“A CHRISTIAN HOME.”
“I don't suppose you can go into detail just now,” she added, noting
young Ried's hesitation and embarrassment; “but I was wondering if you
could give me some general idea of what she wanted to do, or thought
could be done.”
“There were a great many things that she wanted to do, and I believe she
thought they could be done; but I don't think she knew the world very
well,” said this aged cynic. “She judged everybody from the standpoint
of her own unselfishness. I remember she was not in sympathy with
soup-houses, and dinner-tickets, and great public charities of that
sort. Or, I don't know that I should say she was not in sympathy
with them. I mean, rather, that those would not have been her ways of
working. She was thinking of young people, and to give them a dinner
now and then, she would not have considered a very great step toward
elevating them morally and spiritually. Mrs. Roberts, it was just
that which she wanted to do,--lift them up. She thought there could be
invented ways of reaching them, so that they would want helping, want
teaching,--_crave_ it, I mean; and she thought that Christian homes of
wealth and culture could be opened to them, and they gradually toled
in,--made to feel on a level with others, in the social scale; in
short, she believed that instead of people going down to them in a
condescending spirit, they could be drawn up to the level of others,
so that they would realize their manhood, and be led to make earnest
efforts to take their rightful places in the world. I know I am bungling
dreadfully; I don't know how to tell you her plans, only that they were
splendid. But I am afraid the world will have to be made over, before
they can be carried out.”
“Perhaps so. Christ is at work making the world over, you know.” The
lady before him, whose eyes never for an instant moved from his face,
spoke with exceeding sweetness and gravity. Neither by word nor glance
did she give him to understand that she thought his schemes wild. “But I
find that, after all, I want details. I catch a glimpse of the grandness
of your sister's meaning. What were some of the steps,--the little
steps, such as you and I could take, toward accomplishing? Yet, even
while I ask the question, I see something of what the answer must be.
'Christian homes opening to receive them!' That is a new thought to me,
and in the plural number I do not see how just now, it could be done,
but _one_ Christian home,--I ought to be able to manage that. Mr. Ried,
that is the way to begin it, you may depend. Indeed, I suppose you have
tried it? The city is full of boys, and many of them are away down.
Since we cannot reach all of them this week, we must try to reach seven;
and failing in that, suppose we say one? For which one have you been
working? Just who, at this moment, specially interests you? I hope it
is one of my boys, because, you see, they appeal to me, just now, as
no others can. Which is it, Mr. Ried? and what have you tried to do for
him? and to what extent have you succeeded?”
There were never any hotter cheeks than young Ried's just at that
moment. This was the most extraordinary person with whom he had ever
talked. It was impossible to generalize with her. Not that he wanted to
generalize; on the contrary, he at once saw the possibilities growing
out of individual effort, and caught at the idea of undertaking
something. But the question was, Why had he not thought of it before?
One person to reach after, and try for!--surely, he might have attempted
it, instead of trying to carry the hundreds that he stumbled against,
and so accomplish nothing for any of them. It was humiliating, the
confession that he had to make:--
“Indeed, Mrs. Roberts, I have not one in mind. If you asked me what one
hundred I was most anxious about, I might possibly be able to answer;
but I see that there has been no individuality about it, unless,
perhaps, the half-dozen or more boys who compose that class are taking
a little stronger hold on me than any of the others; but even for them
I have tried to do nothing, unless two or three attempts to secure a
permanent teacher for them--which have ended in failure--may count for
effort. I don't blame myself as much as I might, because, now that you
suggest personal work to me, I realize that there is nothing for one
situated as I am to do. I have no Christian home at my command.”
“Ah, but we are to come down to very small numbers, you know,--to
fractions, if need be. You have a piece of Christian home at command, I
trust?”
But he looked at her inquiringly, and she explained:--
“Why, you have the privacy of your own room, which is, of course, your
corner of home just now, and it is a Christian corner. Is there not room
in it sometimes for two?”
He smiled faintly over that.
“Mrs. Roberts, there is one thing with which you evidently are not
familiar, and that is the corner which a poor clerk in the city has
to call home. Mine is the fourth story back of a fourth-rate
boarding-house, where the thermometer drops often below the
freezing-point, and this place I share with as uncongenial a fellow as
ever breathed. What would you think of labelling such accommodations
'home?' and what can I do in it for others?”
“Not much, perhaps,” smiling, “unless for the uncongenial fellow. I
should think there might be a chance in this direction.”
“Ah, but,” he said, eagerly, “he is a Christian. My sympathies do not
need to be drawn out in that direction.”
