Earlier text: THE STORY OF A BIBLETHE WARNINGS JUSTIFIED.
By S.
God has never given warnings to His people in any age of the world without good and sufficient reasons therefor; and the true Christian will find in His Word warnings which, if heeded, will enable him to escape all the snares of the enemy. “Behold,” says the Lord, “the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them.” Isa. 42:9. Now the Word of God contains the record of the fulfillment of earlier prophecies, prophecies which are now fulfilling, and prophecies which have not yet been fulfilled. So the Lord says, “The former things are come to pass.” That men may have no excuse for disbelieving the predictions of that Word, the Lord Himself calls our attention to the faithful fulfillment of former predictions. Then He gives us His promise that He will warn us of those things which are yet to occur: “Before they spring forth I tell you of them.” The Lord warned the antediluvian world of the destruction which He was to bring upon it in consequence of its wickedness. Those who heeded the warning were saved; those who did not were lost. The warning came to Sodom before the Lord laid the hand of punishment upon it, and they who heeded it went out in safety. He told Abraham the condition of his descendants in Egypt and their ultimate deliverance from bondage. He told Israel of calamities which should come because of their forsaking Him, and Israel has experienced the fulfillments of that Word. He told Israel when they might expect their Lord, and He came on time. He gave warning of the destruction of Jerusalem, and the fire and sword of the Romans swept it to the ground; but they who heeded the warning came out unscathed. Now the Lord has told us9 what we might expect in this generation, and we see these things fulfilling before our eyes. He has told us that the rich would oppress the poor, and take from the hireling his wages. We have seen it done, and are seeing it done with more and more frequency, with greater and greater harshness, with less and less care for the miseries of the people oppressed. He has told us that the rich in the last days would be, not simply growing rich, but actually heaping treasure together, and we have seen it done and doing. But these things were given as waymarks to tell us when we are in the “last days.” They have come. We are in the “last days.” In these last days, then, the Lord tells us that “perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” 2 Tim. 3:1–5. No one writing at the present time could better describe the condition of things as they exist in these very days than the prophet of the Lord has pictured them beforehand in the above scripture. But this is not all. The Lord, speaking to the people of this age, says that “there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them;” and “thru covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you.” 2 Peter 2:1–3. How fully this is being fulfilled at the present time! First, on the part of religious teachers who deny the divinity of Christ and the efficacy of His atonement for man’s salvation; and secondly, on the part of schemers who defraud the people in the name of religion; who virtually “make merchandise” of deluded followers! Witness the mind cures, the psychic healing, the absent treatments at so much each, the “divine healing” for the money there is in it; witness the wonderful power exercised by one man over a vast audience recently, near Chicago, when 3,000 persons rose to testify to their belief that that man was the prophet Elijah, and then see them pour their money into his hands. Verily, that scripture is fulfilled before our eyes. The Lord has told us, as one of the signs of His soon coming, that “there shall arise false christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Matt. 24:24. False christs have come, and there will be more of them. We have met them in different parts of the country, and have heard of them in different parts of the world; and there may, and probably will, arise others who will make greater pretensions and show greater power than any that have thus far arisen. There are false prophets in every part of the world, and their prophecies are a babel of confusion. The Lord has designated one class that will be crying “peace and safety.” The number of these is legion; they are in the church and out of the church. Some are prophesying wonderful progress; others a temporal millennium of righteousness under the personal reign of Christ. And all this in spite of the scripture which says that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived;” and “As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Matt. 24:37–39. In Chicago, on June 2, John Alexander Dowie rose before an immense congregation and declared: “I am Elijah the prophet, who appeared first as Elijah himself, second as John the Baptist, and who now comes in me, restorer of all things. Elijah was a prophet, John was a preacher, but I combine in myself the attributes of prophet, priest, and ruler over men. Gaze on me, then. I say it fearlessly. I am the living, physical, and spiritual embodiment of Elijah, and my coming to earth a third time has been prophesied by Malachi, by God Himself, and by His Son Jesus, by Peter, and 3,000 years ago, by Moses. All who believe in me in very truth all of this, will stand up.” 3,000 people rose to their feet and greeted these with cheers and hand-clappings. Now the Lord Himself has told us that in the last days we are to expect just such things as this, and more. We repeat His words: “There shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Such false prophets as above mentioned will increase, and their deceptions will increase, as we draw nearer the end. We have seen how the giving of former warnings has been justified—how they have been fulfilled, and those who have heeded them have