It was four o'clock in the afternoon of a dull winter day that Mr.
H. sat in his counting-room. The sun had nearly gone down, and,
in fact, it was already twilight beneath the shadows of the tall,
dusky stores, and the close, crooked streets of that quarter of
Boston. Hardly light enough struggled through the dusky panes of
the counting-house for him to read the entries in a much-thumbed
memorandum-book, which he held in his hand.
A small, thin boy, with a pale face and anxious expression,
significant of delicacy of constitution and a too early acquaintance
with want and sorrow, was standing by him, earnestly watching his
motions.
"Ah, yes, my boy," said Mr. H., as he at last shut up the
memorandum-book. "Yes, I've got the place now; I'm apt to be
forgetful about these things; come, now, let's go. How is it?
Haven't you brought the basket?"
"No, sir," said the boy timidly. "The grocer said he'd let mother
have a quarter for it, and she thought she'd sell it."
"That's bad," said Mr. H., as he went on, tying his throat with a
long comforter of some yards in extent; and as he continued this
operation he abstractedly repeated, "That's bad, that's bad," till
the poor little boy looked quite dismayed, and began to think that
somehow his mother had been dreadfully out of the way.
"She didn't want to send for help so long as she had anything she
could sell," said the little boy in a deprecating tone.
"Oh yes, quite right," said Mr. H., taking from a pigeonhole in the
desk a large pocketbook, and beginning to turn it over; and, as
before, abstractedly repeating, "Quite right, quite right!" till the
little boy became reassured, and began to think, although he didn't
know why, that his mother had done something quite meritorious.
"Well," said Mr. H., after he had taken several bills from the
pocketbook and transferred them to a wallet which he put into his
pocket, "now we're ready, my boy." But first he stopped to lock up
his desk, and then he said abstractedly to himself, "I wonder if I
hadn't better take a few tracts." Now, it is to be confessed that
this Mr. H., whom we have introduced to our reader, was, in his way,
quite an oddity. He had a number of singular little _penchants_ and
peculiarities quite his own, such as a passion for poking about
among dark alleys, at all sorts of seasonable and unseasonable
hours; fishing out troops of dirty, neglected children, and fussing
about generally in the community till he could get them into schools
or otherwise provided for. He always had in his pocketbook a note
of some dozen poor widows who wanted tea, sugar, candles, or other
things such as poor widows always will be wanting. And then he had
a most extraordinary talent for finding out all the sick strangers
that lay in out-of-the-way upper rooms in hotels, who, everybody
knows, have no business to get sick in such places, unless they have
money enough to pay their expenses, which they never do.
Besides this, all Mr. H.'s kinsmen and cousins, to the third,
fourth, and fortieth remove, were always writing him letters, which,
among other pleasing items, generally contained the intelligence
that a few hundred dollars were just then exceedingly necessary to
save them from utter ruin, and they knew of nobody else to whom to
look for it.
And then Mr. H. was up to his throat in subscriptions to every
charitable society that ever was made or imagined; had a hand in
building all the churches within a hundred miles; occasionally gave
four or five thousand dollars to a college; offered to be one of six
to raise ten thousand dollars for some benevolent purpose, and when
four of the six backed out, quietly paid the balance himself, and
said no more about it. Another of his innocent fancies was to keep
always about him any quantity of tracts and good books, little and
big, for children and grown-up people, which he generally diffused
in a kind of gentle shower about him wherever he moved.
So great was his monomania for benevolence that it could not at
all confine itself to the streets of Boston, the circle of his
relatives, or even the United States of America. Mr. H. was fully
posted up in the affairs of India, Burmah, China, and all those
odd, out-of-the-way places, which no sensible man ever thinks of
with any interest, unless he can make some money there; and money,
it is to be confessed, Mr. H. didn't make there, though he spent an
abundance. For getting up printing-presses in Ceylon for Chinese
type, for boxes of clothing and what-not to be sent to the Sandwich
Islands, for schoolbooks for the Greeks, and all other nonsense of
that sort, Mr. H. was without a parallel. No wonder his rich brother
merchants sometimes thought him something of a bore, since, his
heart being full of all these matters, he was rather apt to talk
about them, and sometimes to endeavor to draw them into fellowship,
to an extent that was not to be thought of.
So it came to pass often, that though Mr. H. was a thriving
business man, with some ten thousand a year, he often wore a pretty
threadbare coat, the seams whereof would be trimmed with lines of
white; and he would sometimes need several pretty plain hints on the
subject of a new hat before he would think he could afford one.
