|UP in Polk county, Wisconsin, not long ago, a man who had lost eight
children by diphtheria, while the ninth hovered between life and death
with the same disease, went to the-health officer of the town and asked
aid to prevent the spread of the terrible scourge. The health officer
was cool and collected. He did not get excited over the anguish of the
father whose last child was at that moment hovering upon the outskirts
of immortality. He calmly investigated the matter, and never for a
moment lost sight of the fact that he was a town officer and a professed
Christian.
"You ask aid, I understand," said he, "to prevent the spread of the
disease, and also that the town shall assist you in procuring new and
necessary clothing to replace that which you have been compelled to burn
in order to stop the further inroads of diphtheria. Am I right?" The
poor man answered affirmatively.
"May I ask if your boys who died were Christian boys, and whether they
improved their gospel opportunities and attended the Sabbath school, or
whether they were profane and given over to Sabbath-breaking?"
The bereft father said that his boys had never made a profession of
Christianity; that they were hardly old enough to do so, and that they
might have missed some gospel opportunities owing to the fact that they
were poor, and hadn't clothes fit to wear to Sabbath school. Possibly,
too, they had met with wicked companions, and had been taught to swear;
he could not say but they might have sworn, although he thought they
would have turned out to be good boys had they lived.
"I am sorry that the case is so bad," said the health officer. "I am led
to believe that God has seen fit to visit you with affliction in order
to express His Divine disapproval of profanity, and I cannot help you.
It ill becomes us poor, weak worms of the dust to meddle with the just
judgments of God. Whether as an individual or as a _quasi corporation_,
it is well to allow the Almighty to work out His great plan of
salvation, and to avoid all carnal interference with the works of God."
The old man went back to his desolated home and to the bedside of his
only living child. I met him yesterday and he told me all about it.
"I am not a professor of religion," said he, "but I tell you, Mr. Nye,
I can't believe that this board of health has used me right. Somehow I
ain't worried about my little fellers that is gone.
"They was little fellers, anyway, and they wasn't posted on the plan of
salvation, but they was always kind and they always minded me and their
mother. If God is using diphtheria agin perfanity this season they
didn't know it. They was too young to know about it and I was too poor
to take the papers, so I didn't know it nuther. I just thought that
Christ was partial to kids like mine, just the same as He used to be
2,000 years ago when the country was new. I admit that my little shavers
never went to Sabbath school much, and I wasn't scholar enough to throw
much light onto God's system of retribution, but I told 'em to behave
themselves, and they did, and we had a good deal of fun together--me and
the boys--and they was so bright, and square, and cute that I didn't see
how they could fall under divine wrath, and I don't believe they did.
"I could tell you lots of smart little things that they used to do, Mr.
Nye, but they wa'n't mean and cussed. They was just frolicky and gay
sometimes because they felt good. I don't believe God had it in for 'em
bekuz they was like other boys, do you? Fer if I thought so it would
kind o' harden me and the old lady and make us sour on all creation.
"Mind you, I don't kick because I'm left alone here in the woods, and
the sun don't seem to shine, and the birds seems a little backward about
singin' this spring, and the house is so quiet, and she is still all
the time and cries in the night when she thinks I am asleep. All that
is tough, Mr. Nye--tough as old Harry, too--but its so, and I ain't
murmurin', but when the board of health says to me that the Ruler of
the Universe is makin' a tower of Northern Wisconsin, mowin' down little
boys with sore throat because they say 'gosh,' I can't believe it.
"I know that people who ain't familiar with the facts will shake their
heads and say that I am a child of wrath, but I can't help it, All I can
do is to go up there under the trees where them little graves is, and
think how all-fired pleasant to me them little, short lives was, and
how every one of them little fellers was welcome when he come, poor as
I was, and how I rastled with poor crops and pine stumps to buy cloze
for 'em, and didn't care a cent for style as long as they was well.
That's the kind of heretic I am, and if God is like a father that
settles it, He wouldn't wipe out my family just to establish discipline,
I don't believe. The plan of creation must be on a bigger scale than
that, it seems to me, or else it's more or less of a fizzle.
"That board of health is better read than I am. It takes the papers and
can add up figures, and do lots of things that I can't do; but when
them fellers tell me that they represent the town of Balsam Lake and the
Kingdom of Heaven, my morbid curiosity is aroused, and I want to see the
stiffykits of election."