Choice Readings for the Home Circle Part 47

"'Here, Lord, I give myself away, 'Tis all that I can do.'

That's all you have to do.' 'Is that verse here?' I showed it to him on the quilt. 'I'll keep it before me. Oh for rest! a little rest!' he groaned again. Not long after he found it,--found peace in believing, and left his hospital bed, happier than he had ever been before.

"An Irishman lay under the Scripture quilt. One day when nearly well, he was looking at it. 'Is that radin?' he asked, putting his finger on the text. 'Yes.' 'Sure, and what does it say?' I read, 'And G.o.d shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.' 'Ye might rade that,' he said, pointing to another text. 'I love them that love me, and they that seek me early shall find me.' 'It is the Lord who says this,' I added after the text. 'Sure, it's good to a lonesome pareson to hear what you rade.' 'So it is. There is no book like the Bible in dark and trying hours.'

"At last came the boy who had the best right to the comfort of our Scripture quilt,--the son, of whom the good woman who made it spoke in the note attached. It was a strange circ.u.mstance that he should have come to lie beneath it, but so it was. He had lain there nearly senseless for more than a week, when I saw him kiss the patch-work. I thought he might be wandering, or if not, had found a text of hope or consolation that seemed to suit his need, and marked with my eye the place he had kissed, to see what it was. It was no text, but a calico block, the pattern a little crimson leaf on a dark ground. He kept looking at it, with tears in his eyes, and I was almost sure his mind was wandering. Nay, he was never more in his right mind, and his thoughts were at home with his mother. A bit of the gown he had so often seen her wear had carried him back to her. He kissed it again. I approached him. He looked up, and smiled through his tears.

"'Do you know where this quilt came from?' he asked. 'Some good woman sent it to us through the Sanitary Commission.' 'You don't know her name, nor where it came from?' 'No, but I saved a note that was pinned to the quilt.' 'Would you be willing to let me see it some time when it is convenient?' 'Oh, yes. I'll get it now.' I got it for him; his hand trembled, and his lips grew white as he opened it and saw the writing. 'Please read it to me quite slowly,' he said, returning it. I read it. 'It is from my mother; shall you keep it?' 'Yes,' I answered, 'I value it very much, and also the quilt.' He put his hands over his eyes. I thought he wished to be alone, and left him. As I stood by his bed the next day, I was wondering if he had not seen his mother's texts, as well as the bit of her gown. He had, and pointed one out to me. It was, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' 'I am no more worthy,' he whispered. I put my finger on the next white block, and read aloud, 'When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compa.s.sion, and ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him.' As I looked up, I saw there were tears upon his cheeks, and his lips were tremulous. He covered his eyes, and I left him. A few days after, when he had grown much stronger, he held up to me the text I had shown him.

'I was a great way off,' he said, 'but He has met me and had compa.s.sion on me.' 'You feel the Saviour's love?' 'It fills me with peace. What love! What a Saviour!' 'Shall I not write to your mother and tell her that her son, who was dead, is alive again; was lost, and is found?' 'Will it not be too much trouble?' 'Oh, no, a pleasure instead.' I wrote the blessed tidings, making the mother's heart rejoice. And now our Scripture quilt was even dearer and more sacred than before."

However dark the skies may appear, And however souls may blunder, I tell you it all will work out clear, For good lies over and under.

--_Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x._

SPEAK TO STRANGERS

"Who was that quiet-appearing girl that came into church quite late, last Sabbath?" I asked a friend of mine who was an active member in the church which I had recently joined.

"Did she wear a striped shawl and a dark dress?" inquired my friend.

"If so, it was Annie Linton, a girl who is a seamstress in Brown's shop."

"I did not notice her clothes in particular," I answered, "but her face attracted me; I should know it among a thousand faces. How could you pa.s.s by a stranger so indifferently, Mrs. Greyson? I expected that you would ask her to remain to Sabbath-school, and go into your Bible-cla.s.s, but you did not once look at her."

"I did not once think of it, and if I had, probably she would not have accepted the invitation, as she is a stranger in town, and undoubtedly will not remain here long," my friend replied quickly, in the way of defense.