escaped. There is just as much reason, just as much justification, for the giving of those which are yet to be fulfilled—aye, more; for the destruction that is now hastening on is more terrible and more complete than anything that has gone before. Some are being carried away by every delusion that Satan has invented. Some have been deceived by every false prophet that has arisen; and as we draw nearer to the closing act in this world’s history, we must expect to see deceptions multiply on every hand. The Lord, looking upon the great deceptions which would be working in these days, says, “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath; because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” Rev. 12:12. In view of all this, the candidate for eternal life has reason to thank the great Revealer. He has pointed out the delusions and stumbling-blocks, and we may expect them to increase in number and power, trying the souls of men, from now on until the trump of God peals out thru the clouds of heaven. In His great love He has warned us, so that we need not be deceived. We have seen His Word fulfilled in the past; and we see it fulfilling now; and we know that all that has been written will be fulfilled to the very letter. Let us, then, take the Word of God as the man of our counsel, study it carefully and prayerfully, that we may escape the corruption and deception that is pouring in like a flood upon the last generation of men. S. A RECENT book, entitled, “Diary by a Japanese Convert,” written by a Japanese observer of Western ways, Kanyo Uchimura by name, makes some observations which are worthy of note, which Americans who boast of our civilization, would do well to consider, and see that without the life and power of Christianity mere name and profession are nothing. Mr. Uchimura says of his travels in the United States:— “I was again robbed of my new silk umbrella on a Fall River steamer, whose superb ornamentation and exquisite music conveyed to me no idea whatever of the spirit of knavery that lurked underneath—and so did once more liberate my heathen innocence. I felt the misfortune so keenly that only once in my life I prayed for the damnation of that execrable devil who could steal a shelter from a harmless stranger at the time of his dire necessity.” “Even the Chinese civilization of forty centuries ago could boast of a state of society when nobody picked up things dropped on the street. But here upon Christian waters, in a floating palace, under the spell of the music of Handel and Mendelssohn, things were as unsafe as in a den of robbers. Indeed, insecurity of things in Christendom is something to which we were wholly unaccustomed. Never have I seen more extensive use of keys than among these Christian people. We in our heathen homes have but very little recourse to keys; . . . no apprehensions are felt of our servants or neighbors ever transgressing upon our possessions. But things are quite otherwise in Christendom. Not only are safes and trunks locked, but doors and windows of all descriptions, chests, drawers, ice-boxes, sugar-vases, all. The housewife goes about with a bundle of keys jingling at her side; and a bachelor coming home in the evening has first to thrust his hand into his pocket to draw out a cluster of some twenty or thirty keys to find out one which will open to him his lonely cell. The house is locked from the front door to the pin-box, as if the spirit of robbery pervaded every cubic inch of the air. . . . Whether a civilization which requires cemented cellars and stone-cut vaults, watched over by bull-dogs and battalions of policemen, could be called Christian, is seriously doubted by honest heathens.” Superstition and American Commercialism
THE hold which superstition still has upon the minds of men and women at the present time was illustrated this week in the case of an inoffensive woman of Dubois County, Indiana, who has been driven from her home by neighbors on the charge of being a witch. The report states: “They have “accused her of having worked her evil charms to “their injury by causing the death of their horses, “cattle, and other live stock. Yesterday one of a “neighbor’s horses became unmanageable. He “accused Mrs. Ferry of having bewitched it, and in “his anger gave her a severe whipping. It appears “that this was the signal for an uprising in the “neighborhood generally against the woman; for “when she appealed to some of them for protection, “they turned against her, and the local magistrate “refused to interfere. It is charged that she has the “power of evoking evil spirits in man or beast, and “that she has caused the death of several persons.” How much this reads like the witch-burnings and witch-hangings of early New England. MR. POULTNEY BIGELOW, who recently delivered a course of lectures at Harvard University, gave out on his return to London, the following statement of his impressions in reference to things in America: “Commercialism is running riot in America. The “Americans are pouring their ideas and energies into “money. The trust builders are doing the rest. “These money kings necessarily exercise a blighting “influence on the morals of public servants. They “create all manner of temptations and breed all “manner of jobbery. In Washington I found cynical contempt for the Constitution. Corruption “stalks thru the government. It disgraces the halls “of Congress.” The eyes of the whole civilized world are being turned upon the present course of the United States, as it leaves the principles upon which it was built, and launches out into the domain of empire. There is a meaning in it all which none can with safety disregard. THE British and Boers have had several minor engagements during the week. At Reits, on June 6, an engagement occurred between General Elliot and a part of General De Wet’s command, in which the Boers had 17 killed