he said:
"Ain't it just possible that your property and the spending of it don't
satisfy you because it is not in the nature of such things to give
satisfaction?"
Mr Green turned and looked earnestly at him.
"Well, I have heard so, but I never believed it any more for hearing it
said. The folks that say it oftenest don't act as if they believed it
themselves. They try as hard for it as any one else, if they are to be
judged by their actions. It is all right to say they believe it, I
suppose, because it is in the Bible, or something like it is."
"And you believe it, not because it is in the Bible, but because you are
learning, by your own experience, every day you live."
Mr Green whistled.
"Come, now; ain't that going it a little too strong? I never said I
didn't expect to enjoy my property. I enjoy it now, after a fashion.
If a man ain't going to enjoy his property, what is he to enjoy?"
"All that some people enjoy is the making of it. You have done that,
you say. There is less pleasure to be got from wealth, even in the most
favourable circumstances, than those who haven't got it believe. They
who have it find that out, as you are doing.
"But I can fancy myself getting all the pleasure I want out of my
property, if only some things were different--if I had something else to
go with it. Other folks seem to take the comfort out of theirs as they
go along."
"They seem to; but how can you be sure as to the enjoyment they really
have? How many of your friends, do you suppose, suspect that you don't
get all the satisfaction out of yours that you seem to? Do you suppose
the lady who was saying so much in praise of your fine place just now,
has any idea that it is only a weariness to you?"
"I was telling her so as we came along. She says the reason I don't
enjoy it is because there is something else that I haven't got, that
ought to go along with it and I agreed with her there."
Again a furtive glance was sent towards Mr Snow's thoughtful face. He
smiled and shook his head.
"Yes, it is something else you want. It is always something else, and
ever will be till the end comes. That something else, if it is ever
yours, will bring disappointment with it. It will come as you don't
expect it or want it, or it will come too late. There is no good
talking. There is nothing in the world that it will do to make a
portion of."
Mr Green looked up at him with some curiosity and surprise. This
sounded very much like what he used to hear in conference meeting long
ago, but he had an idea that such remarks were inappropriate out of
meeting, and he wondered a little what could be Mr Snow's motive for
speaking in that way just then.
"As to making a portion of it, I don't know about that; but I do know
that there is considerable to be got out of money. What can't it get?
Or rather, I should say, what can be got without it? I don't say that
they who have the most of it are always best off, because other things
come in to worry them, maybe; but the chances are in favour of the man
that has all he wants to spend. You'll never deny that."
"That ain't just the way I would put it," said Mr Snow. "I would say
that the man who expects his property to make him happy, will be
disappointed. The amount he has got don't matter. It ain't in it to
give happiness. I know, partly because I have tried, and it has failed
me, and partly because I am told that `a man's life consisteth not in
the abundance of the things that he possesseth.'
"Well, now, if that is so, will you tell me why there ain't one man in
ten thousand who believes it, or at least who acts as if he believed it?
Why is all the world chasing after wealth, as if it were the one thing
for body and soul? If money ain't worth having, why hasn't somebody
found it out, and set the world right about it before now?"
"As to money not being worth the having, I never said that. What I say
is, that God never meant that mere wealth should make a man happy. That
has been found out times without number; but as to setting the world
right about it, I expect that is one of the things that each man must
learn by experience. Most folks do learn it after a while, in one way
or other."
"Well," said Mr Green, gravely, "you look as if you believed what you
say, and you look as if you enjoyed life pretty well too. If it ain't
your property that makes you happy, what is it?"
"It ain't my property, _sartain_," said Mr Snow, with emphasis. "I
know I shouldn't be any happier if I had twice as much. And I am sure I
shouldn't be less happy if I hadn't half as much; my happiness rests on
a surer foundation than anything I have got."
He paused, casting about in his thoughts for just the right word to
say--something that might be as "a fire and a hammer" to the softening
and breaking of that world-hardened heart.
"He _does_ look as if he believed what he was saying," Mr Green was
thinking to himself. "It is just possible he might give me a hint. He
don't look like a man who don't practise as he preaches." Aloud, he
said,--
"Come, now, go ahead. What has cured one, may help another, you know.
Give us your idea as to what is a sure foundation for a man's
happiness."
Mr Snow looked gravely into his face and said,
"Blessed is the man who feareth the Lord."
"Blessed is the man whose trust the Lord is."
"Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is
covered."
"Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, in whose
spirit there is no guile."
Mr Green's eye fell before his earnest gaze. It came into his mind
that if there was happiness to be found in the world, this man had found
it. But it seemed a happiness very far-away from him--quite beyond his
reach--something that it would be impossible for him ever to find now.
The sound of his mother's voice, softly breaking the stillness of a
Sabbath afternoon, with some such words as these, came back to him, and
just for a moment he realised their unchangeable truth, and for that
moment he knew that his life had been a failure. A pang of regret, a
longing for another chance, and a sense of the vanity of such a wish,
smote on his heart for an instant and then passed away. He rose from
his seat, and moved a few paces down the walk, and when he came back he
did not sit down again. His cedar twig was smoothed down at both ends
to the finest possible point, and after balancing it for a minute on his
forefingers, he tossed it over his shoulder, and shutting his knife with
a click, put it in his pocket before he spoke.
"Well, I don't know as I am much better off for that," said he,
discontentedly. "I suppose you mean that I ought to get religion. That
is no new idea. I have heard _that_ every time I have gone to meeting
for the last thirty years, which hasn't been as often as it might have
been, but it has been often enough for all the good it has done me." He
looked at Mr Snow as if he expected him to make some sort of a reply,
but he was silent. He was thinking how vain any words of his would be
to convince him, or to show him a more excellent way. He was thinking
of the old time, and of the talk wasted on him by the good people who
would fain have helped him. At last he said, gravely:
"It wouldn't amount to much, all I could say to you, even if I was good
at talking, which I ain't. I can only tell you that I never knew what
it was to be satisfied till I got religion, and I have never been
discontented since, and I don't believe I ever shall again, let what
will happen to me."