The first snowflake was wafted in upon the north wind to-day. I stood in
my study door and watched it fall and disappear; but I knew that many
would come after and hide my garden from sight ere long. What will the
winter bring us? When they wake once more, the flowers that now sleep
snugly under their blanket of dead leaves, what shall we have to tell?
The postman has just brought me a letter, and with it lying open before
me, my thoughts wandered back to "the hard winter" of a half-score seasons
ago which none of us has forgotten, when women and children starved in
cold garrets while men roamed gaunt and hollow-eyed vainly seeking work.
I saw the poor tenement in Rivington Street where a cobbler and his boy
were fighting starvation all alone save for an occasional visit from one
of Miss Wald's nurses who kept a watchful eye on them as on so many
another tottering near the edge in that perilous time, ready with the lift
that brought back hope when all things seemed at an end. One day she found
a stranger in the flat, a man with close-cropped hair and a hard look that
told their own story. The cobbler eyed her uneasily, and, when she went,
followed her out and made excuses. Yes! he was just out of prison and had
come to him for shelter. He used to know him in other days, and Jim was
not--
She interrupted him and shook her head. Was it good for the boy to have
that kind of a man in the house?
The cobbler looked at her thoughtfully and touched her arm gently.
"This," he said, "ain't no winter to let a feller from Sing Sing be on the
street."
The letter the postman brought made me see all this and more in the
snowflake that fell and melted in my garden. It came from a friend in the
far West, a gentle, high-bred lady, and told me this story: Her sister,
who devotes her life to helping the neighbor, had just been on a visit to
her home. One day my friend noticed her wearing an odd knitted shawl, and
spoke of it.
"Yes," said she, "that is the shawl the cook gave me."
"The cook?" with lifted eyebrows, I suppose. And then she heard how.
One day, going through the kitchen of the institution where she teaches,
she had seen the cook in tears and inquired the cause. The poor woman
sobbed out that her daughter had come home to die. The doctors had said
that she might live perhaps ten days, no longer, and early and late she
cried for her mother to be with her. But she had vainly tried every way to
get a cook to take her place--there was none, and her child was dying in
the hospital.
"And I told her to go to her right away, I would see to that; that was
all," concluded my friend's sister; "and she gave me this shawl when she
came back, and I took it, of course. She had worked it for the daughter
that died."
But it was not all. For during ten days of sweltering July heat that
gentle, delicate woman herself superintended the kitchen, did the cooking,
and took the place of the mother who was soothing her dying child's brow,
and no one knew it. Not here, that is. No doubt it is known, with a
hundred such daily happenings that make the real story of human life,
where that record is kept and cherished.
And clear across the continent it comes to solve a riddle that had puzzled
me. Recently I had long arguments with a friend about religion and dogmas
that didn't help either of us. At the end of three weeks we were farther
apart than when we began, and the arguments had grown into controversy
that made us both unhappy. We had to have a regular treaty of peace to
get over it. I know why now. The snowflake and my friend's letter told me.
Those two, the cobbler and the woman, were real Christians. They had the
secret. They knew the neighbor, if neither had ever heard of dogma or
creed. Our arguments were worse than wasted, though we both meant well,
for we were nearer neighbors when we began than when we left off.
I am not learned in such things. Perhaps I am wrong. No doubt dogmas are
useful--to wrap things in--but even then I would not tuck in the ends,
lest we hide the neighbor so that we cannot see him. After all, it is what
is _in_ the package that counts. To me it is the evidence of such as these
that God lives in human hearts--that we are molded in his image despite
flaws and failures in the casting--that keeps alive the belief that we
shall wake with the flowers to a fairer spring. Is it not so with all of
us?