and the British 20. A large amount of ammunition and cattle were captured from the Boers. On June 12, 250 British colonials were surprised, and only 52 escaped death or capture. At about the same time a British patrol of 29 men was captured. The Boers refuse to be drawn into a pitched battle, and there is little hope of a speedy close of the war. A LONDON despatch states that the English Government has decided to lay upon the mines of the Transvaal $250,000,000 of its war burden. A special commissioner has given much time to ascertaining the producing powers of the Transvaal mines, and in harmony with the intimation of the government some time ago, the mines will be made to shoulder one-half the burden of the war. THE Cuban Constitutional Convention has finally agreed to the terms of the United States, by adding the Platt Amendment to their Constitution as an appendix. The vote stood 16 to 11. It is now stated that in view of their acceptance of the amendment, their independence is assured; and still a large and influential body of the Cubans, as well as many Americans, hold that in accepting the amendment, they have really thrown away their independence. The earliest time yet named for the setting up of the Cuban Government is next autumn, and it is even hinted that American troops may remain in Cuba after the Cuban Government is established, to see whether the Cubans are able to govern themselves. STATISTICS issued by the War Department show that since the beginning of the war between the United States and the Filipinos, 31,315 of the latter have surrendered or been captured. Still others have surrendered since the statistics were issued, and now it is reported that the Filipino leader, General Cailles, has signed articles of capitulation. Governor-General MacArthur has announced his intention of sailing for the United States on July 1. Skirmishes between Americans and Filipinos continue. It is reported that Cardinal Gibbons will soon sail from Rome for America, bearing a letter from the pope to the President on the settlement of the question of the religious orders in the Philippines. A DESPATCH from Denver, Colorado, states that Judge Palmer of the Circuit Court has cited three ministers of that city to appear before him for contempt of court. These men, speaking from their pulpits, had criticized the judge’s rulings. If the law upholds the judge in this matter so that he and other judges are able to punish men for criticizing the ruling of the court, it will be another long step backward in the matter of the freedom of speech. MUCH bitter feeling has been stirred up in the vicinity of Shreveport, Louisiana, between the whites and the blacks, over the killing of a prominent planter by a negro. Armed posses have been hunting for the slayer, but he has not yet been found, and other negroes who were with him at the time are in custody. THE Amalgamated Society of Engineers of London has promised to aid the striking machinists of America in their struggle for shorter hours. The strike at the Newport News Ship-building Company’s yards has become serious, and there is a prospect that this big ship-building plant will be shut down entirely. A BRITISH expedition operating in Somaliland against a leader known as the Mad Mullah, reports a heavy engagement on May 28. The report states that 500 of the Somalis were killed and 5,000 head of cattle captured. The British lost ten killed and nine wounded. A PRELIMINARY report of the latest English census shows that 77 per cent. of the population of England is in the cities, leaving only 23 per cent. in the rural districts. In England, as well as in the United States, the tendency of the people is to crowd into the cities. THE American Manila Brewing Company is the name of a corporation recently started in the Philippines, the direct product of American occupation. This brewing plant which is being established in Manila is to have a capacity of 60,000 barrels of beer a year. THE survey has been completed for a railway line across western Alaska. The survey extends from Iliamna Bay to Bering Strait, a distance of about 800 miles. The surveyors state that eastern capitalists will soon begin the construction of the road. ABOUT 3,500 trackmen and bridge-builders on the Canadian Pacific Railway are now on strike for an increase in wages. The company has sworn in a large number of special constables, who are patrolling the road and guarding the bridges. TWO FERRY-BOATS collided in New York harbor on June 14, and one, the Northfield, went down with several hundred persons on board. It is thought that about 35 persons were drowned, tho the definite number could not be ascertained. THERE is reported to be great destitution among the Pima Indians of the Sacaton Reservation, Arizona. The government appropriation for their maintenance is entirely exhausted, and their crops for this year are a complete failure. THE battleship Oregon arrived in San Francisco harbor from Manila on June 12, nearly three years and three months from the day when she left the port of San Francisco to take part in the naval operations around Cuba. THE places of the striking machinists in the Moran Brothers’ shipyards at Seattle, Washington, have been taken by non-union men, and the shipyards are being carefully guarded by a strong force of heavily armed men. TROLLEY cars constructed in this country and propelled by electric apparatus of American make, are soon to be in operation in the historic city of Athens, Greece, and connecting it with Piraeus. THE new battleship Illinois was given her official trial on June 12, maintaining an average speed of 17.31 knots per hour. This new vessel is one of the fastest and best equipped of her class. ALL the great railroads of the West and Northwest are now to be practically under one general management with headquarters at Chicago. THE CHOICE OF TOM THE DRUDGE.