I said nothing more, for Mrs. G. was really an excellent Christian woman, with this one fault,--carelessness,--which sometimes caused her to make grave mistakes.

But I could not help thinking about the stranger girl. Her large dark eyes and finely formed face revealed more than ordinary intelligence, and in some way I gained the impression that she was deeply impressed with religious conviction, if not a Christian already. It seemed to me that she left the church very reluctantly, and was half waiting an invitation to the Bible-cla.s.s.

The next Sabbath she came again and occupied the same seat,--just in front of my own. She bowed her head very reverently during prayer, and once during the sermon I saw her lip quiver with emotion, and a tear came into her eye. The services closed, and the stranger lingered as before. My friend, good Mrs. G., again forgot to speak to the girl.

She pa.s.sed out of the church slowly, and did not come again. I thought she must have left town, as I had not seen her for several days; but one Sabbath, as I attended another church, I saw her again. She seemed a little more at ease, I thought, and there was a quiet smile on her face. After the services were concluded, I saw many a pleasant smile given to the stranger girl, and I understood the secret of the changed look upon her face. I made some inquiries, and learned that she had joined this church, and was earnest and active in all its work. I also learned that she had made a profession of religion just before coming to our village, and had an unusually clear experience. How much the indifference of our own people had to do with her finding a home in another church, I know not.

Several years have pa.s.sed since this occurred, but I have never forgotten it. Many a stranger's hand I have clasped as I thought of Annie Linton's sweet face. I was young in Christian experience then, and that lesson was a profitable one to me.

Speak to the stranger, Christian friend, with the a.s.surance that no evil will grow out of it. It is better sometimes to step over the rules of etiquette than to chill some warm stream of G.o.d's new-given love by coldness and indifference.

LOVING WORDS.

Loving words are rays of sunshine, Falling on the path of life, Driving out the gloom and shadow Born of weariness and strife.

Often we forget our troubles When a friendly voice is heard, They are banished by the magic Of a kind and helpful word.

Keep not back a word of kindness When the chance to speak it comes; Though it seems to you a trifle, Many a heart that grief benumbs

Will grow strong and brave to bear it, And the world will brighter grow, Just because the word was spoken; Try it--you will find it so.

THE MAJOR'S CIGAR

After a separation of ten years I met my old friend, Major----, at a railway station. If he had not spoken first I should not have recognized my Virginia comrade of '64. It was not merely the disguise of a silken hat and shaven cheek, but--as I told him after we had chatted a little about each other's ups and downs since the war--I was sure this was the first time I ever saw him away from the table without a cigar in his mouth.

"Haven't smoked for five years," was his reply. "I'm down on tobacco as thoroughly as you ever were."

"Good! Tell me all about it."

We locked arms, and walked leisurely up and down the platform.

Dropping the dialogue, this was, in substance, his story:--

"It wasn't a sudden conversion. I never was quite so easy in my mind over it as I pretended to be. I intended to taper off when I got home from the army. And I did, smoked less in three weeks than I used to in one. But one summer I went off on some business for our company, which kept me up in the mountains, among the charcoal-burners, three days longer than I expected. I got out of cigars, and couldn't obtain any for love or money. In forty-eight hours I was more uncomfortable and unstrung than I ever was before in all my life. I actually borrowed an old Irishman's filthy clay pipe, and tried to smoke it. I thought of that miserable summer we spent crawling about the trenches in Virginia, and I wished I was there again, with a cigar in my mouth.

Then I began to realize what a shameful bondage I was in to a mere self-indulgence. I, a man who secretly prided himself on his self-control, nerve, and manliness,--who never flinched at hard fare or rough weather,--a downright slave to a bad habit; unnerved and actually unfit for business for lack of a cigar. It made me angry at myself; I despised myself for my pusillanimity.

"Going into the matter a little further, I found that the money I had spent for cigars in a dozen years would have paid for my house and furnished it. I had smoked away more money than I had laid out for our library, our periodicals, and our intellectual culture generally.

Cigars had cost me nearly twice as much as I had given to church work, missions, and charity. My conscience rose up at the record. I knew I could not plead any equivalent for the outlay; it had not fed me; it had not strengthened me; it had simply drugged me. Every cigar had made the next cigar a little more necessary to my comfort. To use the mildest word, it had been a _useless_ expenditure.

