 Section 7 of WHAT SHE SAID AND WHAT SHE MEANT, AND PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T TIME AND CAN'T AFFORT IT, CHAPTER II, MAKING CALLS. Her next stop was at Mr. Jarvis Veeder's mansion. Mrs. Veeder was not in, but the young ladies were. Would she see the young ladies? Yes, she would. They were graduated young ladies, having finished their education, whatever that may mean. They certainly ought to have a degree of leisure, and if their father could be induced to help along in industrial school with his money, perhaps they would help it with their time and their education. She was shown to the back parlor where were the Mrs. Veeder and with them two other young ladies, each with their fancy work. They gave her kindly greeting. She was a frequent collar at the house, for she made lovely dresses and aprons for the little Veeders. I wish I could give you a glimpse of that back parlor. It was a most luxurious room. Wealth and taste and skill had united in making it a place of beauty. If it had a fault, it was that it was crowded. Finally Mrs. layman's eyes rested curiously on the number of fancy ornaments which filled the available spaces, tidies of every hue and shape and design on the backs of rockers and easy camp chairs, and on the three-cornered sofa three of them, three on the teta-teta, and on the arms of all the chairs that could boast of arms. The vases, on mantles and brackets, rested on mats of bright-colored wools, rose mats and pansy mats and tulip mats, and every grade and shape of mat seemed literally to swarm. Worsted cats curled composately in the corners of the hasyx, with which the room was plentifully supplied. In front of the doors were elegant mats of rich design, a great gray woolly dog occupying one's center, heavily surrounded with fine-worsted work, known to the initiated by the name of filling in. At the other door was one of those devices of Satan for consuming time and money, an elegant mat manufactured out of raviled Brussels carpeting laboriously knit together again, and a sleeping lion in wools and beads crouched in the center of the hearth rug. In short, the menagerie in green and blue and yellow and brown wools that curled in millennial peace together in that room represented a small fortune in money and an almost unlimited number of hours. And wonderful to relate, all these works of art were the product of the united skill of the young ladies of the house. Mrs. Lehmann had long been aware of this fact, for the fond mother loved to boast of her daughter's industry. Surely having done up the fancy work for a century to come, these young ladies were the ones to devote their leisure to industrial schools. She explained the subject with equal clearness, but with not quite the enthusiasm that she had shown at Mrs. Van Normans. That lady had had a quieting effect on her ardor. Well, said Miss Lillian Veter, I am sure it is a nice idea, real sweet of you to think of it, Mrs. Lehmann, but who will be the teachers? You say you will need a good many, where are they to come from? Why, said Wiley, Mrs. Lehmann, it must be a benevolent work entirely, of course, so we must depend mainly on those who have their time at their own disposal. I thought perhaps you and your sister would take up the work. My patience, said Miss Lillian, and the idea, said Miss Evelyn. Why, Mrs. Lehmann, I hope you don't think we are ladies of leisure. I assure you I am hurried from morning till night. Last Christmas I sat up until midnight two or three times to finish my bead cushion, and I have at least a dozen pieces of fancy work in the house this minute waiting to be finished. When they ever will be, I am sure I don't know. You see, Mrs. Lehmann, we have such a host of friends, and they all expect something in the fancy line from us, knowing that we understand all such work, and then our large house requires so much of that sort. Oh, dear me, don't mention our doing anything of the kind. I am sure I shudder at the thought of the holidays, or of weddings, or of people's birthdays, for fear I shall be so crowded with work. And Miss Lillian sighed, and pushed back her hair from her flushed forehead, and bent over her white silk-spits dog, and said, One, two, three, four, no, why, one, two, three. There, I've made a mistake. Now that dog's nose will all have to be taken out. What a shame! I declare I won't speak again in an hour. As for Miss Evelyn, she had exhausted the time at her disposal, in the sublime sentence, the idea, and from that time had devoted herself most energetically to her bead fringe, keeping up an incessant murmuring of One, two, three, and a pearl, One, two, three, and a pearl, until you wondered that she didn't scream over the stupidity of the thing. It was impossible not to measure the amount of mental and physical and spiritual life of these two young ladies by a comprehension of their absorptions, and Mrs. Layman, without suffering herself to waste any arguments at all on them, turned to their friends Miss Alice Markham and Miss Margie Lee, both of them members of the same church with herself, both of them pledged not to live for themselves, but for Christ, both of them with fathers whose bank accounts supplied all their wants, real and fancied, both of them having graduated at Madame de Longe's seminary. How did these young ladies occupy their time? She appealed to them. Miss Alice answered with spirit. I've always observed, Mrs. Layman, that you people who are very industrious suppose that young ladies who do not have to work for a living have therefore nothing to do. Now certainly I am not a young lady of leisure. I am keeping up my music. I practice four hours a day. That in itself consumes about all the available time between calls and going