When she was reading of the life of Christ he listened with a profound
look of perplexity on his pale face. But when she pronounced the
words, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," he uttered an exclamation of
surprise, and sat up in his bed.
"I have spoken those words before!" he cried, "but in a different
language. It was in another life which seems like a dream. I lived
long, long ago, in a far-away land. I had another mother there, Mary
was her name, and a good father whom the people called Joseph. I lived
there as I do here, but the world mocked me because I tried to teach
them to love one another--they could not understand. They put me to
death. They made a cross, and hung me on it, on a hill in the
direction of the setting sun from Jerusalem. A multitude gathered to
see me die."
Amazed at his radiant and transformed countenance, which held in it
the light of eternity, she fell down before him crying:--
"My Lord! My Master!"
He lifted her up, his weakness gone.
"Rise," said he gently. "Call me not 'Master,' for I am but the son of
God, as you are His daughter. The Father of us all, in His love, is
not better than the humblest of His children."
She was going out to cry aloud in the streets that Jesus, the son of
God, had come to earth, but he prevented her.
"Speak not of me to them," he said softly; "they could not understand;
it would be even as it was before."
That very day he went about according to his humble wont, among the
poor and the miserable, spreading joy and comfort everywhere.
Wan-faced courtesans, with death and hate in their eyes, despairing
thieves, murderers, and would-be suicides, listened to his words of
hope and began life anew. He went to the houses of the wealthy and
plead in the behalf of suffering men and women, misguided children,
and mistreated animals, but was called a tramp and sent away.
One day his mother lead him to the corpse of a dead friend. "Make him
live again," she whispered.
He looked down at the dead and smiled infinitely. He took a flower
from a vase, and put it into the hand that was cold. "This is the
birthday of our friend," he said. "Should I wish to alter the work of
my Father, in whose eyes all things are perfect? Our friend is this
day delivered from the womb of earthly travail."
One bright morning she came and laid herself at his feet.
"I have heard strange things to-day," she said, "things I have not
learned before because I am so ignorant. They say that all the great
and good churches in Christendom have grown up upon the teachings of
Jesus of Nazareth."
"Nazareth," he repeated dreamily, "I lived in Nazareth."
"They worship him that was crucified on Calvary; ah! they would listen
to you now, my Master. You have lived in their memories for centuries.
Hear, the bells are ringing. It is the Sabbath, the Lord's day!"
"My Father's day has neither beginning nor end."
"Come, go with me," went on the woman eagerly, "we shall hear them
praise your name."
"I will go with you," said he, a strange look in his eyes.
She ran from the room and presently came back with a suit of new
clothes which she had borrowed from a dealer: Her face was aglow with
pride and joy as she spread them before him.
"What are they for?" he asked in gentle surprise.
"For you," she said, "that you may go into the house of the Lord robed
as--as others are."
A blended look of wonder and pain passed over his face.
"The spirit of the man is not clothed with the wool of the sheep that
was slain," he said gently. "I will go as I am, and fear naught in my
Father's presence."
She led him down several streets till they reached a grand
thoroughfare. Along this they went side by side, jostled by the
fashionable throng, till they came to a stately church. Going up the
broad stone steps they entered the great Gothic doors. A group of men
in the vestibule laughed at his long hair and ragged attire. Elegantly
dressed ushers were seating the people as they entered. They did not
speak to the woman and her son, but smiled at one another, and passed
some jests in undertones. After awhile one of them drew near, and said
to her:--
"Have you not made a mistake, my good woman? This is St. ---- Church.
St. ----'s is the next below."
Tears were in her eyes as she led her son away. By and by they came to
another edifice. In a niche in the stone wall near the entrance was
the figure of Jesus on a cross. He paused and looked at it for several
minutes, murmuring, "Strange! Strange!"
In the vestibule she was so awed by the imposing interior of the
structure and the fashionable congregation, that she drew him to one
side.
"Perhaps we had better stand here," she whispered. "We seem to be
unlike the rest. We shall not be in the way out here, and through the
door we can see and hear the service."
He made no answer. He was looking at a grand window on which stood a
representation of Jesus, in a stream of light from heaven, bearing the
words, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." "Strange,
very strange!" she heard him whisper, and tears were in his eyes.