By Joseph Hathaway
TOM rose wearily from milking the last of his seventeen cows, and carried his foaming bucket to the row of large tin cans. The milking-stool, strapped around his body, sagged ludicrously as he walked. His clothes were stiff with grime and grease and odorous with the smell of soured milk. He emptied his bucket, lifted the heavy cans into the cart, and wheeled them to the dairy, while his Chinese co-worker, chanting a shrill, weird paean of thanksgiving at labors finished, closed up the barn and trotted away to his cabin. The dairy was very sweet and clean. It required much washing to keep it so. Outside a pot was sending up clouds of steam over a fire of logs. In the small anteroom Tom exchanged his soiled garments for a clean suit of jeans. The change was superficial. He felt hot and damp and wearied to the bone. His hands were stiff and sore. Mornings they were worse. He had to soak them in hot water before he could open them. He strained the milk into rows of shining pans and set them up on shelves. Some of the shelves were higher than his head, and his arms trembled. As he lifted up the last full vessel a shadow darkened the doorway. He half turned. The milk splashed turbulently, and then with a clash the pan fell from his grasp and emptied its contents on the floor. Tom lifted his head to confront his father’s angry face. “Hi!” Walters did not look as if he would be blamed. His beard trembled with rage and impatience. He was a hard-featured man, of a type common among farmers who have earned their substance by dogged faithfulness to the one maxim—save. He was gaunt and muscular. His shaggy brows beetled out over deep-set eyes. A wart served to locate the starting-point of a nose that was sharp and prominent. If his smile was ever tender, no one ever knew it. It was hidden in a thick growth of beard beginning to turn gray. He was wealthy, as wealth went in that community, but the sight of the spilled milk seemed to infuriate him. “Of all the fool carelessness, I’ll be blamed! A whole pan of milk, and no tellin’ how many more! Spilled every drop of it! The place would go for taxes, for all your savin’! A boy that’s that fool careless ain’t worth his salt! Well, why don’t you get the mop? Goin’ to leave it there to spoil the rest, I s’pose!” His anger flared higher at the sound of his own voice. “Hi!” Walters was not a man of extensive vocabulary, but, like the rest of him, it was hard-worked. At times like these he was likely to throw his words together in combinations which he had not planned. “That’s right, go at it hobbledehoy, and spill the other pans! Ain’t you got sense enough to use a mop? Land’s sake, it’s time you had begun to earn your salt!” He turned abruptly and made his way out of the dairy with the slight limp that had marked his gait ever since he had stopped that terrible runaway, years before, when Tom was a baby just big enough to climb up into the buggy and shake the lines. Tom went on with his work. Washing cans was to him a tedious and irksome task. He scalded them carefully at last and set them out in the air to drain. Supper was over when he reached the house. There was to be company that night. His sister Flossy, who had been known as Florence before she went away to school, appeared in a calico wrapper, with hair elaborately curled. She set out cold beans and bread and lukewarm tea. She forgot the butter, and Tom did without. He was not in a humor to talk. “Tom, you’ll freeze the ice-cream? That’s a darling!” Tom grunted. Terms of endearment were imported articles in the Walters household, and he regarded them with suspicion and disrelish. They embarrassed him; they seemed so superfluous and insincere. “And you’ll put on your nice clothes? And your lawn tie? That’s a good boy! These clothes are—ah!” She sniffed delicately and smiled. The action was to indicate that dairy perfumes might be pastoral and poetic, but were scarcely in harmony with lawn ties. “I shan’’t come down.” Tom filled his mouth with beans to preclude explanation, but the measure was hardly necessary. Flossy smiled amiably even sympathetically, and adjusted her hair-pins. “You must be frightfully tired with those awful cows! Dreadfully sorry you won’t be down! But we’ll save you some ice-cream—that is, if you’ll freeze it? That’s a dear!” Tom scowled and pushed back his chair. His heavy boots scraped across the floor as he stalked out to the kitchen. He was willing enough to freeze the cream—he did everything that fell to his lot, as a matter of course—but his sister’s flourishes annoyed him. He was unable to respond in kind, and he did not like to feel a churl. When he came back, the beans and tea were removed, and the table