A little girl in a wretched tenement in New York stood by her mother's
death-bed, and heard her last words: "Jessie, find Jesus."
When her mother was buried, her father took to drink, and Jessie was
left to such care as a poor neighbor could give her. One day she wandered
off unnoticed, with a little basket in her hand, and tugged through one
street after another, not knowing where she went. She had started out
to find Jesus. At last she stopped from utter weariness, in front of a
saloon. A young man staggered out of the door, and almost stumbled over
her. He uttered passionately the name of Him whom she was seeking. "Where
is He?" she inquired eagerly. He looked at her in amazement.
"What did you say?" he asked.
"Will you please tell me where Jesus Christ is? for I _must_ find
Him"--this time with great earnestness.
The young man looked at her curiously for a minute without speaking, and
then his face sobered; and he said in a broken, husky voice, hopelessly:
"I don't know, child; I don't know where he is."
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At length the little girl's wanderings brought her to the park. A woman
evidently a Jewess, was leaning against the railing, looking disconsolately
at the green grass and the trees.
Jessie went up to her timidly. "Perhaps she can tell me where He is,"
was the child's thought. In a low, hesitating voice, she asked the woman:
"Do you know Jesus Christ?"
The Jewess turned fiercely to face her questioner and in a tone of
suppressed passion, exclaimed: "Jesus Christ is dead!" Poor Jessie trudged
on, but soon a rude boy jostled against her, and snatching her basket
from her hand, threw it into the street.
[Illustration]
Crying, she ran to pick it up. The horses of a passing street car trampled
her under their feet--and she knew no more till she found herself stretched
on a hospital bed.
When the doctors came that night, they knew she could not live until
morning. In the middle of the night, after she had been lying very still
for a long time, apparently asleep, she suddenly opened her eyes and the
nurse, bending over her, heard her whisper, while her face lighted up
with a smile that had some of heaven's own gladness in it: "Oh, Jesus, I
have found you at last!"
Then the tiny lips were hushed, but the questioning spirit had received
an answer.
--Selected.
"I'LL NEVER STEAL AGAIN--IF FATHER KILLS ME FOR IT"
A friend of mine, seeking for objects of charity, got into the room of
a tenement house. It was vacant. He saw a ladder pushed through the
ceiling. Thinking that perhaps some poor creature had crept up there,
he climbed the ladder, drew himself up through the hole and found himself
under the rafters. There was no light but that which came through a
bull's-eye in the place of a tile. Soon he saw a heap of chips and
shavings, and on them a boy about ten years old.
"Boy, what are you doing there?"
"Hush! don't tell anybody--please, sir."
"What are you doing here?"
"Don't tell anybody, sir; I'm hiding."
"What are you hiding from?"
"Don't tell anybody, if you please, sir."
"Where's your mother?"
"Mother is dead."
"Where's your father?"
"Hush! don't tell him! don't tell him! but look here!" He turned himself
on his face and through the rags of his jacket and shirt my friend saw
the boy's flesh was bruised and the skin broken.
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"Why, boy, who beat you like that?"
"Father did, sir."
"What did your father beat you like that for?"
"Father got drunk sir, and beat me 'cos I wouldn't steal."
"Did you ever steal?"
"Yes, sir, I was a street thief once."
"And why don't you steal any more?"
"Please, sir, I went to the mission school, and they told me there of
God and of Heaven and of Jesus and they taught me, 'Thou shalt not steal,'
and I'll never steal again, if father kills me for it. But, please sir,
don't tell him."
"My boy, you mast not stay here; you will die. Now you wait patiently
here for a little time; I'm going away to see a lady. We will get a
better place for you than this."
"Thank you sir, but please, sir, would you like to hear me sing a little
hymn?"
Bruised, battered, forlorn; friendless, motherless; hiding away from an
infuriated father he had a little hymn to sing.
"Yes, I will hear you sing your little hymn." He raised himself on his
elbow and then sang:
"Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child;
Suffer me to come to Thee.
Fain would I to Thee be brought,
Gracious Lord, forbid it not;
In the Kingdom of Thy grace
Give a little child a place."
"That's the little hymn, sir; Goodbye."
The gentleman went away, came back again in less than two hours and
climbed the ladder. There were the chips and there was the little toy
with one hand by his side and the other tucked in his bosom underneath
the little ragged shirt--dead.
-John B. Gough.