“IT IS NO MADE-UP AFFAIR”
It was Monday evening, and there was company at Mr. Roberts' home;
not the usual Monday evening gathering, but quite a large party
of well-dressed men and women, many of them young, yet some were
middle-aged. The pretty room opposite the conservatory was thrown open,
and aglow with lights and flowers; and groups were continually passing
in and out, admiring the paintings and the flowers, and the type-writers
of different patterns, and the books and magazines, of which there
were many. But interest was not confined to this room. The parlors were
thrown open and the music-room beyond; even the cosy little library was
public property for this one evening. The company was large, and their
tastes were varied; so no pains had been spared to give them variety.
You are acquainted with quite a number of the guests; yet I am by no
means sure that you would recognize them all. Even in so short a period
of time as three years, great changes may be elicited!
For instance, do you know the young man in unnoticeable, and therefore
appropriate, evening dress, who is doing duty at the piano, watching
with practiced eye the course of the player, and turning the leaf with
skilful hand at just the right moment? It is a somewhat embarrassing
position; but his manner leads you to suppose that he has been
accustomed to it all his life, and that he reads music well. In the
latter belief you are correct; but as to being accustomed to it--three
years ago Nimble Dick could have told you a different story!
You can't believe that it is he? I do not wonder. The change is
certainly a great one; but he does not feel it. To tell you the truth,
he almost forgets, when he becomes absorbed in his work, that this sort
of society was not always open to him. Three years means a long time to
the young; and Richard Bolton has so long been accustomed to the freedom
of Mrs. Roberts' parlors, and to the sort of people whom one finds
there, that none of the refinements of polite life are strange to him;
and as to turning music, has he not done it for his hostess numberless
times?
If your eyes are now opened, it is possible that you may be trying to
spy out other young men. The rooms are full of them, elegantly-dressed,
fashionable young men; but a few are noticeable by the air which they
have of being in a sense responsible for the comfort of the others. They
are on the alert; they are taking care that no young guest shall appear
for a moment to be forgotten or neglected. They appear to be entirely
familiar with the house and all its appointments. They can be appealed
to for a glass of water or an ice, or to know what special scene this
landscape hanging over the mantel represents, or whose bust this is in
the niche at the left, or in what portion of the library a certain
book will be found, or from what part of the foreign world that
strangely-shaped shell came, and they are all equally at home. In short,
it is like having a dozen or twenty young hosts to look after your
comfort and pleasure. In point of fact, there are seventeen of them. The
original seven has thus increased. Two months ago there were twenty, but
one has secured an appointment as telegraph operator in a distant city,
and as Stephen Crowley occupies a similar position in one of the offices
in this city, some very interesting conversations are held, and many
important items connected with the “Monday Evenings” and the South End
School and the “Library Association,” etc., are transmitted when the
lines are not otherwise employed. Young Haskell, too, has gone with one
of the partners from the store where he was first employed, to set up a
branch store in a not distant town; and his old Sabbath-school teacher
has already received letters from him, saying that they have started
a branch Sunday-school in the south part of the town, and that he has
picked seven little wretches out of the streets, from eight to twelve
years of age, and gone to work. “And, dear Mrs. Roberts, I wish you
would pray for me, that I may be able to bring every one of them to
Christ.”
So the letter ran; and that tells volumes to the initiated about young
Haskell.
But although the changes among these young men have been great almost
to bewilderment, only one of the number has been promoted to a dazzling
height. The others are without exception earning good, honest livings
for themselves; securing good, substantial educations through the
evening classes which have grown out of that first effort; bidding fair
to become leading and honored citizens when they actually take their
places as men. But Mark Calkins, faithful, plodding, good-hearted,
patient Mark, has surpassed them all! The truth is “that eye hath not
seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart,” what sort of
magnificence surrounds him now. He has gone to court. The chief Ruler
of the realm has sent for Mark to be always in his immediate presence in
the palace; and with what joy he went I cannot tell you. Nor how often
they speak of him, and try to let their hearts conceive of the glory
which surrounds him, and dwell on the day when they will be called, one
after another, to share the same glory; for this is the ambition of more
than half of them.
Now, in that sentence is unveiled the most curious part of my curious
story; and that it is curious, I frankly admit. It is no made-up affair.
I am not responsible for the strangeness of it. You are to remember
that “truth is stranger than fiction,” and then to understand that I am
telling you the truth. It is, then, a fact, that these young men have
each received conditional appointments to serve in the palace, high in
power and splendor and dignity. The conditions are that they are to be
willing to be guided in all things by the will of their King, whom they
each admit to be wise above all wisdom, and to be kind above all
their conceptions of kindness. It is true that nine of the number
have accepted their appointments, donned their uniform, assumed their
positions as He has directed, and are waiting for the summons to appear
in person at court. It is also true that the others are still in a state
of indecision; they do not know whether to accept the appointment or
not. It is true that they feel themselves honored; that they believe
this to be the only path of honorable and safe promotion. It is true
that they have full faith in those who will tell with joy, that, having
enlisted, they find the service even in this ante-room sweet, and the
rewards great. It is true that they severally visited Mark, just as the
door was opening to admit him to the palace, and heard him speak of the
glimpses of its glory, and heard that his last words before he went away
were, “Oh, mine eyes see the King in his beauty!” and that his voice
was jubilant as that of a conqueror, and his face radiant as with a
reflection of unseen glory; and yet they hesitate, and dally with the
call, and mean, some time, to have such an inheritance deeded to them,
but not now! Remember, I am not responsible for this. Were I writing
fiction I should hesitate to set down such idiotic folly, expecting you
to call it unnatural or absurdly overdrawn; but I do solemnly declare to
you that this is fact. Account for the folly of their behavior as best
you can.
