 CHAPTER 1 A GOOD LISTENER She was just the nicest old lady. We were always glad to see her coming down the walk. So original, we said, so good-natured, so large-hearted, and so quaint. In fact, we had a long list of sentences beginning with SO to describe Mrs. Solomon Smith. In winter she always had her knitting. She had it this afternoon. And Laura took her crochet and marry her braiding, while I gave the block of coal in the grate a vigorous poke, and sent the red glow flaming up before I settled myself to enjoy her. "'That's for all the world like some folks,' she remarked meditatively, resting her knitting needle on her lip and staring into the glow on the hearth. You have to give them an awful poke every now and then before they set themselves to a mounting to anything.' Then she returned to the subject about which Mary had questioned. "'Yes, I went to the Olin Park Sunday school. I didn't mean to stay over Sunday when I went to town, but the folks were real cordial, and I'll own that I've had a hankering after Sunday schools ever since Solomon was made superintendent. The Olin Park Church is famous, you know, and so last Sunday morning I just went there. It's a great big room, a dozen rooms for that matter, and glass doors shutting you up all alone with your class. I'd like that first rate if I was a teacher, and they have carpeted floors and cushioned seats and an organ and maps and mottos and a bell and everything. There ain't anything that you can get with money to add to that school. I like that, too. If a work is worth doing, it's worth having the tools, and the best kind you can get. It didn't seem to me a mite too fine for the use they want to put it to. But Mrs. Smith, interrupted Laura, who likes nothing better than to get into an argument with Mrs. Smith, or for that matter with anybody who is quick-witted, what do you think about spending so much money for carpets and cushions and all such things when the missionary boards need money, and when so many good things are waiting to be done and can't move on for the want of money? Well, I don't know, child, said Mrs. Smith. There's a chance to make two sides to it, I suppose, and a good deal might be said both sides, I dare say. Maybe it ain't just the thing. I don't feel over and above sure about it in my own mind, and yet I'll own that I hate to see folks coming from their handsome houses in their handsome dresses and setting down on old worn-out cushions with their feet on bare, dusty floors as if anything was good enough for the Lord. It don't seem quite right. If they don't have no better than that at home, most of them, why, that's another thing. Some folks say that they're oughten to be nice fixed up churches on account of poor people not feeling to home. But it always did seem to me as though that depended on the way they was treated after they got there. I ain't never had such a carpet in my whole house as this one in your setting room, and never expect to have. But as long as you act real glad to see me, and treat me just as well as though my house was all Brussels carpets from Garrett to Seller, I'll own that I kind of like to step my feet on the pretty vines and flowers, and have a good look at them. Like enough, folks feel so in handsome churches. As for the money being needed, well, it's a question I don't understand, and it stretches out so many ways I don't know how it's ever going to be understood. Red cushions in a church ain't necessary maybe, but for the matter of that neither is red worsteds, and though one don't cost as much as the other, if the idea is wrong, why it's wrong, whether it's pennies, waste, or a dollars, and the whole thing snarls itself up, you see, and who's going to find the end of it? Laura bent her head lower over her red worsteds and coughed, while Mary laughed outright. Then Laura, blushing and smiling, you needn't laugh, Mary, red worsteds don't cost any more than serpentine braid. But what about the Olin Park Sunday School, said I? Oh, yes, well, I liked all the pretty things, but I'd agree with Laura here about some of the dressing. It was too fine for the place. You see, it seems to me such a different thing from having fine churches. If my pew-in church is carpeted in green Brussels, and my seat covered with green velvet or something, and stuffed with down, I can offer a piece of it to the ugliest dressed woman that comes in, and hand her a book, and look pleasant at her, and make her feel that she has got as much of the softness and prettiness as I have, and as good a right to it, because it all belongs to the Lord. But you see, if I wear a blue silk dress trimmed with white lace, I can't go and spread a breath of it over her, nor make her feel as if it was as much hers as mine. Know how I fix it. Don't that make a difference? Them girls stood side by side, some of them in blue silks, with knife-pleatons, and box-pleatons, and