No one offered to give them seats, and they remained standing in the
vestibule against a wall. A grand organ began to peal out the music of
Gounod's Saint Cecilia Mass. Presently it died down; there was a short
pause, then, like the rising of a musical storm came the subdued
voices of the choristers from the closed vestry. The door was
gradually opened, and the music swelled out into the church. The
crucifer, a beautiful lad, attired in a blood-red cassock and a white,
lace-trimmed cotta, entered. Behind him, chanting, came a long train
of choir-boys, followed by two acolytes who swung by chains of brass
censers from which rose clouds of fragrant smoke. Two priests brought
up the rear; one, the celebrant of the Holy Communion, was
magnificently garbed. He wore a trailing black cassock of richest
silk, and over it a short lawn cotta trimmed with priceless lace, an
enormous cloth-of-gold cope on the back of which blazed a cross
wrought in jewels. About his neck he had a white stole, over an arm a
snowy maniple, upon his head a priestly beretta.
"Is it not beautiful?" asked the poor woman of her son. But he did not
hear her. His eyes, blinded by tears of infinite sorrow, were resting
on the white statue of the Virgin near the snowy altar of marble, on
which burnt a constellation of tapers and candles around the red lamp
of the "Holy Presence."
His breast heaved; a sob escaped him, and his head sank upon his
chest.
"And they do this in the name of love," he said, as if in prayer.
"They make an idol of my memory while my brothers and sisters are
dying for the lack of love and kindness. They do all this to praise me
whom they have so little understood. O God, my Father, let this trial
pass, or make me as you are that I may, this time, set them right, for
I suffer past endurance."
The short sermon ended. The celebration of Mass began. The wafer and
the wine were consecrated. The priest raised the wafer before the
eyes of the congregation and said, "This is my body," and all heads
bowed low.
"At the very instant you hear the bell strike," whispered a man to a
boy near the mother and son, "at that very instant the Saviour will be
there--listen!"
"Father, forgive them," the woman heard her son say, and she followed
him out of the church. They had reached the street when three strokes
from a silver bell was heard.
A few minutes later, as they were passing through a squalid street on
the way home, they came to a little church. He read her wishes in her
face, and they went in. A man approached and showed them to a back
seat. On a platform a preacher was striding to and fro shouting,
singing snatches of hymns, and praying. In his excitement he would
fall on his knees and raise his hands heavenward; again he would
spring up and beat himself with his hands, and violently kick the
floor, preaching, singing, and praying alternately.
"Save yourselves from the eternal wrath of an angry God!" he cried. "I
tell you that hell is yawning for you; the burning breath of countless
devils is about you. Christ died to save you; will you not trust in
him? Now is the only time; to-morrow it may be too late!"
After awhile the congregation began to sing a hymn, and the preacher
went on: "Come forward all who want the prayers of the church. Come
now, and embrace salvation!" And men, women, and children trembling
with fear, and weeping and groaning, went to the altar and threw
themselves on their knees.
The poor woman looked at her son. His face was pale and set as with
the agony of death. She glanced over the congregation. People sat
there wrestling with the greatest problem of their lives, their faces
white, their eyes dilated. Others were smiling as if highly amused at
the preacher's actions. Members of ritualistic churches, who had come
out of curiosity, were frowning contemptuously, and congratulating
themselves on the dignity of their own form of worship.
"I must go," said the son to his mother. "I must be with those that
need me. Here they teach that the Eternal Father hates His children.
If only they knew Him they would not be afraid."
He never entered a church again. He continued his life as he had begun
it, teaching human love and gentleness to all he knew. Once he was
trying to save a half-demented drunkard from being beaten by an
inhuman policeman, and was put into prison. While he was there his
mother died, and when he was released, his health was broken.
A week passed in which he could get no food to eat. He was starving.
One moonlit night he rose and staggered out to search for bread,
suffering indescribable tortures. His voice had gone. He stood on the
corner of a street, and mutely held out his hands to passers-by, but
they paid no heed to him. Along the street he tottered till he came to
a brightly lighted building. A church was holding a festival.
Beautiful women in the height of fashion, children in the daintiest of
dresses, were promenading about. He looked in at the door, and when he
saw the long tables filled with eatables, his eyes gleamed with the
desire of a famished animal. He staggered across the threshold, but
was stopped by the door-keeper. "Ticket," said the man. The outcast
did not understand, he could see nothing but the food within. A
policeman stepped forward and laid his hand on his arm.