out. And then I read French and German as regularly as I did in school. An industrial school may be a good idea, though probably about the last thing that these dreadful people want is to be industrious. Why don't they go to work? That is what I always wonder. There is a great deal of useless sympathy wasted on the poor, miserable set. But the children, ventured Mrs. Layman, who realized that to attempt argument with this lady would be a literal casting of pearls where they would not be appreciated. Well, the children, lazy, thieving set, just as bad as they can be. The little boys who come from Higbee Lane region are a disgrace to the city. And as for the girls, Miss Maurice has been trying to gather some of them into her mission class, actually coaxed the little wretches to come, bribed them with sugar plums, and how did they repay her? One of them stole her pencil case the very next Sunday, and they looked more like animals than human beings, and smelled fuh. Words failed Miss Alice, and Mrs. Layman turned from her promptly. A young lady who could bring forward the utter degradation of the poor as a reason for doing nothing for them was not the material needed for teachers in an industrial school. But before she utterly left her, she could not resist the temptation to ask one question, which she meant as a probe to that lady's conscience. May I ask you, Miss Markham, what you are going to do with your music in French and German? Do with them, queried Miss Markham, in a half-wondering, half-supercilious tone. Why, my good woman, what do people generally do with talents in superior education? That is a solemn question, said Mrs. Layman. It really needs to be settled on one's knees before the Lord. If music and French and German are worthy of the absolute absorption of all our available time to the exclusion of any other of God's work, then if we are Christians they must in some way be doing God's work, else we are not applying our talents to the end that they were given, nor to the end that we covenanted when we united with his visible church. I am simply asking for information, Miss Markham. I suppose, of course, your special talents are consecrated. Then she turned entirely from her and looked at Miss Lee. Are you interested to know what that young lady was engaged in? An occupation which so absorbed her that apparently she had neither eyes nor ears for any other earthly object? She was snipping holes in a piece of cloth and sewing them up again, snipping carefully, skillfully, sewing them with infinite pains and millions of delicate stitches requiring patience and skill. She called them wheels and eyelets and leaves and scallops, and when they were done it was perfectly exquisite, and was designed for the infantile robe of an atom of humanity who luxuriated in more of that article now than her weary overburdened little body knew how to bear up under. The maker of the said embroidery was civil and ladylike. She smiled kindly on Mrs. Lehmann, hoped she would succeed. Such things were needed, she supposed, though she never had time to think much about it. She was always busy, one thing and another took up the time, until now she really was busier than she had been when in school. She never could teach anybody, sewing and lessons and all that she had no taste for, had tried to teach her own little sister to him and made wretched work of it. Still there must be people who had time for such things, people on whom society didn't make so many demands. They were just the ones too, for they could understand the poor and turn into their feelings, as of course people of position and culture couldn't be expected to do. But, after all, said Mrs. Lehmann, the one who seemed to understand the poor better than any other person who ever lived was the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, in a moment, she was sorry that she had said it, for these young ladies all looked at her as though she had some way said an improper thing. Her aunt she knew they would not have considered Jesus of Nazareth a person of position and culture. But she left them to their dogs and cats and fringes and snippings and betook herself to the next name on her list, Mr. E. D. Landor. This family were at dinner and she was ushered cordially into the dining-room. Come in, come in, said Mr. Landor heartily. He was a merchant and the stockholder in half a dozen factories, and everybody spoke of him as a whole-sold, generous-hearted man. Come right in. Have some dinner with us. You have dined a sensible woman to dine at a reasonable hour. Ah, well, and how is your good husband, the best machinist that comes about my premises? He will make his fortune yet and deserves to. All this Mr. Landor said in a brisk business tone, carrying on his eating at the same time with rapidity and skill. He was used to giving attention to several important affairs at once. Mrs. Layman took courage from his cheery voice and loud cheery manner, and unfolded her errand. I grieve to tell you that the benevolent face settled into an ominous frown. Now, my good friend, you are dealing in a kind of filth that won't wash off. Let me advise you as a sensible woman to let that sort of scum alone. It is all stuff to talk about the worthy poor. There is no such thing. It is a crime to be poor in this country, a man ought to be punished for it. Mr. Landor, said Mrs. Layman with spirit, now you are talking nonsense and you know you are. Any man who calls himself a patriot and remembers the army of soldiers who came home from the war, ruined in health and crippled in limbs, has no right to say any such thing. I had a friend who went, and who came, and who is poor, dependent on others for his support. Now! Well, well! Said Mr. Landor. There are