panniers and puffs, and with bright ribbons flying as gay as peacocks, and then one in rusty alpaca, darned here and there, and frayed at the wrists, and made like nothing is nowadays, and they felt uncomfortable, you could see it in their eyes, and it didn't look right. No, child, I don't know as I'd have a uniform, I don't like sisters of charity ways of doing it, nor I don't like the Quakers exactly, and if I was the matron of an orphan asylum, the thing that I wouldn't do would be to have all the dresses and aprons alike. You see, it doesn't look home-like, but the way I'd manage it would be to have all the people have common sense, and then pick out their dresses for church with an eye to the best good of everybody, and it would be all right. This brought a merry laugh from Laura. That is an excellent way of managing it, but how would you arrange it so that all the people would have common sense? Don't you think it is one of the scarcest things in the country? Maybe so, child, with the gravest and most earnest old face imaginable. But it's easy, God, after all, if people would only put themselves under the lead of the Lord Jesus Christ, they would have common sense as well as everything else. Maybe, though, I did those young things in justice. But it seemed to me they was so busy fixing the ribbons and shaking out the panniers, and admiring the set of their kids that they hadn't room for much else. They didn't act like thinking beings, that was the trouble. I ain't one that expects folks sixteen years old to act as though they were sixty, but I did hate to hear them sing, Jesus keep me near the cross, and giggle right at the end of the lines. The cross seems such a solemn thing to me, I can't make out how the very thoughtlessist of them can take the words on their lips with a laugh. It can't be because they are young and frisky, it is some mistake in their bringing up. If one of them had lost a dear friend and somebody was speaking of it in solemn language, they wouldn't have any trouble in keeping from laughing. I expect I'm an old fogey, but it kind of seemed to me, as I sat there, that some of the hoity-toity singing helped along the giddy feelings. We are soldiers for Jesus and we'll battle for the right. That's what they sung loud and strong, four hundred voices, and they didn't look nor act like soldiers. I'm dreadful afraid some of them didn't know the meaning of the words. Sound the battle cry one of them saying, right in my ears, a loud shrill voice she had, and then she whispered, Charlie Perks has got his hair parted in the middle, did you ever see the like, he'll be wearing an overskirt next, and then she came in to line with the singers, gurg your armor on for the Lord. Now how could them two thoughts find place in her brain at once, it don't stand to reason you see, and there she stood pretending to be singing praise to him, speaking his name, and if her heart wasn't praising, wasn't she taken his name in vain? The whole thing just made me shiver. I couldn't help watching that class of girls the whole blessed time. The visitor's seat ran right along behind theirs, and I never did see such restless beings since I was born. They couldn't keep still in prayer time either. They nudged each other and passed slips of paper down the seat, and whispered a little, and this same girl who sang so loud giggled every now and then. Now, Mary, you look exactly as though you would like to say, if I wasn't so much older than you, that I couldn't have been praying myself or I wouldn't have had time to see all this. That's just as true as you live. I was sort of distracted with the flutter and noise, and I couldn't keep my thoughts anywhere. There again is the question of who is to blame for them girls growing up in that way. You see, the grown-up folks didn't keep as still as they might. The four young fellows who tended to books and papers and such things kept tiptoeing around, up this aisle and down that, and the leader of the singing turned over the leaves of his book, and if you'll believe it, the superintendent himself seemed to be trying to find his place in the Bible while the minister was praying. Well, they began the lesson. I listened hard then, for Solomon and I have been studying that lesson by spells for the four part of the week, and I wanted to see what new ideas I could get, and you never see the beat of that teaching in all your life. This is a funny lesson for us, one of them said. I knew all about the birth of Christ when I was a baby. And then they went to discussing. They talked about that star, wondering whether it was a new star or a new look to an old star, and how it looked, and how long it shone the first time it appeared. And then they didn't know a mite more about it, you know, when they got through than they did at first. And then they tried to find out just exactly what part of the East the wise men came