THE LITTLE PICTURE MAKERS.
AFTER Susie Decker pitched out of the window that Sabbath afternoon
she became such an object of importance that you would hardly have
supposed anything else could have happened worth mentioning; but after
the excitement was quite over, and Susie had been cuddled and petted
and cared for more than it seemed to her she had ever been in her life
before, Mr. Decker, finding nothing better to do, went out and sat down
on the doorstep.
Little Sate dried her eyes and slipped away very soon after she
discovered that Susie could move, and speak, and was therefore not
dead. She had wandered in search of entertainment to the yard just
around the corner, where had come but a few days before, a small boy on
a visit.
This boy, Bobby by name, finding Sunday a hard day, had finally, after
getting into all sorts of mischief within doors, been established by
an indulgent auntie in the back yard, with her apron tied around his
chubby neck, to protect his new suit, with a few pieces of charcoal,
and permission to draw some nice Sunday pictures on the white boards of
the house.
This business interested Sate, and in spite of her shyness, drew her
the other side of the high board fence which separated the neighbor's
back yard from Mr. Decker's side one.
Just as that gentleman took his seat on the doorstep, he heard the
voices of the two children; first, Bobby's confident one, the words he
used conveying all assurance of unlimited power at his command--
"Now, what shall I make?"
"Make," said Sate, her sweet face thrown upward in earnest thought,
"make the angel who would have come for Susie if she had died just now."
"How do you know any angel would have come for her?" asked sturdy Bobby.
"Why, 'cause I _know_ there would. Miss Sherrill said so to-day; she
told us about that little baby that died last night; she said an angel
came after it and took it right straight up to heaven."
"Maybe she don't know," said skeptical Bobby.
Then did Sate's eyes flash.
"I guess she does know, Bobby Burns, and you will be real mean, and bad
if you say so any more. She knows all about heaven, and angels, and
everything."
"Does angels come after all folks that dies?"
"I dunno; I guess so; no, I guess not. Only good folks."
"Is Susie good?"
"Sometimes she is," said truthful Sate, in slow, thoughtful tones, a
touch of mournfulness in them that might have gone to Susie's heart had
she heard and understood; "she gave me the biggest half of a cookie the
other night. It was a _good deal_ the biggest; and she takes care of me
most always; one day she took off her shoes and put them on me, because
the stones and the rough ground hurt my feet. They hurt her feet too;
they bleeded, oh! just awful, but she wouldn't let _me_ be hurt."
"Why didn't you wear your own shoes?"
"I didn't have any; mine all went to holes; just great big holes that
wouldn't stay on; it was before my papa got good, and he didn't buy me
any shoes at all."
"Has your papa got good?"
"Yes," said Sate confidently, "I guess he has. My sister Nettie thinks
so; and Susie does too. He don't drink bad stuff any more. It was some
kind of stuff he drank that made him cross; mamma said so; and the
stuff made him feel so bad that he couldn't buy shoes, nor nothing;
why, sometimes, before Nettie came home, we didn't have any bread! He
isn't cross to-day, and he wasn't last night; and he bought me some new
shoes--real pretty ones, and he kissed me. I love my papa when he is
good. Do you love your papa when he is good?"
"My papa is always good," said Bobby, with that air of immense
superiority.
"Is he?" asked Sate, wonder and admiration in her tone. Happy Bobby,
to possess a father who was always good! "Doesn't he ever drink any of
that bad stuff?"
"I guess he doesn't!" said indignant Bobby. "You wouldn't catch him
taking a drop of it for anything. If he was sick and was going to die
if he didn't, he says he wouldn't take it. I know all about that; the
name of it is whiskey, and things; it has lots of names, but that is
one of them. My father is a temperance."
"What is that?"
"It is a man who promises that he won't ever taste it nor touch it, nor
nothing, forever and ever. And he won't."