exceptions, of course, but they only prove the rule. The masses of the poor are so, because they have been improvident, extravagant, dissipated, idle, everything that is mean and to be condemned. And I have no patience with their whining beggarly ways, nor with schemes for lifting them up. They have been lifted up too much. They need letting down. They ought to be sent to State's prison every one of them. And their children too, I suppose. And their children to the House of Correction, or any other place where they can be kept from being a pest to the city. Those are my sentiments, and you are welcome to them. And Mr. Landor brought his hand down on the table in so emphatic a manner that the plate-glass shivered at the jar, and he thereby evinced that this was a sore question with him, touching somewhere a bare spot in his conscience. As for Mrs. Lehmann, his excitement seemed to cool and quiet her. "'You are more willing to support the poor than I supposed,' she said, with quiet sarcasm in voice and manner. "'I certainly do not expect any such munificent donation as you will have to give for your share if you propose to have this great army of people clothed and fed for the future at the expense of the State. Now I was for putting them in a way to help themselves, but you propose to take care of them and their children for all time. Still, there is one trouble in the way. What about their souls? The prisons and penitentiaries stand ready, I suppose, to look after their bodies. At least you can be taxed to help build places large enough to receive them. But will they assume the responsibility of the souls? I thought the Lord left that work for us, His professed followers. He said they would always be with us. He didn't say anything about our finding them nowhere safe in prisons and penitentiaries. Mr. Landor stared at her as though she were talking in an unknown tongue. "'The fact is,' he said after a moment, "'I haven't time to be sentimental about this thing. I have had to work hard myself, am working hard yet, and I am not given to gush or sentiment of any sort. A man like your husband, who can work for his wages, I am willing to respect. But a man who comes sniveling around me expecting sympathy because he doesn't want to work and support his family, I've neither time nor patience for. I can't afford to support the poor of this city, Mrs. Lehmann.' In point of fact, now what do you want to do? Have soup houses and free lunches and hot coffee and sandwiches, and educate the people and elevate the masses? I know the terms you see. I'll bosh the whole of it if you'll excuse my saying so. And your husband is much too sensible a man to allow you to get mixed up with it, or I'm mistaken. As long as you feed the vagrants for nothing, they will be willing to be fed. And as long as they can live without work, they'll do it. As for the children who are too young to work, they have got to suffer for the sin of their parents. That's Bible! I'll risk any of them starving, either. That sort never do. No, ma'am, I can't hedge your list, can't afford it. Let them work and earn their living as I do. Mrs. Lehmann rose to go. Long ago she had decided that this man could not claim brotherhood with the self-sacrificing, long-suffering Lord. She began to feel that his family on earth was smaller than she had supposed. Yet her voice was not disheartened, nor her manner that of one crushed. Well, Mr. Landor, we shall have an industrial school and try to teach these children to work and earn their own living. And we shall have soup houses, too, buy and buy, and sandwiches and coffee. And when you come to lunch with us, you shall not be insulted by being offered anything free. You shall pay a good round price for it. I am sorry that you don't see the way clear to help us, but we shall do it. She did not know in the least who the we meant, but the Lord knew. He honored her faith just then with a touch of sight. Uncle Frank! A clear, youthful voice came up from the lower end of the table. I want to help about this thing. Madame, if you please, I will head your list. I can't do it so well as my uncle could, if he would, but almost anybody can start a thing." And she reached forth her hand for the paper. I'll write my subscription in pencil, and in order to be sure that it is binding, you may, if you please, pay it now, Uncle Frank. But, my dear child, you should take time to reflect before you waste your money. I have reflected, long enough to know that somebody may be starving just this minute. I'll help feed them first and reflect afterward. But, Maude, I am your guardian, remember? I don't know that I ought to let you waste your money. She pushed the paper toward him with a gleam in her eye that meant business, as she said. But, Uncle, I am of age, remember? If I choose to waste my money, I am not sure that you can help it. A flush of victory mounted to Mrs. Lehmann's very forehead as she received back her subscription paper, and she gave her hand to the young girl with an eager, thank you! That was almost like a benediction. She saw the clear, unmistakable characters that had been traced on the paper. Maude L. Harlow, one hundred dollars. I want to be one of your teachers, Miss Maude said earnestly, retaining the hand and looking with strong, grave eyes into Mrs. Lehmann's liquid ones. That is, if you will teach me how. I don't know anything about such work, but I know I can learn. Maude! In harsh tones from her uncle. Why, Maude! In pleading once from her aunt. My dear child, I wouldn't have you do such a thing for the world. Such a horrid place for infection! Miss Maude laughed. My life is no more precious than others, auntie. If you are afraid to have me bored here, I'll go to the Sansom house. They are