from, and how long a journey they took. And then they talked about Herod, and all the wicked things he had said and done, how he murdered his wife, you know, and his children, and how old he was, and how long he had been sick, and what year he died, and everything about him. And then they went back to the wise men again, and they talked about the gold they brought, and wondered how much there was, and in what shape it was, and described frankincense and myrrh, and told how one was used for putting around dead folks, and the other for burning incense. And then, if you'll believe it, the bell rang. I didn't tell you about the bell, did I? It kept ringing every few minutes. There seemed to be something that somebody ought to be warned by that bell to tend to most of the time. It would have distressed me if I had been a teacher. Well, it rang this time, and that lesson was done. You see, they had been interrupted lots of times. The secretary had come along, and the librarian, and the treasurer, and the boy with the new lesson papers, and I don't know what not. But I guess they wasn't disturbed. It didn't break the thread of their thought, you see, for they didn't have none to break. And that was all them girls got that day out of that lesson. What did you and Mr. Smith get out of it? Mary asked her, looking roguish. Bless you, child. It is just alive with thoughts. Them things they talked about was good enough, some of them, but the teacher didn't get to anything. I thought, more than a dozen times, now she is coming at the thought. But she didn't. She slipped right around it just as easy. How do you suppose now she could have got rid of saying something to them young things about the trouble that the wise men took to find Jesus, what a long, hard journey it was, and how much they had to go through, and how it is such a simple thing to do that it seems strange that everybody don't do it? And there they was, so sharp with their answers, and knowing so much about history, and quoting scriptures and all that. Why didn't she remind them how much Herod's chief priests and scribes knew about history and prophecy and all that, and what good did their knowledge do them? And when I see them a-fluttering there, and nudging each other, and having so little heart in it, I couldn't help wondering whether any of them professed to be a worshipper of Jesus, had their names on the churchbook, you know, and was it real, or was it kind of like Herod's? Not so ugly looking, but not much more honest. Then that bright star coming out and guiding them men, dear me, how could she help reminding her girls that he himself is the bright morning star, and stands all waiting for the chance to guide them home? And then the gifts, how they brought their best to him. She didn't say a word about our gifts, how our hearts are better to him than all the gold and silver, or the cattle on a thousand hills. Nor a word about the altars where our frankincense ought to be burned every morning and evening. Nor nothing at all, only just the bare facts about Herod and the gold and the gums. Will they be any likelier to find Jesus by the help of that teaching? Where is he, the wise men asked, and my heart ached to lean over there and ask them girls if there wasn't one among them who would like to know where he was and go and worship him, to think that she had a chance to talk about finding him and giving him our hearts and giving him our prayers and being lighted by the star of Bethlehem all the journey through, and she threw away her chance. It made me sick. I would like to go to Sunday school and be in your class, Mrs. Smith. Laura said this, and every touch of humor had gone out of her voice and her eyes shown with tears. My class-child, bless your dear heart, I'm nothing but an ignorant old woman. I don't know enough to teach a class. But if I did try to teach one and had a lesson all about finding Jesus and giving the best things to him, I wouldn't leave both them ideas clean out of sight. But there it's easier to grumble than it is to teach, I dare say. CHAPTER 2 Good morning, Mrs. Smith, said both girls at once. We were so glad last night, continued Laura, to hear of your return. Here, take this armchair. An event had happened at the little house in the Hollow. Mrs. Solomon Smith had been away from it for an entire week. We, who knew her so intimately, were sure that wherever she went she would go with her eyes open, so that her return was to her friends an anticipated pleasure, hardly less than anything she might have enjoyed herself while away. We knew she would permit us to see with her eyes and to hear with her ears, adding the sharp suggestions of her own mind besides. So we were glad to welcome her, and willing also to give her time to breathe a bit, and to ask all the questions concerning home and friends that her loving heart might suggest. Then, smoothing down her apron