"Oh my!" said Sate. "Then of course you love him all the time. I mean
to love my papa, all the time too. I'm most sure I can. What makes you
make such a big angel? Susie isn't big; a little angel could carry her."
"This angel isn't the one who was coming for Susie; it is the one who
is going to come for my papa when he dies."
"Oh! then will you make the one who will come for my papa? Make him
very big and strong, for my papa is a strong man, and I don't want the
angel to drop him."
Mr. Decker arose suddenly and went round to the back part of the house,
and cleared his throat, and coughed, two or three times, and rubbed the
back of his hand across his eyes. Had he peeped through the fence and
caught a glimpse of the angel whom Bobby made, he might not have been
so strangely touched; but the words of his little girl seemed to choke
him, and his eyes, just then, were too dim to see angels.
He was very still all the rest of the afternoon. At the tea table he
scarcely spoke, and afterwards, while Mrs. Decker and Nettie were
mourning over Norm's escape, he too put on his coat, and went away down
the street.
Mrs. Decker came to the door when she discovered it, and looked after
him. He was still in sight, but she did not dare to call. As she
looked, she gathered up a corner of her apron and wiped her eyes.
Presently she sat down on the step where he had been sitting so short
a time before, leaned her elbows on her knees, and her cheeks on her
hands, and thought sad thoughts.
She felt very much discouraged. On this first Sunday, after the new
room had been made, and new hopes excited, they had slipped away, both
Norm and her husband, to lounge in the saloon as usual, and to come
home, late at night, the worse for liquor. She knew all about it!
Hadn't she been through it many times?
The little gleam of hope which had started again, under Nettie and
Jerry's encouraging words and ways, died quite out. Sitting there,
Mrs. Decker made up her mind once more, that there was no kind of use
in working, and struggling, and trying to be somebody. She was the
wife of a drunkard; and the mother of a drunkard; Norm would be that,
before long. And her little girls would grow up beggars. It was almost
a pity that Susie had not been killed when she fell. Why should she
want to live to be a drunkard's daughter, and a drunkard's sister? If
the Heaven she used to hear about when she was a little girl, was all
so, why should she not long for Susie and Sate to go there? Then if she
could go away herself and leave all this misery!
She had hurried with her dishes, she had hoped that when she was ready
to sit down in the neat room with the new lamp burning brightly, he
would sit with her as he used to do on Sunday evenings long ago. But
here she was alone, as usual. More than once that big apron which she
had not cared to take off after she found herself deserted, was made to
do duty as a handkerchief and wipe away bitter tears.
Meantime, Nettie sat in the pretty church and looked at the lovely
flowers, and listened to the wonderful singing. Miss Sherrill sang the
solo of something more beautiful than Nettie had ever even imagined.
"Consider the lilies how they grow." What wonderful words were these to
be sung while looking down at a great bank of lilies! It is possible
that the singing may have been more beautiful to Nettie because her own
fingers had arranged the lilies, but it was in itself enough for any
reasonable mortal's ear, and as it rolled through the church, there
was more than one listener who thought of the angels, and wondered if
their voices could be sweeter. Nettie's small handkerchief went to her
eyes several times during the anthem; she could not have told why she
cried, but the music moved her strangely. Before the anthem was fairly
concluded there was something else to take her attention. Mrs. Job
Smith in whose seat she sat, gave her arm a vigorous poke with a sharp
elbow, and whispered in a voice which seemed to Nettie must have been
heard all over the church, "For the land's sake, if there ain't your pa
sitting down there under the gallery!"
As soon as she dared do so, Nettie turned her head for one swift look.