The smile was a peculiar one now, but the tone was very quiet in which
the little lady said that some time, when they had leisure to talk, she
should like to ask him whether his experience with Christians had been
so exceptionally bright that he thought there was no work to do in that
direction.
“But just now,” she added, earnestly, “I want to know, since you are
shut away from home effort, for which of these boys you are praying
especially, and which of them do you carry about on your heart, with the
hope of a chance meeting, an unexpected, opportunity to speak a word,
or do a kindness, or look a kindness that shall give you possible
future influence? Don't you have to work in those ways? Two people
never equally interest me at the same moment. I find I must be intensely
individual, not to the exclusion of others, but in praying. For
instance, yesterday I prayed, and this morning I prayed, for my entire
class, but there was one all the time who was uppermost. I find myself
questioning, What can I do for them all, but especially for him? Do you
know, I fancy that most Christians feel the same; individual effort
is so necessary that I have thought perhaps the Holy Spirit turns our
thoughts most directly toward one person at a time, so that we may
concentrate our efforts. Do you think this is so?”
Young Ried did not answer promptly; he had no answer ready that suited
him. His strongest feeling just then was one of self-reproach, mingled
with humiliation. How had he looked down on this fair and beautiful
little woman,--her very beauty being, he had fancied, an element against
her when it came to actual effort. How had he allowed himself to sneer
over her attempts at teaching that class of boys! How actually irritable
he had been over it! How almost angrily he had questioned why it was
that a teacher was not found for them fitted to their needs; when he had
prayed about it so much; determined not to believe that the prayer had
been answered, and the teacher found; yet here she was, the one whose
efforts he had despised, talking already about individual prayer for
them, while he, who had done a great amount of fretting for them, had
not once presented them as individuals to Christ, and asked a definite
blessing for each! His answer, when it came, was low and full of
feeling:--
“I have concentrated my desires in praying for the coming of such a
teacher as might get hold of them; and I begin to think that I have an
answer to my prayers.”
But she was absolutely proof against compliments. She wasted not a
moment's thought on that, but said:--
“Mr. Ried, who are they? I tried to get their names yesterday, but soon
saw that they were not in the mood to help me. I don't think I have one
correct name. Can you give me a list?”
No, he could not--which admission did not lessen the glow on his cheek.
Possibly he could mention the names of two, and guess at a third, but of
the others he knew nothing.
“To whom, then, can I go? Mr. Durant would know, of course. Where shall
I find him?”
So much Alfred knew. Mr. Durant was to be found at the Fourth National
Bank; but, as for giving information in regard to that class, he was
sure it was beyond him. He (Alfred) had asked only last Sabbath who the
boy was who behaved so wretchedly, and also who was the fellow next him,
but Mr. Durant had not known.
Well, then, Mrs. Roberts said, nothing daunted, not even a shadow
appearing on her quiet face, she must just study it out with his help.
“There is immediate work for you,” she said, “for of course I want
to know their names. Who are the two? This Dirk Colson, whom you
mentioned,--which was he?”
Alfred described him as well as his bewilderment would allow, and was
interrupted--
“Oh, the small dark one. I know,--he interested me. Where does he live?”
But to this question no clear answer could be given. Down in one of the
alleys towards the South End; but just which alley, or how far down it,
Alfred did not know. He knew it was a disreputable alley, and that there
wasn't a decent home anywhere about it, and that was all.
“What does Dirk do for a living?”
This question was quite as difficult to answer as the other. Nothing,
young Ried believed; at least nothing regular; odd jobs he doubtless
picked up occasionally, but as for regular employment, Alfred was sure
he had none.
“Is that his fault? I mean, doesn't he desire work, and make an effort
to secure it?”
But this young Ried could not even pretend to answer. Work, for such as
he, was scarce; boys with better habits, brought up to be industrious,
were at this present time out of work. Possibly the fellow was not to
blame for being an idler.
Many other questions were asked, and many attempts were made at answers;
but when the shoppers began to press in, to such a degree that their
conversation was broken, and the energetic seeker after information felt
herself obliged to retire, one thing had been accomplished: Alfred Ried
had been made to realize that he knew much less than he had supposed he
did about the seven boys who had seemed to be filling his thoughts for
several weeks; and also, in his eager, passionate desire that everything
should be done for all of them, he had overlooked the chances for doing
here and there some little thing for one of them.
“Good morning,” Mrs. Roberts had said, turning cordially to a
fashionably-dressed lady. “Collars? Oh, yes, this is the counter for
them to be found in endless variety. They have a new pattern that I have
been admiring. Mr. Ried, please show Mrs. Emory the curtain collars,
with embroidered points.”
