ASLEEP IN JESUS.
Gilbert Allison, of the firm of Allison, Russell & Joy, wholesale and
retail liquor dealers, walking briskly along a sideway that led toward
one of the great thoroughfares of the city, halted a second before
crossing the street. As he stopped a voice reached his ear. Hearing the
voice he took a more careful glance at the surroundings and found
himself standing in front of a plain little wooden structure that he
learned, from a sign upon one corner, was some sort of an orthodox
chapel. Through the narrow, open doorway the voice floated:
Asleep in Jesus, blessed sleep,
From which none ever wake to weep--
A calm and undisturbed repose,
Unbroken by the last of foes.
Asleep in Jesus! Oh, how sweet
To be for such a slumber meet!
With holy confidence to sing
That death has lost its venom sting.
Both words and tune were unfamiliar to him. Was it the song itself, sung
to the sweetly pathetic tune of "Rest," was it the strangely beautiful
and solemn voice of the singer, or was it common curiosity to see the
owner of the unusual voice that proved the attraction prompting him to
step into the vestibule? Unseen he watched as the song went on:
Asleep in Jesus! peaceful rest,
Whose waking is supremely blest.
No fear nor foe shall dim the hour
That manifests the Savior's power.
Asleep in Jesus! Oh, for me
May such a blissful refuge be!
Securely shall my ashes lie
And wait the summons from the sky.
The sweet voice of the singer died away, and the stillness was broken
only by low sobbing. Then the minister arose.
Gilbert Allison had seen enough. The plain, dark coffin just before the
altar railing told him that another human soul had left its earthly body
and had gone beyond.
He was not interested in this. His mind dwelt on the singer. She was
rather small, a well-formed and graceful appearing young woman of
perhaps twenty-two or twenty-four. She wore a plain dark dress, and a
round hat rested on the masses of red-brown hair that framed her face
and crowned her shapely head. Here and there in the mass a carved silver
hair-pin showed itself, and Gilbert Allison found himself studying the
effect as he walked down the street; found himself puzzled as to why he
had stopped and noticed her hair or her. Evidently she had made an
impression on him. He tried, in a way, to analyze this, and finally gave
it up, yet found himself continually recalling the face in its frame of
red-brown hair.
He had known many charming women in his three and thirty years of life,
but he had never felt before the indescribable charm that had suddenly,
like the fragrance of a hidden violet, come to him for the unknown
singer in the dingy chapel. Gilbert Allison had guarded well his heart's
affections, but there comes a time in the lives of most men when the
heart refuses to be subject to the will and obstinately goes whither it
pleases. This man's heart was about to assert its rights. The daughter
of a Republican was to have a lover, for it was Miss Thorn who sang.
That Miss Thorn should sing had been the wish of the now lifeless
sleeper, and Jean had done her best.
All that was mortal of Maggie Crowley rested in the plain, dark coffin.
A life fraught with sorrow and tears and an innocent shame was ended; a
body racked with hunger and pain and cold was at rest. From the time of
her awful hurt, now a year ago, Maggie had been an invalid. The children
had gone out to work, and the frail mother had tried to cheer them as
she toiled in the valley of despair. A new sorrow had come into the
wretched home: Cora, yet a child in years, because she had a fair face
and a drunkard for a father, had been robbed of her one priceless
possession--her unspotted character--by a man whose name was familiar in
high circles, and whose hand was courted by more than one mother for
some cherished daughter.
From the time that her sister had bartered away her purity, in the
bitter, thankless battle that she fought for bread, Maggie had steadily
grown weaker, and when the mother knew the time was near at hand for her
to go she sent for Miss Thorn.
Jean had never been beside a death-bed, but she did not hesitate.
Maggie was lying, white and thin, upon the pillow. She looked eagerly
toward the door. Her eyes lit with a lingering light, and a faint smile
came around the corners of her drawn mouth when she saw that it was
Jean. She spoke slowly and softly, without much effort, and quite
distinctly.
"I'm going pretty soon, Miss Thorn, and I wanted to see you. You've been
so good to us--God will bless you for it. When I am gone, don't forget
poor mother. Please don't, Miss Thorn! She will be sad. I'm the only one
that remembered the other days, and we used sometimes to talk of them
and pray that they might come back. Maybe God will send them back some
day--but I will not be here. I'm not afraid to die. Christ died for the
drunkard's child--I'm sure he did. I'm so glad to go. In my Father's
house are many mansions--many mansions--one for us."
She closed her eyes as she repeated the words softly.
"When I am gone, do not feel sad, mother--not too sad," she continued in
a moment. "Think that I have only gone to sleep to wake up where there
is no more sorrow. I'll be waiting in our mansion, mother, and there we
will be happy, for the Book says he will not be there who puts the
bottle to his neighbor's lips."
She stopped to rest. The room was very quiet.
"When my father comes," a look of intense longing came into her sunken
eyes, and for a moment she struggled to force back the great sob of
sorrow that seemed choking her, "tell him 'goodby' for Maggie. Perhaps
he will be sorry--not like he once would have been--just a little. Don't
let the children forget me. Dear children! How I wish I could take them
all to the mansion. And Cora, poor Cora----"
The last tears that ever shone in Maggie's eyes filled them now.