not afraid of any amount of infection, if you give them money enough. Anyway, I'm going to work in this school if I can get a chance. But Frank, there is no use in talking. I know what I am about. My father got the first dinner he had had for three days in a public soup-house once, and you began your education in a charity school, you know. Do you think I could forget the debt of gratitude, I owe? Was Mrs. Lehmann discouraged with her two hours' work, do you think? Not a bit of it. She was not the woman to have gone home discouraged, and to have folded her hands and wept over failure, even had she not met Miss Maude Harlow that afternoon. Indeed, I will own that she was of the temperament which made her, after the third rebuff, set her lips together in the firm way that some women can, and say to herself, now we will have an industrial school and all the other improvements. But then, meeting Miss Maude, and having her name on a bit of paper and hearing her words and clasping her hand, made her feel gloriously triumphant, made her feel as though she had been at court and clasped hands with one of the princesses of the realm, and so she had. She gave an account of her afternoon's work at the tea-table, after the little Lehmanns were sleeping the sleep of downright weariness, detailing her experiences with touches of humor that made the husband shout with laughter and the white strings of grandma's cap quiver as she more quietly enjoyed the fun. Then she said, You went too far to the other extreme, daughter. It isn't the very rich who can understand and help the very poor, that is, as a rule. There are Miss Maude's, thank the Lord, who are exceptions, but as a rule the busy workers are the ones to join hard and hand in such work. Mindful of that bit of advice from her wise old mother, Mrs. Lehmann on her very next afternoon of leisure went out to call on Mrs. Jenny Johnson, who lived in a pretty house just around the corner from the avenue. She being one of those who, though not by any means poor, was certainly not among the wealthy. Mrs. Lehmann knew her very well, in fact exchanged calls with her occasionally. A most unlucky time had she chosen, however, for this call. Mrs. Johnson was preparing for a tea party. She had invited Mrs. Dr. Merchant and Mrs. Judge Butler to take tea with her, as well as a dozen other persons less notable. She was making special preparations. Mrs. Lehmann, by virtue of her being in acquaintance, and by virtue of the hostess being in great haste and anxiety concerning something in the oven, was suddenly summoned to the dining-room to look at the table, for the feast was to be that very evening. It was worthy of being looked at as a matter of curiosity if one looked from no other standpoint. Having only one girl, explained Mrs. Johnson as she wiped a streak of flour from her flushed cheek, makes it necessary for me to set the table before any of them come, and obliges me to do the whole of the getting-ready myself. I declare it makes slavish work of having company. If I weren't ashamed about having so many people invite me and never returning it, I don't believe I'd ever get added in the world. As it is I haven't invited half the people I wanted. Now we wanted you and Mr. Lehmann to-night, but, dear me, we didn't get around to your street at all. Mrs. Lehmann disclaimed, as best she could, any expectation of an invitation, and then she regarded the table with an amused air, while the over-tasked martyr continued her tale of woe. I have had to do every bit of the cooking myself, and my fruit-cake did act abominably. I had to make the second batch before it looked black enough to suit me. My pound-cake looks nice, doesn't it? And I had real good luck with my gold and silver and orange cakes. But the thing I pride myself on is this lemon-cream-cake. I do think lemon-cream-cake is the very prettiest-looking cake that ever was made. But such a sight of work as it is! My bones fairly ached the day I made it. I whipped the eggs myself, and egg-beater is nowhere when you come to such delicate work as that. Two, three, four, six. Counted Mrs. Lehmann to herself, and smiled again. Six kinds of cake with which to entertain a company of ordinarily well-fed people, after seven o'clock in the evening. Besides there were pickled pears and pickled plums, and current jelly and grape jelly, and canned quince and canned peach and stewed cranberries and chicken salad and cold turkey and oysters scalloping in the oven as fast as they could. Poor Mrs. Johnson didn't know that Mrs. Judge Butler, whom she was so anxious to honor, would not have had one half of these dishes at her table. Our Mrs. Lehmann, who had originally come from an aristocratic tree, was quite aware of it. She wondered, within her earnest soul, why good sense, or failing in that, why conscience itself did not loudly protest against this foolish waste of money, time, and strength. Mrs. Johnson, in her anxiety, had no room for conscience. "'Do you suppose the cake will dry?' she asked anxiously. It isn't cut, but I didn't know how to manage unless I had it on the table before they came. I haven't a girl who can attend to any such thing. She is only a cheap girl. It is one of the miseries of being poor.' "'Poor!' And the mistress of that table, spread for one evening's feast, and not by any means intended for the halt or the lame or the blind, or the poor and needy in any form. The words suggested to Mrs. Lehmann the object of her call, and more, it must be confessed, because of a curious desire to study human nature from this standpoint, than because she had any expectation of help, she made known her wants. CHAPTER IV. SOCIETY MARTERS "'Bless your heart and soul!' exclaimed Mrs. Johnson, dropping now in utter