"This is no place for you," he said roughly. "You have no money, move
on!"
"He looks hungry, wait!" said a little girl, who was pinning some
flowers on the lapel of a young minister's coat, and she ran to a
table and brought a piece of bread to the starving man. He hugged it
in his arms, and tottered out into the night, chuckling to himself in
joy. A square where trees and flowers grew was before him. He entered
it, and sank on to a bench near a fountain. He looked at the bread,
and a savage content captured his features. He was about to break it
when a man arose from a seat across a walk, and came and sat down
beside him, eyeing the food covetously. He touched the thin hand that
held it, and the two men looked into each other's eyes.
"I am starving," said the breadless one. "I have no means. I belong to
a family who have descended from kings; I cannot beg. I thought you
looked as if you did not want it. I am dying."
The other clutched the food tightly in both his hands for an instant.
A look of ferocious desire wrung his face, and he raised it to his
lips. Then a divine smile dawned in his eyes, and he proffered it to
the other. The man took it eagerly, and slipped into the darkness,
that he might eat it unseen. As he turned away the head of the giver
sank slowly to his breast.
Brightly lighted streets stretched away in several directions. A
procession of men and women bearing banners and beating drums and
tambourines passed along, singing hymns, and pausing now and then to
kneel on the cobblestones to pray or to urge the little clusters of
idlers to join them in their march to safety. Above the wondrous stars
and moon were shining as they had shone at the dawn of eternal
thought. They shone on the Vatican at Rome, the imperial cradle of
saints; on the comfortable homes of ministers in the church; on the
"palaces" of gentle-blooded bishops; on assemblages of men who were
wrangling over creeds; on gatherings where earnest searchers after
truth were being tried for heresy; on prisons where inmates of dark,
silent cells were praying for a gleam of light, for but the voice of
an insect to keep madness from their tortured brains; on millions of
suffering human beings--on the cold, dead form of one who understood
naught but love.
O THOU WHO SIGHEST FOR A BROADER FIELD.
JULIA ANNA WOLCOTT.
O thou who sighest for a broader field
Wherein to sow the seeds of truth and right,
Who fain a nobler, wider power wouldst wield
O'er human souls that languish for the light;
Search well the realm that even now is thine!
Canst not thou in some far-off corner find
A heart, sin-bound, as tree with sapping vine,
That waiteth help its burdens to unbind?
Some human plant, perchance beneath thine eyes,
Pierced through by hidden thorns of idle fears;
Or, drooping low for need of light from skies
Obscured by doubt-clouds, raining poison tears?
Some bruised soul the balm of love would heal?
Some timid spirit faith would courage give?
Or maimed brother who, though brave and leal,
Still needeth thee to rightly walk and live?
Oh, while _one_ soul thou find'st that hath not known
The fullest help thy soul hath power to give,
Sigh not for fields still broader than thine own,
But, steadfast, in thine own more broadly live!
AN EVENING AT THE CORNER GROCERY.
A WESTERN CHARACTER SKETCH.
BY HAMLIN GARLAND.
Colonel Peavy had just begun the rubber with Judge Gordon of
Cerro-Gordo County. They were seated in Robie's grocery, behind the
rusty old cannon stove, the checker-board spread out on their knees.
The Colonel was grinning in great glee, wringing his bony yellow hands
in nervous excitement, in strong contrast to the stolid calm of the
fat Judge.
The Colonel had won the last game by a large margin, and was sure he
had his opponent's "dodges" well in hand. It was early in the evening,
and the grocery was comparatively empty. Robie was figuring at a desk,
and old Judge Brown stood in legal gravity warming his legs at the
red-hot stove, and swaying gently back and forth in speechless
content. It was a tough night outside, one of the toughest for years.
The frost had completely shut the window panes as with thick blankets
of snow. The streets were silent.
"I don't know," said the Judge, reflectively, to Robie, breaking the
silence in his rasping, judicial bass, "I don't know as there has been
such a night as this since the night of February 2d, '59, that was the
night James Kirk went under--Honorable Kirk, you remember,--knew him
well. Brilliant fellow, ornament to western bar. But whiskey downed
him. It'll beat the oldest man--I wonder where the boys all are
to-night? Don't seem to be anyone stirring on the street. Aint
frightened out by the cold?"
