_MR. BLAKE AGREES WITH THE WALKING-STICK._
Early on Sunday morning Willie awoke and began to think about Sitles,
and to wish he had money to buy him a broom-machine. And then he
thought of widow Martin. But all his thinking would do no good. Then he
thought of what Old Ebony had said, and he wished he could know what
that text was that the cane was just going to quote.
“It was,” said Willie, “the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the
fourteenth chapter of something. I’ll see.”
So he began with the beginning of the Bible, and looked first at
Genesis xiv. 12, 13. But it was about the time when Abraham had heard
of the capture of Lot and mustered his army to recapture him. He
thought a minute.
“That can’t be what it is,” said Willie, “I’ll look at Exodus.”
In Exodus it was about standing still at the Red Sea and waiting for
God’s salvation. It might mean that God would deliver the poor. But
that was not just what the cane was talking about. It was about giving
gifts to friends. So he went on to Leviticus. But it was about the wave
offering, and the sin offering, and the burnt offering. That was not
it. And so he went from book to book until he had reached the twelfth
and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Judges.
He was just reading in that place about Samson’s riddle, when his mamma
called him to breakfast.
He was afraid to say anything about it at the table for fear of being
laughed at. But he was full of what the walking-stick said. And at
family worship his father read the twentieth chapter of Acts. When he
came to the part about its being more blessed to give than to receive,
Willie said, “That’s what the cane said.”
“What did you say?” asked his father.
“I was only thinking out loud,” said Willie.
“Don’t think out loud while I am reading,” said Mr. Blake.
Willie did not find time to look any further for the other verses. He
wished his father had happened on them instead of the first text which
the cane quoted.
In church he kept thinking all the time about the cane. “Now what could
it mean by the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter?
There isn’t anything in the Bible against giving away presents to one’s
friends. It was only a dream anyhow, and maybe there’s nothing in it.”
But he forgot the services, I am sorry to say, in his thoughts. At last
Mr. Blake arose to read his text. Willie looked at him, but thought of
what the cane said. But what was it that attracted his attention so
quickly?
“The twelfth and thirteenth verses”--
“Twelfth and thirteenth!” said Willie to himself.
“Of the fourteenth chapter,” said the minister.
“Fourteenth chapter!” said Willie, almost aloud.
“Of Luke.”
Willie was all ears, while Mr. Blake read: “Then said he also to him
that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy
friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors,
lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when
thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.”
“That’s it!” he said, half aloud, but his mother jogged him.
The minister added the next verse also, and read: “And thou shalt be
blessed, for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed
at the resurrection of the just.”
Willie had never listened to a sermon as he did to that. He stopped two
or three times to wonder whether the cane had been actually about to
repeat his father’s text to him, or whether he had not heard his father
repeat it at some time, and had dreamed about it.
I am not going to tell you much about Mr. Blake’s sermon. It was a
sermon that he and the walking-stick had prepared while they were going
round among the poor. I think Mr. Blake did not strike his cane down on
the sidewalk for nothing. Most of that sermon must have been hammered
out in that way, when he and the walking-stick were saying, “Something
must be done!” For that was just what that sermon said. It told about
the wrong of forgetting, on the birthday of Christ, to do anything for
the poor. It made everybody think. But Mr. Blake did not know how much
of that sermon went into Willie Blake’s long head, as he sat there with
his white full forehead turned up to his father.