"God knows about Cora," said Jean, tenderly, while the mother wept in
silence.
The dying girl lay quite exhausted, and, while she rested, her eyes
wandered from one to the other of the few around the bed and rested
lovingly on her mother's face. Her minutes were numbered. Mortality was
ebbing away. When she spoke again it was with more of an effort, pausing
now and then for breath.
"Stoop over, mother; let me put--my arms around--your dear, kind neck.
Put your face down--so I can put my cheek--against yours--as I did when
we were happy. I'm going back--to it. I smell the roses. I hear the
pigeons--on the roof. Lift me--mother--gently. I am--tired.
Sing--my--good night--song--I'll--go--to--sleep."
Mrs. Crowley drew the dying girl's head close to her heart and tried to
sing; but her voice failed. Then, in the presence of the death angel,
Jean sang for the girl's long sleeping.
Suddenly a clear, happy, childish voice rang out on the
stillness--"Papa's coming!"
It was the last. The arms around the mother's neck unclasped. The weary
head sank upon the pillow. The eyelids fluttered. The breaths came
shorter and shorter--the weary girl had entered into rest.
The soul of the drunkard's daughter had gone where justice reigns
supreme; where a God of justice watches the kingdoms of the earth and in
mercy stays the doom that comes a certain penalty of the nation that
sells its maids and youths to the rum fiend.
Mrs. Crowley stood looking down on the wan face of her first-born.
"Thank God she is happy! But it's hard--so hard!"
A mother's love is the same the world around. This mother threw herself
down by the bedside, and, holding one of the lifeless hands to her lips,
sobbed bitterly.
It seemed a desecration that just now the father should come stumbling
into the scene, filling the room with the fumes of liquor and muttering
drunken curses. But Maggie was beyond the reach of human harm. This
would never pain her heart again.
Neighbors came in, and Jean stepped out into the fresh air.
It was nearly noontime. The streets were busy, and as she went towards
home she saw the beer wagons driving in every direction, loaded with
their freight of sorrow and pain and death. As she passed the palaces of
gilded doom, arrayed in cut glass and mirrors, luring the souls of men
and boys to hell, she thought of the Christian voters of the nation who
allow it to be so because, bound by party ties and fooled by party
leaders, they will not force this mighty issue to the front and demand
its recognition at the ballot-box; and these words rang in her ears:
"Because I have called and ye have refused, ye have set at naught all my
counsel. I also will laugh at your calamity when your destruction cometh
as a whirlwind."
The words burned in her mind, and when she reached home she entered the
library and without removing hat or gloves threw herself upon a sofa.
It was not quite time for luncheon. The house was quiet.
Vivian had, during the year, married the rector of a large and
fashionable city church. For weeks before the eventful occasion life had
been one round of shopping and fitting, of entertaining and rehearsing.
Jean, as maid of honor, had figured conspicuously in the different
functions, and for a time her mind was so absorbed with the fragrance
and sunshine of life that its seamy side was forgotten. But after it
was all over her thoughts and sympathies went out again to that family
of the "other half" that she had so strangely become interested in, and
the old question pressed itself for solution, why, in a Christian land
of plenty, such a state of life for such vast numbers was allowable or
even possible.
With the sound of the dying girl's voice in her ears and the sight of a
nation's legalized poison yet before her vision she rested, and so
engrossed was she with her thoughts that she did not notice the entrance
of her father.
"A penny for your thoughts, my dear."
Jean looked up suddenly. Then she caught her father's hand and drew him
to her side.
"I have seen a death to-day, father--a death, a drunkard, loads of beer
and whisky."
"Crowley dead at last?"
"Maggie."
"Poor girl. No doubt she is better off."
"Yes, better off," repeated Jean. "But, father, I have been thinking of
the whirlwind. You know the Book that has voiced unerringly the stage
play of the ages says destruction is coming as a whirlwind--as a
whirlwind. Can you not catch its roaring under the bluster of silver and
tariff and war? Do you never hear the mutterings of its power? Are there
not signs of the coming whirlwind--signs unmistakable--roastings in the
South and lynchings in the North, bloody strikes from east to west,
deep-seated unrest among the nation's laboring masses, and the steadily
increasing cry of a multitude of suffering and helpless people writhing
under the heel of the great iniquity? Couple the signs of the times,
father, with an indisputable knowledge of corruption in politics, the
inefficacy of the law because of the absolute power of rum and 'boodle'
and the utter absence of any fixed moral principle in the dealings of
the great majority of the old party leaders, and have we not an 'issue'
that imperatively demands the attention of every loyal American?
"The more I think, the less I blame the laboring element for their
dissatisfaction, bordering on madness at times. I feel that they have
just cause to be alarmed. Am I a pessimist, father, or is there a cancer
eating out the nation's life?"
The young woman stood in the center of the room, erect and with arm
extended. The lawyer was looking at her with a gleam of fatherly
admiration; but as she closed the outburst with her question he grew
grave and stroked his beard. The facts were not unfamiliar to him.