with her wrinkled hands, untying her capstrings and settling back for a long talk, she began. Well, I've been and I've got back. And take it all in all, I ain't had such a spell come over me, never as I know of. How did I happen to go? Bless you, child, I couldn't help it. The papers were so full of it, you know. Couldn't take one up for six weeks beforehand that something about that convention and the wonderful things they were going to do and say would stare you in the face. What is a Sunday School convention anyhow, says I to Solomon, and I thought he ought to know, because he had been superintendent for more than a year. But he didn't know, says I to him, Well, now if I pretended to be a Sunday School man, I'd go the whole thing. I'd find out about those things. And if they were worth going to, I'd have the good of them. Can't afford it, says Solomon. Oh, no, said I, of course not. I knew you'd say that. It comes so handy. But then, you know, you went to the cheese makers convention last year, and to the agricultural show, and to the dairyman's meeting, and to the cattle show, and I don't know what not. Yes, said he, of course, I did. That's my business. It stands me in hand to know all that's going on about farming, and keep up with all the new things. Exactly, says I, and you can afford money to tend to all such things. But Sunday School teaching and superintending is kind of a pastime. You only do it because you've got a spare hour on Sunday that you can't use for hoeing or mending fence, and put it in there, because you don't know what to do with yourself. But it wouldn't be the thing to go and spend money just to help along such an amusement. Is that it? Solomon looked at me kind of sharp like, and was right still for about two minutes. Then says he, Come now, if you think it is so important, suppose you go to the meeting, I'd like to have you first rate. I don't belong to Sunday School, says I. That don't make no difference, said he. You can tell me all about the meeting, and I shall know more about it than if I was there myself, and I'd like to hear about it. I ain't got time to go myself. You know, we are uncommon busy this season. Well, at first I didn't mean to go no more than nothing. But I went on talking just for the sake of it, and says I, I thought you couldn't afford the money. I only said that for the sake of saying it, because Solomon, he ain't a mite close with his money. Only being a man, you know, he got so used to saying, I can't afford it, that the words just spring to his mouth before he knows it. He looked a little foolish and says he, Well, I can't afford to waste money. But if you think it is so important, and would help you know why that's another thing, says I, I think it's important for you, because it's right in a line with your work. If it's to help that kind of work along, of course, it would help you. But I don't suppose it would help me make any better butter or cheese, or look after the chickens and turkeys, or get any earlier garden sauce than I have now. And you know, that's my work. Well, now says he, you know, I always did understand things better for your telling of them. And if I had the time to go, and there couldn't but one of us go, why, for the improvement of it, I'd rather it would be you, because you could tell it off to me of evenings all winter, and I could take it in better. Well, I always was a master hand Solomon thought at telling things, and I knew he paid attention to what I said better than to most folks. But for all that, I hadn't the faintest notion of going to a Sunday School convention, nor didn't give it a sober thought, till we got a letter from Hannah, my sister, you know, and she told me about her Jesse being tuckered out and needing a rest. And they wished she could have a change and go somewhere for a few days before school commenced again. To wouldn't hardly pay for her to come down to the country to see us for so short a time. And the journey was expensive too. But they did wish she could get away somewhere. And then I looked up at Solomon all of a sudden, and he nodded his head and says he that Sunday School convention is the very thing. And Solomon, being a man you know, is dreadful set in his way when he gets a notion. And he was so took up with that one, that he gave me no peace till I up and started, he accounting out the money for me and for Jesse, as if he rather enjoyed it. I knew I'd have to pay Jesse's way if I took her, because her pot ain't a mite forehanded. Never was. He lives in a town, and has a large family, and there's always shoes and hats and gloves and things wanting. And it takes a sight more to live than it does on a farm, and he ain't got nothing to depend on but a store where they keep dry goods. That always did seem to me a dreadful, uncertain way of living. Suppose folks should take a notion to go without new clothes for a spell. You can't