"Shouldn't wonder." Robie was busy at his desk, and not in humor for
conversation on reminiscent lines. The two old war-dogs at the board
had settled down to one of those long, silent struggles, which ensue
when two "champions" meet. In the silence which followed, the Judge
was looking attentively at the back of the Colonel, and thinking that
the old thief was getting about down to skin and bone. He turned with
a yawn to Robie, saying:--
"This cold weather must take hold of the old Colonel terribly, he's so
damnably thin and bald, you know,--bald as a babe. The fact is, the
old Colonel aint long for this world, anyway; think so, Hank?" Robie
making no reply, the Judge relapsed into silence for a while, watching
the cat (perilously walking along the edge of the upper shelf) and
listening to the occasional hurrying footsteps outside. "I don't know
when I've seen the windows closed up so, Hank; go down to thirty below
to-night; devilish strong wind blowing, too; tough night on the
prairies, Hank."
"You bet," replied Hank, briefly. The Colonel was plainly getting
excited. His razor-like back curved sharper than ever as he peered
into the intricacies of the board to spy the trap which the fat Judge
had set for him. At this point the squeal of boots on the icy walk
outside paused, and a moment later Amos Ridings entered, with whiskers
covered with ice, and looking like a huge bear in his buffalo coat.
"By Josephus! it's cold," he roared, as he took off his gloves and
began to warm his face and hands at the fire.
"Is it?" asked the Judge, comfortably, rising on his tiptoes, only to
fall back into his usual attitude, legal legs well spread, shoulders
thrown back.
"You bet it is!" replied Amos. "I'd'know when I've felt the cold
more'n I have t'-day. It's jest snifty; doubles me up like a
jack-knife, Judge. How d' you stand it?"
"Tollerble, tollerble, Amos. But we're agein', we aint what we were
once. Cold takes hold of us."
"That's a fact," answered Amos to the retrospective musings of the
Judge. "Time was you an' me would go t' singing-school or
sleigh-riding with the girls on a night like this and never notice
it."
"Yes, sir; yes, sir!" said the Judge with a sigh. It was a little
uncertain in Robie's mind whether the Judge was regretting the lost
ability to stand the cold, or the lost pleasure of riding with the
girls.
"Great days, those, gentlemen! Lived in Vermont then.
Hot-blooded--lungs like an ox. I remember, Sallie Dearborn and I used
to go a-foot to singing school down the valley four miles. But now,
wouldn't go riding to-night with the handsomest woman in America, and
the best cutter in Rock River."
"Oh! you've got both feet in the grave up t' the ankles, anyway," said
Robie from his desk, but the Judge immovably gazed at the upper shelf
on the other side of the room where the boilers, and pans, and
washboards were stored.
"The Judge is a little on the sentimental order to-night," said Amos.
"Hold on, Colonel! hold on. You've _got_ 'o jump. He! he!" roared
Gordon from the checker-board. "That's right, that's right!" he ended,
as the Colonel complied reluctantly.
"Sock it to the old cuss," commented Amos. "What I was going to say,"
he resumed, rolling down the collar of his coat, "was, that when my
wife helped me bundle up t' night, she said I was gitt'n' t' be an old
granny. We _are_ agein', Judge, the's no denyin' it. We're both gray
as Norway rats now. An' speaking of us ageing reminds me,--have y'
noticed how bald the old Kyernel's gitt'n'?"
"I have, Amos," answered the Judge, mournfully. "The old man's head is
showing age, showing age! Getting thin up there, aint it?" The old
Colonel bent to his work without reply, and even when Amos said,
judicially, after long scrutiny, "Yes, he'll soon be as bald as a
plate," he only lifted one yellow, freckled, bony hand, and brushed
his carroty growth of hair across the spot under discussion. Gordon
shook his fat paunch in silent laughter, nearly displacing the board.
"I was just telling Robie," pursued Brown, still retaining his
reminiscent intonation, "that this storm takes the cake over
anything--"
At this point Steve Roach and another fellow entered. Steve was
Ridings' hired hand, a herculean fellow, with a drawl, and a liability
for taking offence quite as remarkable.
"Say! gents, I'm no spring rooster, but this jest gits away with
anything in line of cold _I_ ever see."
While this communication was being received in ruminative silence,
Steve was holding his ears in his hand and gazing at the intent
champions at the board. There they sat; the old Judge panting and
wheezing in his excitement, for he was planning a great "snap" on the
Colonel, whose red and freckled nose almost touched the board. It was
a solemn battle hour. The wind howled mournfully outside, the timbers
of the stove creaked in the cold, and the huge cannon stove roared in
steady bass.