was resplendent in shining linen and embroidered centerpiece. He felt no regret in absenting himself from the festivities—he would study his geology up-stairs. He felt gingerly along the shelf where he always kept it. The place was loaded down with pink and white gift-books, which no one ever read. Ordinarily they were stored away in trunks. His geology was not there. It would look like an elephant among white rabbits on that dainty shelf, he realized. His sisters must have put it away. He would hunt them up. At the half-open doorway of their room he paused. Inside he caught a glimpse of airy white curtains, and a white bed with pictures behind it, and a strip of bright matting pearl-colored and green. His sisters were talking. “O, no, honey, not that—wear the other ribbon!” “Yes; that’s lovely!” It was Flossy’s ecstatic voice. “You’ll match the pink in the parlor—how charming! And the ice-cream and berries—they’re pink, too! What do you think? Tom said he wasn’t coming down.” “Aren’t boys the queerest? I didn’t urge him. He’s such a—a, well, you know, all elbows and hands—and so glum! I try my best to jolly him up, but he just sits and glowers—at his beans.” “Flossy, why isn’t he coming down?” “There, see my sweet-peas—um! Why isn’t he coming down? I really—don’t—know. If I had time, I’d try to find out, but he baffles me. He’s different from the boys at school. They’re dears! I suppose milking makes his hands bigger—smilax or maiden-hair, which goes best? Pin them, won’t you? That’s a dar—” Tom stumbled up-stairs out of hearing of the rippling voice, and shut himself into his own room. It wasn’t a pleasant place to spend an evening in even for a boy like Tom, and Tom was not sensitive to environment. It had been made a sort of junk-shop for all the pieces of stray and broken furniture in the house. There is a popular persuasion that boys delight in such things. The chair he sat in had no back, and one of its legs was fractured. Flossy, whose decorative instinct transcended everything, had mended it one day with a knot of scarlet ribbon. A bit of wire might have held it more securely, but ordinarily it did not matter. A room to Tom meant a place to sleep in. He did not remember ever having examined the furnishings of his chamber before. His bed was narrow and hard, and covered with a somber patchwork quilt. The varnish was cracked into sections, like the surface of alligator-skins. The floor was carpeted with threadbare Brussels that might have had a pattern some time—exactly what, it was impossible to speculate. It was faded to a sad and unambitious gray. The old-fashioned mahogany bureau would have delighted a collector. In the eyes of the family it was simply dingy, discolored, and out of date. Above it was a cracked mirror in an oval frame. Tom pulled down the window-shade and lit his lamp. There was absolutely nothing to do. If he only had his beloved geology! But it was heavy and cumbersome, like himself. The girls had put it out of sight. He fell to studying his own image in the looking-glass. Tom was not a bad-looking lad, although awkward and loose-jointed, from too rapid growing. His eyes were good, and his forehead broad and intelligent. He had the framework of a powerful man and a breadth of shoulders that would have been the envy of many a college athlete. But he saw only the high cheek-bones, the muscular jaw, the patient bovine cast of cheeks and nostrils—and a great abhorrence of himself seized him. He was getting to look like the cows he worked with! There are times when the handsomest person feels a disgust of his own countenance. His features seem to sag in stupid masses, his eyes sink back into dull inertness. Sometimes he sees in them a sluggish resemblance to some familiar beast—a horse or a sheep, perhaps. Oftentimes the disgust sinks deeper and encompasses his whole ego. It was so with Tom. It is a morbid distemper, bred of too much introspection. The cure for Tom would have been to put on his best clothes, go down and mingle with the gay company whose laughter broke so harshly into his solitude, and forget himself. Instead he sat down sullenly in the broken chair, and told himself he would think his situation out. He had been misunderstood, mistreated, and ignored. He had been his sister’s cat’s-paw and his father’s drudge. And what was his reward? A junk-man’s chair tied with a milliner’s bow and the assurance that he was not worth his salt! A sound of laughter, louder than the rest, struck discordantly upon his ear. He got up with a sudden resolution. He was sick to the heart with it all—why should he stay? He would leave—no one wanted him. He would get out of the stifling atmosphere and get out of himself. He