eat the things lying there in the cases waiting to be sold. But now on a farm it's different. Folks has got to have wheat and corn and potatoes, and even if they shouldn't want them, why then you can eat them yourself? So I always felt kind of sorry for Hannah's folks. Well, I went for Jesse, and her and me got started. She thought it was the funniest notion I ever took yet. Just as funny for her as for me, for she never went to Sunday school since she was a little girl, she said. She ain't a mite over seventeen this minute, and there she talked about when she was a little girl. But land, she wears trains and all them things, and looks as old as any of them. I alone up that I felt real queer as we began to get near the town where the meeting was. Well, well, I said to Jesse, I've always heard it said that there ain't no fool like an old fool, and I believe it. The idea of my going to a convention at my time of life. It would be bad enough if I was women's rights. Auntie, said Jesse, let's give it up and go back home. Jesse, says I, did you ever know your uncle Solomon's wife to give up a thing after she has once got started? I ain't one of them kind. I shall see what a Sunday school convention is before I'm three days older. You may depend on that. Well, we showed our papers and got our street and number, and did it all up regular, and went to the nicest kind of a house where they treated us like queens. And the next morning we went to the convention. Land, it wasn't an overpowering place at all, just a big room with three or four dozen folks in it, sitting as far apart as they could get, and singing each one of them a different kind of a tune by the sound. It was very faint singing anyhow. Solomon could have beaten them all hollow. My patience says I to the man at the door. I thought this was a dreadful big meeting. Why, you ain't got as many here as we get to our country singing schools. He smiled as pleasant as could be and says he the people haven't got in yet. We are having devotional exercises. Oh, says I, the people don't come until after they are over and there's something important to be done. Well, now that's curious, I should think, for a Sunday school meeting. The devotional part ought to be kind of important. It's early yet, says he. Do you think so, says I. Why, the men folks where we were stopping went to the store two hours ago and the women went to market and got back before we started. Why, it's after nine o'clock. But Jesse, she was blushing like a peony. The land knows what at. She's great on blushing Jesse is, kept at it half the time we were gone. And she kept twitching at my sleeve and coaxing me in, so I went along. Of all the doleful meetings I ever was in, that one named devotional exercises was the worst. I didn't think there was a might of devotion about it. Now that's the truth. Why, Solomon and I have set down in our kitchen with the old Psalm book and a tallow candle and grandfather's big Bible, and had enough sight better meeting than that was many a time. I can't think what ailed the people. The man who prayed acted as though he should never get through and sit down. He was afraid that the meeting would come to an end. And so he went on and on, seeming to think that it was his duty to keep the thing going. And he prayed about things he didn't care nothing about, I believe. His voice sounded like it, but we oughtn't to judge. Anyhow, my heart felt pretty heavy, and I looked at Jesse, and I was afraid if they had many devotional exercises, she wouldn't get jerked up a bit. After a spell though that man did get through, and somebody found out by accident that the time for devotional exercises was up, you can't think how glad they all acted. They was as lively as bees right away. A brisk little man hopped up and went on that platform, and says he, the convention will please come to order. And where he had kept himself in that brisk ringing voice of his, through all them devotional exercises, I don't know. Why, his voice sounded just like a breeze from the sea. It kind of waked everybody up. But, bless you, the convention didn't come to order. It couldn't. If they had sent a telegraph all over town, saying, the devotional exercises are over, you can come on. They couldn't have crowded and squeaked and rustled in faster than they did. Such a hubbub you never did see. They came talking and laughing, too. Kept up their talking, pretty loud voices at that, till they got fairly inside the door and a little bit down the aisles. And there was that man on the platform trying to do the talking himself. I whispered to Jesse, says I, them folks appear to be so tickled to think that they didn't get here to them devotional exercises that they can't stop laughing and talking. Then Jesse she giggled, and I was ashamed of her. Dear me, I wish I could tell you all about that meeting. I could talk all summer about it. And Solomon