Well, Sallie and her father are left behind. But, mind you, they are not
among the doubtful ones. They both as much expect to serve at court as
they expect to live through all eternity. But while they wait they are
busy. They have moved from the alley; the surroundings were not such
as they liked. Did you notice that bit of a house landing modestly
back from the road, at the further corner of those ample grounds that
surround the South End Church? It is the sexton's house, and that
church, and those Sunday-school rooms, and those grounds, and everything
pertaining to them, are under his care. The father is the sexton, it
is true, and attends the furnace and rings the bell; but it is Sallie's
care that keeps seat and desk and window so beautifully free from dust
or stain. Oh, they live busy lives, and happy ones. Sallie trusted not
in vain in her father's promise that night, when he put his weak will
into the pledge; but you are to understand that it was but a few days
thereafter when he planted his weak and wavering feet on the Rock of
Ages. Then did Satan angle for him in vain.
So, on this Monday evening, there were but seventeen at the gathering.
I hesitate over what to name the gathering. I would call it a party,
but that in many respects it was so totally different from anything with
which you are probably acquainted by that name.
The young man who stands by the door of the conservatory, eagerly
describing to Miss Henderson a rare and curious flower, which has been
sent to Mrs. Roberts from California, is “black Dirk.” Really, I hope
you are sufficiently astonished; for he looks so utterly unlike the
scamp who used to be the special torment of the South End Mission that
I should be disappointed if you were not impressed by it. “Mr. Colson”
almost everybody calls him now. The name has long since lost its
strangeness. He is in the employ of the great firm of Bostwick, Smythe,
Roberts & Co., and although Mr. Roberts has never found it convenient to
do so before, there were reasons why he thought it would be well to
have a clerk within call; so Mr. Colson boards with what was the junior
partner of the firm. He is so no more, by the way, for Mr. Ried has been
received as a member, and is decidedly a junior partner. Probably Mr.
Roberts could tell you, if he chose, why one so young, and without
capital, had been elected to partnership; but, as a rule, he keeps his
own counsel, only remarking that the young man developed remarkable
business faculties which were patent to the whole firm. To his wife he
said:--
“I tell you, Flossy, I believe a consecrated life will be honored by the
Lord, in whatever channel he gives it talents to develop. 'Whatsoever
he doth shall prosper.' That young man is going to have a career in
business. I shouldn't be surprised if the Master meant him to show the
world how a Christian can use money to his glory.”
It is early yet to prophesy what Mr. Colson will do. Doubtless he will
be a merchant; certainly he will be a Christian; possibly he will be
an orator, of whom the world will yet hear,--a temperance orator, for
instance. I know you would like to hear him read a poem. He is not
confined to Will Carleton's style now, though he still reads with power
some of those inimitable delineations of life; but Gracie Dennis offers
no more criticisms when he reads. In fact, I have heard her defer to
him, when a question arose, as one who had probably studied the passage,
and caught its best. I am willing to confess that my poor black Dirk was
a bit of a genius. The thought I desire you to catch is that so many
of those poor fellows, who of necessity live by their wits in the city
slums, are diamonds which could be fitted to shine. You take a diamond
and throw it down in the dirt and filth, and put your foot on it and
grind it in, and leave it there, sinking and soiling, day after day,
year after year, and when somebody comes along and picks it out, how
much will it gleam for him at first? Yet the diamond is there.
“Thou shalt be a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.” Mrs. Roberts had
been at work hunting diamonds for His diadem.
As Mr. Colson stood there chatting freely with Miss Henderson, there was
nothing about the association that looked incongruous, neither did it
occur to any. There was not a trace of embarrassment about this boy from
the slums; he had forgotten the slums, and stood talking with one of the
aristocrats of the city.
How came she to talk with him, to allow herself to be entertained
by him? Let me tell you: thereby hangs a tale. Some time before this
evening--in fact, nearly two years before--Mrs. Roberts had come to a
puzzle, and stood and looked at it doubtfully. Then she presented it to
the others:--
“They are growing easy in their manners with me, learning to be
gentlemanly without embarrassment, and thoughtful over little things
without being ashamed of it; but I am afraid that with other ladies they
would be sadly frightened and awkward. When Mrs. Delaney came in this
evening I could but notice how utterly silent Mr. Colton became; he
had been talking well before. It seems as though there was a great gulf
between them and social advancement. How can we bridge it?”
Then young Ried ventured his thought:--“My sister Ester had a class in
the Center Street Sabbath-school--nice little girls, who wore pretty
dresses, and had their hair curled, and came from the best families.
After she was taken sick, she told me one of her regrets was that she
had not stayed well long enough to try a plan which she had. She meant
to take a class of rough little boys in the mission-school, and she
meant to ask the mothers of the little girls to let them come, once a
month, and play with the little boys from the streets--she to play with
them, and watch over them every moment; but to try to interest the girls
in teaching the boys gentleness and good manners. I don't know how it
would have worked. Ester was never well enough to undertake it; nor
could she seem to enlist any one else in such service. It has grave
objections, I suppose; but I have always thought that I should like to
see something of the kind carefully tried.”
Mrs. Roberts, before this little story was half-concluded, had turned
those eager eyes of hers on the speaker--eyes that always had a peculiar
light in them whenever her soul took in a new suggestion.
“Thank you,” she said. “I see, oh! a great many things. I ought to have
called in that dear sister Ester to help on this phase of the question
before. It has always seemed to me as though we were doing her work.”