"I do wish," he said thoughtfully, "that the laboring element would see
that it is to their interests to stand by that party that promises them
the most in the way of reform, instead of making so much fuss and
striking and splitting into small parties that can hope to effect
nothing and might cripple their best friend and put the country
hopelessly in the hands of the political enemies of progress and
reform."
Jean laughed.
"You look now for all the world, father, like a child whom I saw a few
days ago. I came upon her holding a doll's body, with a stump of neck
where the head had once been. She looked down at it tenderly and smiled
a dear little motherly smile. 'What do you see, child?' I asked. 'My
dolly's beautiful face,' she said. 'Where is it?' said I. 'It's gone,'
she answered, proudly, but with the fond look still in her eyes. You
view the reform element in your party in about the same light."
"When did you turn champion of the labor party?" said the judge, a
trifle impatiently.
"I have done no turning. There is but one party standing for the real
good of the people. What is the use of organizing a party to exterminate
trusts and then being afraid to measure arms politically with the
greatest trust on earth? The laboring element will seek their best
interests sooner or later."
"Your party has added a few labor planks to catch votes."
"I beg your pardon, father. Almost from the beginning, some thirty years
ago, this party stood as it does now. The trouble with you is, if I may
be allowed to say it, you know nothing of the party I have discovered.
Let me read you its platform."
And from a small, green book Jean began her reading, while Judge Thorn
listened attentively. But before she had finished James appeared with
the evening paper, and almost unconsciously he opened it. As he cast his
eyes on the page a smile overspread his face, and the words of the
reading were lost. Jean finished presently, and frowned a little, when
she saw her father so deeply engrossed in his paper. Presently he looked
up, the broad smile still upon his face.
"Jean, my girl, listen!" and he read an account of the dramatic passage
of the anti-canteen law by Congress.
Judge Thorn had been deeply interested in the canteen question. He had
known a boy, the son of a professional friend, who had been most
carefully and prayerfully reared at home in fear of the inheritance of
an appetite for liquor, but who had gone at his country's call to uphold
her honor, and had become a drunkard through the regimental canteen. He
himself had seen the fifty law-breaking canteens in Camp Thomas at
Chickamauga, with their daily sales amounting to hundreds of dollars. He
had seen something of the same evil at the little army post near their
own city; and a young man who had been his confidential clerk before the
war, and who was now with one of the volunteer regiments at Manila, had
written to him of the canteen: "It has been the curse of this army, and
has caused more deaths than the Mauser bullets. It is a recognized fact
that in regiments where canteens are established drinking is not
restrained, rather encouraged, and numerous sprees are started that are
finished in the saloons just outside. Six cases of delirium tremens have
resulted from the establishment of the regimental groggery. Our army is
in danger a thousand times greater than any foreign foe may ever bring
against us. When will the government take action?"
The lawyer's clear mind had seen where the responsibility for the whole
system lay, and, sorely tried by the President's inaction, partly to
lift from his party the odium of the canteen disgrace and partly as a
matter of real heart choice, he had worked with more than his usual
vigor to help bring to bear a pressure in Washington great enough to
abolish the army saloon.
"Cheer, Jean!" he said. "Cheer for the party in power. The bill has
passed."
"Was it your party or public sentiment in spite of your party that
brought about the passage of the bill?" asked Jean.
"Sentiment, my dear girl," said the judge, dogmatically, "without
machinery back of it, is good for nothing."
"Exactly. If you remember, father, that has been the burden of my plea
for a new party. Answer me a question, and I will cheer so that I may be
heard a block. You tell me that the position of this party you ask me to
cheer for is high license; now here is a list of ninety-five of the
principal cities of the country, forty-six high license and forty-nine
low license. The total arrests for drunkenness in the high license
cities was 288,907, as against 208,537 in the low license cities. What I
want to know is this: How is this sort of a temperance measure going to
'promote temperance and morality'? Public control, local option, mulct
tax and other measures you devise figure up about the same way. Take
these statistics and in the light of them solve the puzzle for me."
"Statistics are hard to dwell in unity with. Take them to a preacher.
This is a matter for them to deal with," laughed the judge.
"Why do they not deal with them, then? Seven million church member
voters in this country! Why do not they focus their religion and do
something? I divine a reason. While they live all the rest of the year
with prayers and resolutions, they go out on a moral debauch on election
day with a disreputable individual known as Party."
The judge stroked his beard and smiled. Then he turned again to his
paper. "No need," he said, complacently, "for a better party than what
we have. Listen!" and again he read the measure that had so pleased him.
"Is it not splendid, and so plainly worded that a wayfaring man, though
a fool or a third-rate lawyer, cannot mistake the meaning of it. Now
watch the machinery work. We shall have 'father's boy' back cheering for
the grand old party yet," and the judge placed his hand fondly on
Jean's shoulder.
"I'll keep my eye on the 'machine,'" answered Jean, playfully, "but I am
woefully afraid it is punctured, though I wouldn't mention it for
anything."
[Illustration: "_Vote for Whisky, Boys!_"]