The popular preacher sat in his study before a glowing grate, and a
satisfied smile stole over his features, as he remembered his sermon
of that morning. He had struck strong blows at sin; relating to his
breathless congregation in plain and burning words, tales of the
wickedness, debauchery, drunkenness and depravity that was going on in
their very midst.
Following the prominent example of a certain pureminded and original
servant of the Lord, he had gone down himself among the lowest haunts
of vice and iniquity, and there sketched in his mind those flaming and
accusive portraits that he had painted before the astonished eyes of
his congregation, with a broad brush and vivid colors. He had heard
blasphemies from lips that were once as pure as his sisters'; he had
stood in the midst of unbridled vice, where wine flowed like water and
amidst songs, curses, laughing and revelry, the chink of money, earned
by dripping hearts' blood, could be heard as it fell into the coffers
of the devil. Oh, he had astonished his flock! He had hurled at them
fiery words of blame that these things were allowed to exist. It had
been a new departure for him, but he expected grand results. And now
he sat by his anthracite fire, and thought over the success of his
labors, and smiled with satisfaction. The latch of his study door
clicked and a being entered. He was grizzly, rum-soaked, dirty,
ragged, disreputable, blear-eyed and of uncertain step. Once, he might
have been a man.
Across his forehead stretched a long strip of dingy court plaster; on
the bridge of his nose an unhealed wound showed scarlet against the
milder red of his face. He brought with him an odor of
disrespectability, rum and unsanctification.
The preacher rose; a slight distension visible in his delicate
nostril; a little shiver of repulsion rippling through his
broadcloth-vestured figure. "What is it, my good man?" he asked.
* * * * *
The being spoke, and the preacher still standing, followed him through
the husky labyrinth of his speech.
"Don't yer know me? I lives in 'Hell's Delight.' I knows you. You come
down, you did, and wants ter take in ther sights. You asks Tony, the
Dago, fer a guide and he sends yer to Creepy Jake. That's me. I takes
yer through the dives, one and all. I knows yer a preacher from the
way yer did. Yer buys the wine like a gent, though--like a real, high
roller gent; anybody would 'a took yer fer a gent."
"Excuse me," said the preacher, "that wound on your forehead--the
blood seems to be dripping on those engravings--allow me--"
"Keep your hankcher, reverend," said the being, as he raised a ragged
coat tail and wiped the drops from his brow. "I won't spile yer
pictures. I'll git off en yer carpet, and let some fresh air in in a
minute. One time I could 'a told yer all about them pictures--dat's
Una and de lion--dat one's the Venus of Milo--de other one's the disc
thrower--you wouldn't believe, reverend, that I knowed de names, would
you? One time I set in cheers like dat--I allus liked dat Spanish
leather upholstering, but your wainscotin' ain't right. De carvin's
allegorical and it don't suit de modern panels--'scuse me, reverend,
dat ain't what I come to say. After you took in de Tenderloin, I got
to tinkin' bout somethin' you said one night after I went wid you to
de tough dance at Gilligan's. Dey was a cove dere dat twigged you as a
parson and was about to biff you one on de ear, but he see'd my gun
showin' down in my pocket, and den he see'd my eye, and changed his
mind--but dat's all right. You says to yerself dat night, but I heard
yer: 'De bruised reed he shall not quench, and de smokin' flax he will
not put out,' or somethin' like dat, and I got ter studyin' over what
a low down bum I've been, and I says, 'I'm goin' to de big bug church,
and hear de bloke preach.'
"De boys an' de tinhorns gimme de laugh and called me 'Pious Jake,'
but today I went to der big church where you preaches, reverend. I
says to myself dat I showed you round de Tenderloin, and stood by you
when de rounders guyed you, and never let de coves work de flimflam on
yer, and when I heard tell of the big sermons yer was preachin' and de
hot shot yer was shootin' into de tough gang, I was real proud, and I
felt like I kinder had a share in de business fer havin' gone de
rounds with yer. I says I'll hear dat cove preach, and maybe de
bruised reed'll git a chance to straighten up--'scuse me, reverend,
don't git skeared, I ain't goin' to fall and spile yer carpet. I'm a
little groggy. That cut on my head is bled a heap, but I ain't drunk."
"Perhaps you would like--possibly, if you would sit--just for a
moment--"
"Thanks, reverend, I won't sit down. I've jest about finished shootin'
in my dye stuff. I goes to dat church and I goes in. I hears music
playin', and I suppose them was angels singin' up in de peanut
gallery, an' I smelt--such a smell ov violets and stuff like de hay
when we used to cut it in de meaders when I wuz a kid. Dey wuz fine
people in welvets and folde-rols, and way over at de oder end was you,
reverend, standin' in de gran' stan', lookin' carm and fur away like,
jest as yer did at Gilligan's ball when de duck tried to guy yer, and
I went in fur to hear yer preach."
* * * * *
A flattering sentence from the report of his sermon in the morning
paper came to the preacher's mind:
"His wonderful, magnetic influence is as powerful to move the hearts
of his roughest, most unlettered hearer, as it is to touch a
responsive chord in the cultured brain of the man of refinement and
taste."
"And my sermon," said the preacher, laying his delicate finger tips
one against the other, and allowing the adulation even of this being
to run with a slight exhilaration through his veins. "Did it awaken in
you any remorse for the life of sin you have led, or bring any light
of Divine pity and pardon to your soul, as He promises even unto the
most degraded and wicked of creation?"
"Yer sermon, reverend?" asked the being, carrying a trembling hand to
the disfiguring wounds upon his face. "Do you see them cuts and them
bruises? Do you know where I got 'em? I never heard yer sermon. I got
dese cuts on de rocks outside when de cop and yer usher fired me out
de church. De bruised reed He will not quench, an' de smokin' flax He
will not 'stinguish. Has you anything to say, reverend?"
(_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, December 1, 1895.)