Which thing Mr. Ried proceeded to do with alacrity and respect, no trace
of the earlier contemptuous feeling shadowing his face. Here was a woman
who knew stylish collars when she saw them, and who also knew several
other things, and had taught him a lesson this very morning that he
would not be likely to forget.
But Mrs. Roberts, as she made her way out from the fast-filling store,
felt that she had not made great progress toward getting acquainted with
her class.
Still it must be admitted that if young Ried had gotten some new ideas,
so also had she. “A Christian home!” She found herself repeating the
phrase, lingering over it, wondering if her new home, in every sense of
the word, merited that title. “It cannot simply mean a home where Christ
is honored,” she said to herself. “I surely have that. It rather means
a home where everything pertaining to it serves His cause. The very
furniture and the light and the brightness are made to do duty for Him,
else they have no place there; and I, labelled Christian, have no right
to them. Can they bear the test, I wonder? What is there that I can do
with all the beauties of my parlors? There are things that I have not
done. I can see some to do; but how can my Christian home serve these
boys? When I get them into it, of course it will work for me; but how to
get them in! Who are they? I wonder what spring I can touch to give me
even this meagre bit of information?”
As if in answer to her mental query, she came just then full upon
Policeman Duffer. She recognized him instantly: a man who, though by
no means small, was so far from having the majestic presence of most
policemen that, in the estimation of the boys, he merited the name
“Little Duffer.” Mrs. Roberts carried to her new work one talent
not always to be found among even efficient workers,--the ability to
remember both names and faces. Especially did a name seem, without any
effort on her part, to fasten itself upon her memory; and not only that,
but it brought with it a train of memories enabling her to locate
when and where, and under what circumstances, she heard the name; and,
therefore, generally whom the name fitted. Recognizing the features of
the policeman whom she had seen at the door of the South End Mission,
she connected him at once with the term “Little Duffer,” heard in her
class, and addressed him:--
“Mr. Duffer, I believe.”
It is safe to say that Policeman Duffer, entirely accustomed as he was
to hearing himself addressed officially a hundred or a thousand times a
day, was yet utterly unaccustomed to the prefix of “Mr.”, and started in
surprise.
“Are you not the gentleman whom I saw at the South End last Sabbath?”
The policeman admitted that he probably was. He was detailed for duty
there. Then she plunged at once into business. Did he know the boys who
attended that school? Some of them he did, better than he wanted to; and
a precious set they were, in Policeman Duffer's opinion.
“Might as well go out to the Zoo,” he declared, “and get a set of
animals and try to tame 'em.”
Mrs. Roberts was not in the mood to argue; she was bent on information.
Did he know, she wondered, the boys who composed her class? She had just
taken the class, and was so unfortunate as not to be acquainted
with their names. One was Dirk Colson, and another she had heard was
Haskell--Timothy Haskell, perhaps, though of that she was not certain.
Did that give Mr. Duffer any clue?
“Plenty of clue,” he said, shaking his head. “So you've taken that
class, ma'am?”--a curious mixture of amazement and credulity in his
voice. “What possessed you, if I may be so bold? They're a hard lot,
ma'am. I know them, as I said, altogether too well. I've had enough to
do with some of them; and I expect more work from them. They gain in
wickedness in a most surprising way. Their names, yes; there's Scrawley
and Sneaking Billy, and Black Dirk,--him you know.”
Mrs. Roberts interrupted him. She begged his pardon, but could those
really be the boys names? Were they not rather some unfortunate street
names that had been fastened upon them?
Thus brought back to his senses, Policeman Duffer laughed, and admitted
that he supposed Sneaking Billy was properly named Sneyder; but he was
once caught in a mean trick, from which he tried in so many ways to
squirm out, that the boys had themselves named him Sneaking Billy, and
the name had stuck.
As for “Scrawley,” his real name was Stephen Crowley. How it became
contracted into “Scrawley” the boys could tell better than anybody else.
They always called him that, and so did other people; and Policeman
Duffer was inclined to doubt whether the fellow remembered that he had
any other name.
“You can see yourself, ma'am,” he added, “how Black Dirk came by his
name. He is the blackest white fellow as ever I saw, and I've seen
crowds of 'em.”
The streets were full, and Policeman Duffer was being interviewed by
a great many people in regard to all the questions that policemen are
expected to answer. But by dint of patient waiting, one foot poised on
a curbstone to keep it out of the mud, making hurried little memoranda
while Policeman Duffer was engaged, and earnestly plying her questions
when he was at leisure, Mrs. Roberts learned the names of her seven
boys, and where several of them lived.