"My detention in the mountains was calculated to open my eyes to my domestic shortcomings, and I saw, as I never saw before, how selfishly unsocial tobacco had made me at home. I smoked before I was married, and my wife never entered any protest against my cigars afterward. But our first baby was a nervous child, and the doctor told me it would not do for it to breathe tobacco smoke. So I got in the way of shutting myself up in the library of evenings, and after meals, to enjoy my cigars. As I look at it now, nothing is more absurd than to call smoking a social habit. It's a poor pretense of sociability, where a man is simply intent on his own enjoyment. My wife owns now, that my tobacco-tainted breath and tobacco-saturated clothing were always more or less a trial to her. The satisfaction it has given her to be rid of a tobacco atmosphere, and the thought of my contemptibly selfish indifference to her comfort all those years, have humbled me, I tell you. And I wouldn't exchange my own daily satisfaction now-a-days in being a _cleaner_ man--inside and outside--for the delight that anybody gets out of his cigars.

"I didn't need to go outside of my own doors to find reasons enough for giving up the habit; but I think I found still stronger ones, after all, when I went away from home. The more I thought about the harm tobacco does in the community at large, the more sure I felt that it was time for me to stop giving it the moral support of my example.

I know I smoked too much, and that my nervous system is the worse for it; and I think the people who are likely to be hurt the most by it are just the ones who are most likely to smoke excessively. And then, I've noticed that the medical men who stand up for tobacco, are always men who use it, and are liable to the suspicion of straining a point in justification of their own self-indulgence.

"On one point, though, I believe the authorities agree. No one denies that it is a damaging indulgence for boys. It means a good deal when smoking is forbidden to the pupils in the polytechnic schools in Paris, and the military schools in Germany, purely on hygienic grounds. The governments of these smoking nations are not likely to be notional on that matter. But the use of tobacco by our American boys and men is excessive and alarming. We ought to save our rising generation for better work than they can do if tobacco saps the strength of their growing years, and makes the descent easier, as no doubt it often does, to worse vices. I don't know how to forgive myself for the temptation I set before my Sabbath-school cla.s.s of bright boys, year after year, by my smoking habits.

"It isn't in the family, either, that the selfishness of the habit is most apparent. I don't believe, other things being equal, there is any other cla.s.s of men who show such a disregard in public for other people's comfort as tobacco users do. A man would be considered a rowdy or a boor who should wilfully spatter mud on the clothing of a lady as she pa.s.sed him on the sidewalk. But a lady to whom tobacco fumes are more offensive than mud, can hardly walk the streets in these days, but that men who call themselves gentlemen--and who _are_ gentlemen in most other respects--blow their cigar smoke into her face at almost every step. Smokers drive non-smokers out of the gentlemen's cabins on the ferry-boats, and the gentlemen's waiting-rooms in railway stations, monopolizing these rooms as coolly as if only _they_ had any rights in them. I can't explain such phenomena except on the theory that tobacco befogs the moral sense, and makes men specially selfish."

The Major's train came in just then, and as he took my hand to say good-by, its smoking-car drew his parting shot: "See there! Did you ever reflect how the tobacco habit levies its taxes on everybody? The railway company furnishes an extra seat to every smoker, which, in the nature of the case, must be paid for by an extra charge on the tickets of all the pa.s.sengers. What a stir it would raise, if the legislature should attempt to furnish luxuries to any special cla.s.s, at public cost, in this way. How we'd vote them down! I vote against _this_ thing by throwing away my cigar!"

WHAT TO MIND.

_Mind your tongue!_ Don't let it speak An angry, an unkind, A cruel, or a wicked word; Don't let it, boys--now, mind!

_Mind eyes and ears!_ Don't ever look At wicked books or boys.

From wicked pictures turn away-- All sinful acts despise.

_And mind your lips!_ Tobacco stains; Strong drink, too, keep away; And let no bad words pa.s.s your lips-- Mind everything you say.

_Mind hands and feet!_ Don't let them do A single wicked thing; Don't steal or strike, don't kick or fight, Don't walk in paths of sin.