exhaustion on the chair behind her. I've neither time nor money for anything. I'm harassed to death now with all that I have to do. I work like a slave, Mrs. Lehmann. I really do. Every bit of my baking I have to do myself, cakes and pies and puddings, and getting fruits ready, all such things I have to attend to. It is just work, work, from morning to night. Mercy knows I'm sorry for the poor if anybody is. And as for giving an afternoon a week to them, I couldn't do it any more than I could fly. I just get through now, and that is all. I haven't time to read more than if I couldn't, and Sundays I'm so tired I just lie and doze half the time. I'd help if I could, and I hope you'll succeed, but I've got a large family to take care of, you know, and they are hearty eaters. Mr. Johnson thinks as much of his pies and puddings as he does of me, and I'm the only one who can make them to suit him. Dear me, I haven't time to do another thing. And as for money, my, what little I get of it I could use a dozen ways at once any time. Actually, I have to spend a good deal of time in planning what we can do without the longest. Oh, I know what it is to be poor. I tell you I'm sorry for them. And six kinds of cake on her supper table, was Mrs. layman's mental comment. Then she thought of the poor people whom she had visited that week, and contrasted their homes with Mrs. Johnson's. But that lady was in a hurry, her oysters were overdoing, and her toilet was not quite made, and it was growing late. There was no use to talk to her. But Mrs. layman by no means despaired of her. She knew an argument that is often needed for such natures as hers, as well as for some natures not in the least like hers. I'll tell you what it is, Mrs. Johnson, she said briskly. I mustn't hinder you now, and I hope you will have a real pleasant time this evening. But I want you to promise me that some day next week you will take an afternoon and come make some calls with me down on Higbee Lane. It will only be one afternoon, you know, and that will help a good deal. Mrs. Johnson mopped her hot and tired face with her apron, and said doubtfully she didn't know. Maybe she could manage to find one afternoon, but she had a great deal to do. Still, one afternoon, if that would be any help, she would really try to go after she got rested. I am so tired now, she said frankly, that if they should all send word they couldn't come and I could go to bed right away and sleep till day after tomorrow, I think I should like it best of anything. I never have time to get rested. But one afternoon, well, yes, I'll try to do that much. Mrs. layman went away smiling. At homes she would show her, homes of which she did not dream. What if it could weaken her to a sense of her opportunities and responsibilities? What if it should even, in time, show her that six kinds of cake made by a woman who has no time to do any of Christ's work were six absolute sins? What an accomplishment would that be? And she tripped up the steps to Mrs. Porter's as though she had received a twenty-dollar donation at the last place and expected as much more here. Mrs. Porter was sowing, and she was in her back-sitting room and had her two children with her. Another Mrs. layman's, you think, see if it is. That back-sitting room was the dingiest spot in the house, and every broken-down piece of furniture that the house contained seemed to have been moved in there. I don't make company of you, you see, the hostess said, half apologetically, as Mrs. layman helped herself to a seat. The children smashed things around so that I don't try to keep anything decent in this room. She was grim and severe over the question of the poor. She didn't believe in them any more than Mr. Landor did, in a quieter but an equally dogged way. I haven't time to go racing up and down the world tending to other folks's affairs, she said severely. Even if there was need for anybody to do it, I couldn't. People who have to do their own work, sowing and all, are not the ones to look after other folks. I do every stitch of my family sowing, Mrs. layman, and it keeps me slaving night and day. She was slaving at that moment on a pollinace for her daughter Helen, aged twelve, and it had a row of knife-pleading all around the bottom, and a row of bows up and down the front, and a row of buttons everywhere, at least so it seemed to Mrs. layman's eyes, as she surveyed the gleaming things that went over the left shoulder in little clusters, as though to have them an inch apart would not have consumed enough of them. Why do those people go to work and earn their own living? Who would employ them, Mrs. Porter, would you? I know, she said with grim satisfaction, but there are people enough who like to get their work done for them while they run around and attend to other folks, I never was one of that sort. And in objection to your theory of work, there are a great many other people who do their own, some who are obliged to, and some who prefer to on the score of economy they think, but really because by so doing they can save enough to be able to put another ruffle on their dress. Did Mrs. layman glance surreptitiously at the skirt, which belonged to the pollinace lying near her on a chair, and which had two carefully made and carefully trimmed ruffles on it? Probably the suggestion that she might have done so made Mrs. Porter savage. That's their concern, I take it, she said stoutly. If they choose to spend their money in ruffles and don't steal nor beg them, they are accountable to nobody as I look at it. In which we should differ, Mrs. layman said, speaking very gently. You and I have proclaimed before a watching world that we are the lords, that our time and money and strength and talents belong to him to