Mrs. Smith _must_ be mistaken, but she would take one glance to assure
herself. Certainly that was her father, sitting in almost the last
seat, leaning his head against one of the pillars, the shabbiness of
his coat showing plainly in the bright gaslight. But Nettie did not
think of his coat. Her cheeks grew red, and her eyes filled again
with tears. It was not the music, now; it was a strange thrill of
satisfaction, and of hope. How pleasant she had thought it would be
to go to church with her father. It was one of the things she had
planned at Auntie Marshall's; how she would perhaps take her father's
arm, being tall for her years, and Auntie Marshall said he was not
a tall man, and walk to church by his side, and find the hymns for
him, and receive his fatherly smile, and when she handed him his hat
after service, perhaps he would say, "Thank you, my daughter," as she
had heard Doctor Porter say to his little girl in the seat just ahead
of theirs. Nettie's hungry little heart had wanted to hear that word
applied to herself. Now all these sweet dreams of hers seemed to have
been ages ago; actually it felt like years since she had hoped for such
a thing, or dreamed of seeing her father in church, so swiftly had the
reality crowded out her pretty dreams. Yet there he sat, listening to
the reading.
What Nettie would have done or thought had she known that Norm and
two friends were at that moment seated in the gallery just over her
father's head, I cannot say. On the whole, I am glad she did not know
it until church was out. Especially I am glad she did not know that
Norm giggled a good deal, and whispered more or less, and in various
ways so annoyed the minister that he found it difficult to keep from
speaking to the young men in the gallery. The fact is, he would have
done so, had he not recognized in one of them his helper of the evening
before, and resolved to bear his troubles patiently, in the hope that
something good would grow out of this unusual appearance at church.
It would perhaps be hard work to explain what had brought Norm to
church. A fancy perhaps for seeing how the flowers looked by this
time. A queer feeling that he was slightly connected with the church
service for once in his life; a lingering desire to know whether in the
hanging of that tallest wreath, he or the minister had been right; they
had differed as to the distance from one arch to the other; from the
gallery he was sure he could tell which had possessed the truer eye.
All these motives pressed him a little. Then they were singing when
he reached the door, and Rick had said, "Hallo! that voice sounds as
though it lived up in the sky. Who is that, do you s'pose?"
Then Norm proud of his knowledge in the matter, explained that she was
the minister's sister, and they said she could mimic a bird so you
couldn't tell which was which.
"Poh!" Alf had said; he didn't believe a word of that; he should like
to see a woman who could fool him into thinking that she was a bird!
but he had added, "Let's go in and hear her." And as this was what Norm
had been half intending to do ever since he started from the house, he
agreed to do it at once. In they slipped and half-hid themselves behind
the posts in the gallery, and behaved disreputably all the evening,
more because they felt shamefaced about being there at all, and wanted
to keep each other in countenance, than because they really desired to
disturb the service. However, they heard a great deal.
What do you think was the minister's text on that evening? "No drunkard
shall inherit the kingdom of heaven." I shall have to tell you that
when he caught sight of Mr. Decker half-hidden behind his post and
recognized him as the man who was so fast growing into a drunkard, and
as the man who had never been inside the church since he had been the
pastor, he was sorry that his text and subject were what they were
that evening. He told himself that it was very unfortunate. That if
he had dreamed of such a thing as having that man for a listener, he
would have told him the story of Jesus as simply and as earnestly as
he could; and not have preached a sermon that would seem to the man
as a fling at himself. However, there was no help for it now; he did
not recognize Mr. Decker until he had announced his text, and fairly
commenced his sermon.
It was a sermon for young people; it was intended to warn them against
the first beginnings of this great sin which shut heaven away from the
sinner. He need not have been troubled about not telling the story of
Jesus; there was a great deal about Jesus in the sermon, as well as a
great deal about the heaven prepared for those who were willing to go.
I do not know that anywhere in the church you could have found a more
attentive listener than Mr. Decker. At least one who seemed to listen
more earnestly; from the moment that the text was repeated until the
great Bible was closed, he did not take his eyes from the minister's
face. Yet some of his words he did not hear. Some of the time Mr.
Decker was hearing a little voice, very sweet, saying: "Make a very
big strong angel to come for my papa when he dies; my papa is a strong
man and I don't want the angel to drop him." Poor papa! as he thought
of it, he had to look straight before him and wink hard and fast to
keep the tears from dropping; he had no handkerchief to wipe them away.