"Speaking about ears," said Steve, after a silence, "dumned if I'd
like t' be quite s' bare 'round the ears as Kernel there. I wonder if
any o' you fellers has noticed how the ol' feller's lost hair this
last summer. He's gittin' bald, they's no coverin' it up--gittin' bald
as a plate."
"You're right, Stephen," said the Judge, as he gravely took his stand
behind his brother advocate, and studied, with the eye of an adept,
the field of battle. "We were noticing it when you came in. It's a sad
thing, but it must be admitted."
"It's the Kyernel's brains wearin' up through his hair, I take it,"
commented Amos, as he helped himself to a handful of peanuts out of a
bag behind the counter. "Say, Steve, did y' stuff up that hole in
front of ol' Barney?"
A shout was heard outside, and then a rush against the door, and
immediately two young fellows burst in, followed by a fierce gust of
snow. One was Professor Knapp, the other Editor Foster, of the
_Morning Call_.
"Well, gents, how's this for high?" said Foster in a peculiar tone of
voice, at which all began to smile. He was a slender fellow with
close-clipped, assertive red hair. "In this company we now have the
majesty of the law, the power of the press, and the underpinning of
the American civilization all represented. Hello! There are a couple
of old roosters with their heads together. Gordon, my old enemy, how
are you?"
Gordon waved him off with a smile and a wheeze. "Don't bother me now.
I've got 'im. I'm laying f'r the old dog. Whist!"
"Got nothing!" snarled the Colonel. "You try that on if you want to.
Just swing that man in there if you think it's healthy for him. Just
as like as not, you'll slip up on that little trick."
"Ha! Say you so, old True Penny? The Kunnel has met a foeman worthy of
his steel," said Foster in great glee, as he bent above the Colonel.
"I know. _How_ do I know?" quotha. "By the curve on the Kunnel's back.
The size of the parabola described by that backbone accurately gauges
his adversary's skill. But, by the way, gentlemen, have you--but
that's a nice point, and I refer all nice points to Professor Knapp.
Professor, is it in good taste to make remarks concerning the dress or
features of another?"
"Certainly not," answered Knapp, a handsome young fellow with a yellow
mustache.
"Not when the person is an esteemed public character, like the Colonel
here? What I was about to remark, if it had been proper, was that the
old fellow is getting wofully bald. He'll soon be bald as an egg."
"Say!" asked the Colonel, "I want to know how long you're going to
keep this thing up. Somebody's dumned sure t' get hurt soon."
"There, there! Colonel," said Brown soothingly, "don't get excited,
you'll lose the rubber. Don't mind 'em. Keep cool."
"Yes, keep cool, Kunnel, it's only our solicitude for your welfare,"
chipped in Foster. Then addressing the crowd in a general sort of way
he speculated, "Curious how a man, a plain American citizen like
Colonel Peavy, wins a place in the innermost affections of a whole
people."
"That's so!" murmured the rest. "He can't grow bald without deep
sympathy from his fellow-citizens." The old Colonel glared in
speechless wrath.
"Say! gents," pleaded Gordon, "let up on the old man for the present.
He's going to need all of himself if he gets out o' the trap he's in
now." He waved his fat hand over the Colonel's head, and smiled
blandly at the crowd hugging the stove.
"My head may be bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin,
indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to 'skunk'
any man in this crowd three games out o' five."
"The ol' man rather gits the laugh on y' there, gents," called Robie
from the back side of the counter. "I haint seen the old skeesix play
better'n he did last night in years."
"Not since his return from Canada, after the war, I reckon," said Amos
from the kerosene barrel.
"Hold on, Amos," put in the Judge warningly, "that's out-lawed.
Talking about being bald and the war reminds me of the night Walters
and I-- By the way, where is Walters to-night?"
"Sick," put in the Colonel, straightening up exultantly. "I waxed him
three straight games last night. You won't see him again till spring.
Skunked him once, and beat him twice."
"Oh git out."
"Hear the old seed twitter!"
"Did you ever notice, gentlemen, how lying and baldness go together?"
queried Foster reflectively.
"No! Do they?"
"Invariably. I've known many colossal liars, and they were all as bald
as apples."