do with as he directs. Whether therefore the time shall be spent in pleading ruffles and the money in furnishing them would depend on whether he saw an end to be attained that would honor him, would it not? This was new ground to Mrs. Porter, evidently she had never realized in her life that she had promised any such thing, rather she had plumed herself on being independent. Some answer must be made to this waiting woman, and puzzled and annoyed she knew not what to say. It was this that made her voice more irritable in its tone than before. I never have time for philosophizing over things, my work always lies before my eyes, and I go ahead and do it the best I can. That's my duty, I believe. Yes, Mrs. layman said, still very gently, but I think it is one of the most intensely practical questions of the day, and one that I should think would puzzle people more and more the higher they reach in the social scale, how far their planning and spending and sewing could be made to subserve the interests of the master. But we are not getting on with the question at hand as to these poor people supporting themselves. Many of them could work if they had the opportunity, but for the women especially work is hard to find, and skilled laborers are plenty, and among the men their awful enemy that a free and intelligent and Christian people have licensed to do its worst is working wonders of poverty and sin. Then there are those who could not work if there were anything for them to do. They are too old or too sick, or they have little children, swarms of them, clinging to their skirts. Something must be done to save them, or they and their children will go to ruin together. Mrs. Porter shut her lips tight, and sewed and talked fast. They are a shiftless drinking, thieving set, the most of them. I know those Higbee-lane folks, the very worst scum you can find in the city. That is most painfully true, but you know the Bible doesn't read. Feed the hungry who are worthy, clothe the naked who are sober and virtuous, tell the respectable and moral people about Christ and Heaven. You see, Mrs. Porter, these are questions with which, in a sense, we have nothing to do. Or rather, the poorer and lower people are, the more imperative is their need of Christ who came to save to the uttermost. This time Mrs. Porter sewed away very fast and spoke no word. Won't you give us a little of your time? The pleader asked, timidly, after a moment of silence. She had not deemed it wise to ask here for money. Not that there was no money, but that there were many ruffles and side-pleetings and biased bands of silk and velvet, and whatever other costly material was the prevailing fashion, for there was a grown-up daughter as well as the two little ones and the twelve year old. I have no time to give, was the short and comprehensive answer. A woman who does her own sewing has dreadful little time, especially if she does her work as she ought to do it. And I calculate to keep my house in order. Some folks think that amounts to nothing, but I consider it as much a Christian duty as anything is. So do I. I quite long for the privilege of helping some of these poor mothers whom I have been visiting, to make their dreary and in every way dreadful homes into something more worthy of the name. How much you could help some of them by a few kind suggestions? Well, my own home needs me. I look after that without any suggestions from anybody, and so might they I daresay if they wanted to. It is the desire to do better that's lacking. You may depend upon that. I think my first duty is to my children. I stay at home with them. Who is to look after my children, I wonder, while I go to Higby Lane and take care of other peoples. Sarah Jane, don't you put your feet on that table again. If you do, I'll whip you as sure as you're alive. And you, Thomas, no more whistling. I'll tell your father of you, see if I don't, and then you'll catch it. No, Mrs. Layman, you and I shouldn't agree, I suppose, if we should talk till midnight. You believe in making homes pleasant for other folks, and I believe in tending to my own home. Sarah Jane, sit down in that chair, and don't get up again until I tell you you may. And that's just the difference between us. By this time Mrs. Layman was fully of the opinion that she and her neighbor would never agree, even though they talked on forever. And without promise or shadow of promise or help or sympathy from this Christian woman, she was obliged to take her leave. At another time, perhaps, Mrs. Porter would not have been so hard-hearted. In truth she was sore-hearted. She had a reasonable degree of expectation that she would be invited to partake of those six kinds of cake and pickles and cream salad and hot rolls gotten up by Mrs. Johnson. And not having been summoned to the feast, she was feeling aggrieved there at. Also Mrs. Johnson's duty to society was productive of bitterness in the heart of at least one sister, and reacted in a manner that was not for the good of the cause. CHAPTER V. FIRST FRUITS Was Mrs. Layman discouraged now, do you think? You must constantly remember that she was not made of the material which discourages, else she would never have started. She counted the cost before ever she did start, and assuredly, having put her hand to the plow, she meant not to look back. She rehearsed her afternoon's work again at the tea-table, this time with more pity and commiseration for the narrow souls of others than with laughter, and Grandma sagely remarked that she hadn't hit the right medium yet. It was not among the people who were engaged in that most hopeless of all struggles, the trying to seem rich, that you found open hearts for the needs and pity for the sins of the abject poor. Were all the