Think of an angel coming for him! "I love my papa when he is good!" the
sweet voice had said. Was he ever good? Then he listened awhile to the
sermon; heard the vivid description of some of the possible glories
and joys of Heaven. Would he be likely ever to go there? Little Sate
thought so; she had planned for it that very afternoon. Dear little
Sate who did not want the angel to drop him.
Now it is possible that if the sermon had been about drunkards, Mr.
Decker would have been vexed and would not have listened. He did not
call himself a drunkard; it is a sad and at the same time a curious
fact that he did not realize how nearly he had reached the point where
the name would apply to him. That he drank beer, much, and often,
and that he was growing more and more fond of it, and that it kept
him miserably poor, was certainly true, and there were times when he
realized it; but that he was ever going to be a common drunkard and
roll in the gutter, and kick his wife, and seize his children by the
hair, he did not for a moment believe. But the sermon was by no means
addressed to people who were even so far on this road as he. It was
addressed to boys, who were just beginning to like the taste of hard
cider, and spruce beer, and hop bitters, and all those harmless (?)
drinks which so many boys were using. It was a plain story of the
rapid, certain, downward journey of those who began in these simple
ways. It was illustrated by certain facts which Mr. Sherrill had
personally known. And Mr. Decker, as he listened, owned to himself that
he knew facts which would have proved the same truth.
Then he gave a little start and shrank farther into the shadow of the
pillar. The moment he admitted that, he also admitted that he was
himself in danger. What nonsense that was! Couldn't he stop drinking
the stuff whenever he liked? "There is a time," said the minister,
"when this matter is in your own hands. You have no very great taste
for the dangerous liquors, you are only using them because those with
whom you associate do so. You could give them up without much effort;
but I tell you, my friends, the time comes, and to many it comes very
early in life, when they are like slaves bound hand and foot in a habit
that they cannot break, and cannot control." Mr. Decker heard this,
and something, what was it? pressed the thought home to him just then,
that, if he did not belong to this last-mentioned class, neither did
he to the former. He knew it would take a good deal of effort for him
to give up his beer; of course it would; else he should not be such
a fool as to keep himself and his family in poverty for the sake of
indulging it. What if he were already a slave, bound hand and foot!
What if the "stuff" which Sate said made him "cross" had already made
him a drunkard! Perhaps the boys on the street called him so; though
they rarely saw him stagger; his staggering was nearly always done
under cover of the night. Still, now that he was dealing honestly with
himself, he must own that it was less easy to go without his beer than
it used to be. Since Nettie had come home he had drank less of it than
usual, and by that very means he had discovered how much it meant to
him. "No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven!" The minister's
earnest voice repeated his text just then. Was he a drunkard? Then what
about the strong angel? Little Sate was to be disappointed, after all!
Oh! I am not going to try to tell you all the thoughts which passed
through Joe Decker's mind that evening. I don't think he could tell you
himself, though he remembers the evening vividly. He stood up, during
the closing hymn, and waited until the benediction was pronounced,
and then he slipped away, swiftly; Nettie tried to get to him, but
she did not succeed, and she sorrowed over it. He stumbled along
in the darkness, moving almost as unsteadily as though he had been
drinking. The sky was thick with clouds, and he jostled against a lady
and gentleman as he crossed the street; the lady shrank away. "Who is
that?" he heard her ask; and the answer came to him distinctly: "Oh!
it is old Joe Decker; he is drunk, I suppose. He generally is at this
time of night."
Yes, there it was! he was already counted on the streets as a drunkard.
"No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven." It was not the
minister's voice this time; yet it seemed to the poor man's excited
brain that some one repeated those words in his ears. Then he heard
again the sweet soft voice: "Make him very big and strong, for I don't
want the angel to drop him."