Now, it is to be confessed the world is not always grateful to those
who thus devote themselves to its interests; and Mr. H. had as much
occasion to know this as any other man. People got so used to his
giving, that his bounty became as common and as necessary as that of
a higher Benefactor, "who maketh his sun to rise upon the evil and
the good, and sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust;" and so it
came to pass that people took them, as they do the sunshine and the
rain, quite as matters of course, not thinking much about them when
they came, but particularly apt to scold when they did not come.
But Mr. H. never cared for that. He did not give for gratitude;
he did not give for thanks, nor to have his name published in the
papers as one of six who had given fifty thousand to do so and so;
but he gave because it was in him to give, and we all know that it
is an old rule in medicine, as well as morals, that what is in a
man must be brought out. Then, again, he had heard it reported that
there had been One of distinguished authority who had expressed the
opinion that it was "more blessed to give than to receive," and he
very much believed it--believed it because the One who said it must
have known, since for man's sake he once gave away _all_.
And so, when some thriftless, distant relation, whose debts he had
paid a dozen times over, gave him an overhauling on the subject
of liberality, and seemed inclined to take him by the throat for
further charity, he calmed himself down by a chapter or two from
the New Testament and half a dozen hymns, and then sent him a
good, brotherly letter of admonition and counsel, with a bank-note
to enforce it; and when some querulous old woman, who had had a
tenement of him rent free for three or four years, sent him word
that if he didn't send and mend the water-pipes she would move right
out, he sent and mended them. People said that he was foolish, and
that it didn't do any good to do for ungrateful people; but Mr. H.
knew that it did _him_ good. He loved to do it, and he thought also
on some words that ran to this effect: "Do good and lend, hoping
for nothing again." He literally hoped for nothing again in the way
of reward, either in this world or in heaven, beyond the present
pleasure of the deed; for he had abundant occasion to see how favors
are forgotten in this world; and as for another, he had in his own
soul a standard of benevolence so high, so pure, so ethereal, that
but One of mortal birth ever reached it. He felt that, do what he
might, he fell ever so far below the life of that spotless One--that
his crown in heaven must come to him at last, not as a reward, but
as a free, eternal gift.
But all this while our friend and his little companion have been
pattering along the wet streets, in the rain and sleet of a bitter
cold evening, till they stopped before a grocery. Here a large
cross-handled basket was first bought, and then filled with sundry
packages of tea, sugar, candles, soap, starch, and various other
matters; a barrel of flour was ordered to be sent after him on a
dray. Mr. H. next stopped at a dry goods store and bought a pair of
blankets, with which he loaded down the boy, who was happy enough to
be so loaded; and then, turning gradually from the more frequented
streets, the two were soon lost to view in one of the dimmest alleys
of the city.
The cheerful fire was blazing in his parlor, as, returned from his
long, wet walk, he was sitting by it with his feet comfortably
incased in slippers. The astral lamp was burning brightly on the
centre-table, and a group of children were around it, studying their
lessons.
"Papa," said a little boy, "what does this verse mean? It's in my
Sunday-school lesson. 'Make to yourselves friends of the mammon
of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into
everlasting habitations.'"
"You ought to have asked your teacher, my son."
"But he said he didn't know exactly what it meant. He wanted me to
look this week and see if I could find out."
Mr. H.'s standing resource in all exegetical difficulties was Dr.
Scott's Family Bible. Therefore he now got up, and putting on his
spectacles, walked to the glass bookcase, and took down a volume
of that worthy commentator, and opening it, read aloud the whole
exposition of the passage, together with the practical reflections
upon it; and by the time he had done, he found his young auditor
fast asleep in his chair.
"Mother," said he, "this child plays too hard. He can't keep his
eyes open evenings. It's time he was in bed."
"I wasn't asleep, pa," said Master Henry, starting up with that air
of injured innocence with which gentlemen of his age generally treat
an imputation of this kind.
"Then can you tell me now what the passage means that I have been
reading to you?"
"There's so much of it," said Henry hopelessly, "I wish you'd just
tell me in short order, father."
"Oh, read it for yourself," said Mr. H., as he pushed the book
towards the boy, for it was to be confessed that he perceived at
this moment that he had not himself received any particularly
luminous impression, though of course he thought it was owing to his
own want of comprehension.
Mr. H. leaned back in his rocking-chair, and on his own private
account began to speculate a little as to what he really should
think the verse might mean, supposing he were at all competent
to decide upon it. "'Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness,'" says he: "that's money, very clearly. How am
I to make friends with it or of it? Receive me into everlasting
habitations: that's a singular kind of expression. I wonder what it
means. Dr. Scott makes some very good remarks about it--but somehow
I'm not exactly clear." It must be remarked that this was not an
uncommon result of Mr. H.'s critical investigations in this quarter.