people in Mrs. Layman's reach of the stamp who ignored their relationship to the souls for whom Christ died? By no manner of means were they. You have only the result of two afternoons of work, and even in those afternoons was there not a Miss Maude with her golden purse and her fresh young hands and her consecrated heart? What a glorious helper she was! How they planned and worked together those two sisters in Christ, revealing, by their loving friendship and cooperation, the very depth of the meaning of that tender and constantly abused term, sisters in Christ. I wish I had time to tell you about other calls and other helpers, very different some of them from Miss Maude, and yet equally grand in their way. There was a mother who had a drunken son, who with his wife had gone down into the depths, and the mother in her neat home with her widow's weeds and her poverty rung Mrs. Layman's hand and said, midchoking tears, God bless you, I am doing what I can, but it is very little, and it will be so blessed to have help, and God will bless you, he will in very deed. And Mrs. Layman, looking at her, believed it. There was crisp, trim little Miss Priscilla Hunter, who sewed all day in her attic room, on clothes for boys too young or too poor, to go to the regular clothing establishments. Poor was Mrs. Hunter. That is, people looking on called her so. But after all, I hardly knew of a richer person than Miss Priscilla Hunter. Time, she said, bless you, yes, there is always time for what ought to be done, whether it is to finish a jacket or pick up a basket of chips for somebody poorer or lame-er than you are yourself. It is a good idea, too. I wonder you have been so many years in getting it thought out. Help! Of course I will. I'll bring my scissors and snip out things for you in odd hours. Oceans of things can be done in odd hours. And I've got a little bundle laid away that will do to make over for somebody. And Mrs. Jackson has an attic full of trumpery that she will never use. I'll see that a good load of it gets sent around to the room. You've got a good room? It's Mr. Hordwell's, isn't it? Of course he'll let you have it. I'll see him if you want me to. He's a friend of mine. I'll slip up there between daylight and dark and see about it. What a helper was Miss Priscilla with her snipping and her slipping here and there, and her strong, vigorous, helpful words like whiffs of breezes blowing fresh from off the sea. There was Mrs. Harland, an invalid never moving out of that one room, never moving in that room except in her wheeled chair. What wonders she could do! She had access to her husband's purse through his heart. It was not a very powerful purse, and yet it constantly overflowed toward the industrial school, for I hope you understand that there was an industrial school and a soup-room and a free lunch-room, or, what was better than free, a lunch-room where the honest and industrious poor could come and for five cents purchase a dinner. There were mothers who work, could and did work hard till noon over the wash-tub, and slip around the corner to the depot of supplies, and, for a dime, purchase food enough for a decent and wholesome dinner for husband and children, ready cooked when her work made it a necessity to be so prepared, ready to be cooked and with careful directions how to cook it when that was all the help needed. So far had broadened and deepened the scheme that had begun in Mrs. layman's brain. Rather than that, it was taking on new plans and schemes every day. It involved a reading-room and a free library open to the poorest, and a store of supplies that could be purchased at the bare cost of furnishing them, and, when needful, less than the bare cost. It took in a pledge to attend a Sunday school and a church service, and a pledge to neither touch, taste, nor handle anything that could intoxicate. Only but surely all these plans moved. There was no thought of failure. Where there is a will there is a way. Dr. Vincent has improved upon that time honoured saying, by adding, where there is a woman there is a will. Grandhearts and great purses took hold of Mrs. layman's idea. There was Mr. McMartin, who, as soon as he became aware of what was being attempted, and before it had taken such proportions as to rouse the public pride, inquired and listened and nodded, and wrote his check for five hundred dollars, and sent it by his errand boy to Mrs. layman with his compliments. There was Mrs. Chester, a woman with five children and a sick husband, who sent, tied up in the corner of a handkerchief, a dime for her husband and a dime for herself, and a five cent piece for each of the five, and an ill-spelled note to the effect that the children prayed every night that God would bless the work. And Mrs. layman laid the sacred dimes and five cent bits side by side with the five hundred dollar check, and thanked God for them all, and knew that in his hands the one would accomplish as much as the other. She had her triumphs, too, as the days went on. The Mrs. Veter attired themselves once of a sunny afternoon in summer silks, and swept into the industrial school rooms, and awed, over the extreme neatness of the little pupils, and the skill they had acquired with their needles, and asked, wouldn't it be nice to teach some of them to do fancy work, and they might be able to actually support themselves by it? And Mrs. layman, the superintendent of the enterprise, rejoicing that the young ladies actually desired to consecrate their talents to usefulness, formed a class in fancy needle work, and the young ladies took turns in attending it. Then came, one day, Mrs. Van Norman's carriage, and Mrs. Van Norman's footmen, and a basket of the most elegant frosted plum cakes in delicate patty