would shape a new career of his own, be it for better or for worse. Tom was not a person who made many resolutions, nor did he fail in many he had made. He had that simple, direct force of character which knows not vacillation. He began without delay his preparations for leaving. The gloom of self-loathing cleared away from his mind. Here was a time for action, not for thinking. On the bed was his Sunday suit and fresh linen Flossy had laid out in tacit announcement that none but the finest would do for her party. He brushed them aside with a grim smile. He did not expect to tread the flowery path of dalliance. In his top bureau drawer his hand struck suddenly against his geology, and he crowded it in joyfully, with working-clothes.11 He was glad to think he would not have to give it up. Mary must have brought the volume to his room. At the thought of her he felt a little pang. She was the elder of the sisters, and she understood him in a way. She never troubled him with “dears” and “darlings,” but talked with him sensibly and was kind. His mother had been like that. He remembered her, too, and her picture down-stairs in the back parlor—a big, cold-looking crayon in a wide gilt frame. They had bought it from a traveling artist one year when the rhubarb crop was good, and to Tom it was a wonderful piece of art. Her lips seemed almost to speak to him at times. He thought he should like to see it once more. He would wait till the guests were gone and then slip down. He would spare himself the ordeal of seeing his father. It stood to reason he would be glad enough to have him go, but something in Tom’s heart shrank from having him tell him so. Country visitors did not stay long evenings. Most of them lived on dairy-farms, where people are forced to observe early hours. After awhile he heard a pushing back of chairs and opening of doors and merry good-nights, and finally the rumble of wheels. He waited a little while longer and then started down—not on tiptoes, as he had meant to at first. It seemed too much like sneaking, and Tom was not a sneak. The back parlor was yet faintly illumined. Some one must still be up. He need meet no one. He could pass right thru, to the little hop-vine arbor beyond the side porch, and out—out into the world. He paused in the secluded room before his mother’s picture—a patient, care-worn face another might have failed to see the beauty in, but which stood with him for the type of all that was lovely. A feeling he had not counted on took possession of him. For the first time he understood the seriousness of the step he was to take. He was about to break into a habit of living—and the Walters were quiet people, into whose habits of living little short of death had ever broken. His father had lived here all his life, and his father’s father; and he himself had looked forward with unconscious pleasure to a life here, under the blue sky that he loved. What would she have said to him, this sweet, submissive woman whose face looked down at him? Something very much like tears burned in Tom’s eyes as he picked up his satchel and turned away. Some one called his name. It was Mary. She touched his shoulder and looked up anxiously into his face. His mother’s gesture! “Tom, what are you going to do?” “Clear out, I guess.” Tom laughed harshly. “Pull stakes and skedaddle.” His slangy speech and his laugh did not mislead her. She saw the quiver of his eyelids, and her hand slipped down into his. Again his mother’s gesture! “No. He’ll be glad enough, you bet.” “O Tom, if you only knew—Tom, listen!” She drew him hastily into the shadow beside the outer door. Voices approaching thru the arbor sounded outside and paused at the threshold. One was his father’s, the other Tom recognized as that of his Uncle Crandell, his mother’s brother, a kindly, gray-haired bachelor who had always been his friend. He was the one man in the community more prosperous than his father, but he had lately sold his farm and was about to move into the city, where he had large commercial interests. It was his voice that was speaking. “Well, it’s just as I’ve told you. It’s been in my mind ever since Nancy died that I’d like to do something for one of her children. There’ll be the position in the shipping-house that some one will have to fill, and all I’d ask would be that I’d be allowed to treat him the same as if he were my own.” “Tom ain’t any hand to like to be under roofs.” “I know he’s not the kind that takes by nature to ledgers and bill-books, but he’s got ability.” “That’s the great thing, to get some one that would be faithful. Tom’s the kind that’s bound to make a success of whatever he undertakes. Half the young men to-day expect to ring the bell and