Well, thoughts will wander; and as he lay with his head on the back
of his rocking-chair, and his eyes fixed on the flickering blaze of
the coal, visions of his wet tramp in the city, and of the lonely
garret he had been visiting, and of the poor woman with the pale,
discouraged face, to whom he had carried warmth and comfort, all
blended themselves together. He felt, too, a little indefinite
creeping chill, and some uneasy sensations in his head like a
commencing cold, for he was not a strong man, and it is probable his
long, wet walk was likely to cause him some inconvenience in this
way. At last he was fast asleep, nodding in his chair.
He dreamed that he was very sick in bed, that the doctor came and
went, and that he grew sicker and sicker. He was going to die. He
saw his wife sitting weeping by his pillow--his children standing
by with pale and frightened faces; all things in his room began to
swim, and waver, and fade, and voices that called his name, and sobs
and lamentations that rose around him, seemed far off and distant
in his ear. "Oh, eternity, eternity! I am going--I am going," he
thought; and in that hour, strange to tell, not one of all his good
deeds seemed good enough to lean on--all bore some taint or tinge,
to his purified eye, of mortal selfishness, and seemed unholy before
the All Pure. "I am going," he thought; "there is no time to stay,
no time to alter, to balance accounts; and I know not what I am, but
I know, O Jesus, what thou art. I have trusted in thee, and shall
never be confounded;" and with that last breath of prayer earth was
past.
A soft and solemn breathing, as of music, awakened him. As an infant
child not yet fully awake hears the holy warblings of his mother's
hymn, and smiles half conscious, so the heaven-born became aware of
sweet voices and loving faces around him ere yet he fully woke to
the new immortal Life.
"Ah, he has come at last. How long we have waited for him! Here he
is among us. Now forever welcome! welcome!" said the voices.
Who shall speak the joy of that latest birth, the birth from death
to life! the sweet, calm, inbreathing consciousness of purity and
rest, the certainty that all sin, all weakness and error, are at
last gone forever; the deep, immortal rapture of repose--felt to be
but begun--never to end!
So the eyes of the heaven-born opened on the new heaven and the
new earth, and wondered at the crowd of loving faces that thronged
about him. Fair, godlike forms of beauty, such as earth never knew,
pressed round him with blessings, thanks, and welcome.
The man spoke not, but he wondered in his heart who they were, and
whence it came that they knew him; and as soon as the inquiry formed
itself in his soul, it was read at once by his heavenly friends.
"I," said one bright spirit, "was a poor boy whom you found in the
streets: you sought me out, you sent me to school, you watched over
me, and led me to the house of God; and now here I am." "And we,"
said other voices, "are other neglected children whom you redeemed;
we also thank you." "And I," said another, "was a lost, helpless
girl: sold to sin and shame, nobody thought I could be saved;
everybody passed me by till you came. You built a home, a refuge
for such poor wretches as I, and there I and many like me heard of
Jesus; and here we are." "And I," said another, "was once a clerk
in your store. I came to the city innocent, but I was betrayed by
the tempter. I forgot my mother, and my mother's God. I went to the
gaming-table and the theatre, and at last I robbed your drawer. You
might have justly cast me off; but you bore with me, you watched
over me, you saved me. I am here through you this day." "And I,"
said another, "was a poor slave girl--doomed to be sold on the
auction-block to a life of infamy, and the ruin of soul and body.
Had you not been willing to give so largely for my ransom, no one
had thought to buy me. You stimulated others to give, and I was
redeemed. I lived a Christian mother to bring my children up for
Christ--they are all here with me to bless you this day, and their
children on earth, and their children's children are growing up to
bless you." "And I," said another, "was an unbeliever. In the pride
of my intellect, I thought I could demonstrate the absurdity of
Christianity. I thought I could answer the argument from miracles
and prophecy; but your patient, self-denying life was an argument
I never could answer. When I saw you spending all your time and
all your money in efforts for your fellow men, undiscouraged by
ingratitude, and careless of praise, then I thought, 'There is
something divine in that man's life,' and that thought brought me
here."
The man looked around on the gathering congregation, and he saw
that there was no one whom he had drawn heavenward that had not
also drawn thither myriads of others. In his lifetime he had
been scattering seeds of good around from hour to hour, almost
unconsciously; and now he saw every seed springing up into a
widening forest of immortal beauty and glory. It seemed to him that
there was to be no end of the numbers that flocked to claim him as
their long-expected soul friend. His heart was full, and his face
became as that of an angel as he looked up to One who seemed nearer
than all, and said, "This is thy love for me, unworthy, O Jesus. Of
thee, and to thee, and through thee are all things. Amen."
Amen! as with chorus of many waters and mighty thunderings the sound
swept onward, and died far off in chiming echoes among the distant
stars, and the man awoke.