tins with Mrs. Van Norman's compliments for the children of the industrial school. She was so delighted with their singing the other evening at the hall. As for Mrs. Johnson, she had devoted that afternoon to making calls with Mrs. layman, and the sights she saw made her so sick at heart, and so sore of conscience, that she could eat no cake for her supper, and at intervals, for several days afterwards, she said, oh my, oh mercy me, dear, dear, who could have thought it? And any other term that seemed to her to express indignation or commiseration or dismay? And then she went to work, hands and heart and soul, for the poor. She hasn't given a tea party since that time. Company she has had, pleasant, reasonable gatherings, social reunions in her pretty parlor, but not a single regular planned, six-caked, pickled, creamed, jellied campaign since that memorable afternoon. She hasn't had time. Now there are those who criticize Mrs. layman and others of her class. They broadly hint that a woman who has so much to do for others must neglect her own, but her house must suffer, or her table, or her children, or her dress. Something is wrong. To be sure, her house is still the sunny home it always was. To be sure, her friends still like to go to Mrs. layman's, because everything always looks so fresh and nice, and the children are so well behaved and happy. But then, of course, something must be wrong, or she, with her three children, could never give a whole afternoon each week to say nothing of constant odd hours to outside work. It does necessitate care, the husbanding of the seconds, the cutting off of many a ruffle and tuck and frill and pucker. But Mrs. layman has chosen between them. Since she cannot do both, she has decided that the souls of the poor, whom Satan hath bound, are of more importance than the decorations of the bodies which belong to the Lord's free men. Was she above criticism? Yes, really and truly above it. She had gotten where it hardly jarred, up on deck where the sky was fair. Occasionally she laughed about the comments in a good-natured way. There were always those who stood ready to let her hear of the comments just for friendship's sake, you know. There will always be that class of people, on the earth at least, until the millennium. I really believe I ought to make a tidy, she said briskly to Grandma one evening. A tidy? Said Grandma, lifting her head and putting her spectacles up on her forehead, and looking as though she thought much planning had made her daughter mad. What does the child mean? Well, mother, you know I neglect my family, and I've been looking into it. I don't see but the house is in pretty good order, and we have all excellent appetites, and the children are pretty well-clothed. There seems to be nothing actually lacking for the comfort of this family unless it is a tidy. We are really deficient in that luxury or necessity. Perhaps I ought to set to work. Grandma saw the point and laughed until her capstrings shook like leaves. But Mr. Layman took a more serious view of the matter. I beg you, don't! He said earnestly, whatever you may be tempted to do in revenge in this world don't make a tidy. If I had the naming of them I'd call them untidies. If they are not the torment of a man I don't know what is. I never go to Mr. Coleman's, but when I get out of a chair there is one sticking to my back and one to each elbow, and I always have an uncomfortable feeling that there may be one hanging to my hair. And the criticisms that troubled Mrs. Layman so little were infinitely more than balanced by the blessed rewards of the work. She always remembered a certain summer afternoon when the first fruits of a glorious harvest, the extent of which can only be known in eternity, were gathered in. It was one of those homes that had been low and destitute and uncleanly and awful. It was a mother and she lay dying, and on the table but a few feet from her stood a little coffin, neat, tasteful, delicate. And the baby, with golden head, sleeping peacefully within, was as sweet and as pure and as white robed as any mother's darling that was ever laid away in coffined bed. In her baby hand she clashed a small, white, fragrant bud, and the mother's eyes over which the film of death was creeping, sought ever and a none that tiny coffin, and as often as she saw it she smiled, and among her last words on earth were these. Baby and I are safe, baby is gone where he said, suffer them to come, and I am going, he is waiting for me, and there is a clean white dress there for me, for me! And I, the voice fails, stops, gathers strength for one last effort, and I should never have known anything about it at all or about him if it hadn't been for you. And there was brought another coffin, neat and decorous, large enough to receive mother and child, and there were pure flowers strewn up and down the quiet forms lying therein, and around the coffin a hymn was sung, A sleep in Jesus, blessed sleep, from which none ever wakes to weep, A calm and undisturbed repose, unbroken by the last of foes. And the minister read from the Bible, and among his selections came these words. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. What! over that coffin, holding that sad, sinful, almost lost mother, holding that baby, child of the lowliest and lowest of earth. Yes, indeed, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Ye that are weary and heavy laden, beloved of God, called to be saints, come unto me, and they had gone. And Mrs. Layman had risen away above criticism and pettiness and envy and misunderstanding into the realm of Christ-like work and Christ-given joy. End of section 10 End of What She Said and What She Meant and People Who Haven't Time and Can't Afford It by Pansy