go up in an elevator. If they find they’re ex- agitating something or other in a labor union. Tom, now—if you set Tom to a task he’ll do it, and he won’t expect an increase of salary for doing it his best, either. Any boy with his brains that’ll milk seventeen cows morning and night all season, and fill in the time between as he does, without complaining, is worth helping, say I. Why, he doesn’t even know you’ve been laying by his wages all this time, does he?” “No. He ain’t any hand to spend money, and I calculated he’d like it best to go to school on by and by. He’s set on science—never seen such a lot of books as he’s picked up.” “Of course I shall want to send him thru college. The more a business man knows of science and mathematics, the better. I’ve been writing ‘for value received’ on my notes too long to go into anything now for pure sentiment. I expect to get my profit out of this deal, and I will. Tom’s a good investment for any one. But aside from that I want the boy. He’s Nancy’s child, and I want him. Well, what do you say?” There was a silence for some moments, and when his father spoke at last it was so low Tom could scarcely hear his words. “It would be like losing Nancy over again.” “Of course; I understand that.” His uncle’s kind voice was lowered, too, and there was something in it which helped Tom to realize that there were parts of his father’s inner life of which he had never dreamed. “A father’s claims are first. I do want the boy, and I would do my best by him, but it is for you to decide.” “No, I dunno as I have any right to say. You’ll have to see the boy. If he wants to go, I sha’n't say a word. I s’pose it would be the best thing for him. I—I never thought about his leavin’ home.” There was another interim, and Tom heard his father twisting the door-knob back and forth. He half started forward, but Mary held his hand tight in mute entreaty of silence. Then his father went on speaking. “I dunno. He hasn’t had an easy time, and I haven’t tried to make it any easier. ’Tain’t my way. I ain’t encouraged him as much as I might, and I’ve been stricter than there was any call for, I s’pose. He’s been a faithful boy, as you say, and an uncomplainin’ boy, but it’s a little late in the day to tell him so. Don’t s’pose I could do it if I tried. I don’t know how I’ll do along without him, but I sha’n't stand in his way. Well—” Once more there was a pause, and then the door was pushed slowly open. “So long as you want your answer to-night, I’ll wake him up. He was clean petered out, milking them seventeen cows. Reckon he’ll be glad enough to stop. If he wants to go, I won’t hinder him. He’s old enough to choose for himself.” Mr. Walters limped into the lamp-light—his limp was always worse when he had been standing still—and Tom could not but see how troubled his harsh face seemed, and how old. A sudden sense of his own strength and youth pulsed thru him with his quickened heart-beats—he on the verge of manhood, his father in the decline. Mary’s hand was on his arm. He stepped forward without the least hesitancy or indirection, and his voice was strong and unwavering. “Father, I do choose for myself, and I choose to stay!” “Hi!” Walters was not a man of theatrical attainments. For a moment a look trembled on his sharp face, and then he passed on across the space of the room unceremoniously, as he would have passed at any other time, with the only difference that the limp was gone out of his walk. “Get to bed, then!” he said, gruffly. “Breakfast at half-past five!” But Mary kept her hand in his, and went with him up the stairs, and made him let her unpack his satchel, and turned back the covers of his bed for him motherwise. And then she put both arms around his neck and looked quietly into his eyes. It was the one time he had ever heard her call him “dear.” “Dear,” she said, “I am glad you are going to stay. I never thought about your leaving, either. None of us did, I think. And, Tom—” The sentence was not finished. There was no need.—Joseph Hathaway. THE GREAT HARPER.
By Lizzie Pershing Anderson
Our lives are harps in the hands of God,
He playeth upon the strings;
He strikes each harp with master touch
Till the soul within it sings. And when He draws but discords forth,
Low moans and piercing cries,
“The Master tuneth His harp to-day,”
A gentle voice replies To our impatient questionings,
“For it is His desire
To bring it into harmony
With His angelic choir. “Fear not; He will not overstrain,
He knoweth every string,
And will make it swell the melody
When angel voices sing.” Then if to Him some minor chords
Will make the music sweet,
We'll say, “Strike, Lord, till to Thine ear
The melody's complete.”
—Lizzie Pershing Anderson.