says I've got too. He is particular to hear of every little thing. Some of the things was grand. That's the trouble. There ain't much comfort in telling about it after all. You get right into the middle of it, and it comes over you how the man looked, and how he walked across the stage, and through his arms, and how his voice sounded. And you seem to feel that that was a good deal of it after all. And there's no use in trying to tell it. Lots of things I didn't understand. The next thing on the program, said the leader, is an exercise in chronology by Dr. Date. What's that? I said to Jesse. And she didn't seem to hear me, and I gave her a nudge. What's that big word, he says? I asked her. And do you believe that child knew? And there's been sites of money spent on her education. She shook her head at me, and I thought she meant that I wasn't to whisper. And I didn't mean to be put off by that child, so I said it again a little louder. Her cheeks were just like peonies, and she bent forward and says softly, Auntie, I don't know. Then I felt real sorry that I had asked her. She seemed so kind of beat. There was a nice looking young gentleman sat just the other side of me, and says he very pleasantly, not laughing at me a bit. It is to show us about dates in the Bible, just when things happened. See, the professor is putting it on the blackboard for us. Sure enough, there he was dashing off a long line of figures and letters to stand for words. He made real pretty figures, and he worked most amazing fast. I watched him aspell, and then says I to my young man. I don't quite see what is the use of filling up one's head with all that mess of figures. It would take me half a lifetime to learn them, and then I should blunder. I always was dreadful at figures, and if I knew them all like a book, I don't see how it would make me any fitter to teach the children the way to heaven. They don't need them figures to go by. He smiled again, not a saucy smile, you know, but a nice pleasant one, and he leaned over to me and says he. There is a fellow out west who has written a book to show that the Bible can't be true because he thinks he has proved that the world is more than six thousand years old. I looked back at the blackboard, and the very first words that that doctor date had written there were these three in great big handsome letters in the beginning. Why, says I, supposing it is, it might be a million years old for all that the Bible says about it. That only says in the beginning. How did he find out when that was? Exactly so, says he, and he laughed outright. But you see, the poor fellow has never studied Bible chronology, and he forgot everybody else had. He makes a great many statements that a careful look at Bible figures proves to be false, and one of the reasons why we study Bible chronology is to be able to correct the mistakes of just such ignorant fellows as he, so that our children won't be led astray by them. Well, after that I paid attention to them dates and names, and if you'll believe it, it was quite interesting and not so terribly hard to remember. He strung some of the words together, making poetry-like, and a good many of them began with the same letters. And, well, I don't know how he did it. Jesse said she believed I was bewitched, but I got quite excited learning of them figures, and I said most of them off to Solomon last night. I couldn't help kind of liking it, and I thought if I was young I'd go into it with all my might, and know all about it. There was some funny acting folks as ever I see at that convention. They had a conference about mistakes in teaching. The man who commenced it told off a lot of mistakes, and then he called on others to give some. And, if you'll believe it, they seemed to be all used up on mistakes. Not one of them opened his lips. The man coaxed and coaxed, and they just looked at each other, and some of them gaped and looked at their watches, and were as dumb as oysters. I had forty notions to speak out, says I to Jesse. For the land's sake, what ails them! I should think they could talk about mistakes, why I know two or three myself, and I'm a notion to give them. Says Jesse. Auntie, don't you do it. I shall sink through the floor. Well, then, says I, I won't, though if you sink as easy as that I wonder you're not at it half the time. But I felt sorry for that man up on the platform, a leading people who wouldn't be led. I always did think Bucky Horses were the most provoking critters that were ever put on a farm. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face, and it looked ready enough to blaze. At last the leader of the whole thing, or the conductor they called him, came to the poor man's help. Says he, we have but three minutes left for the discussion of this subject. Well, why on earth he didn't say that before, if he had any idea of the good it would do, I can't imagine. Their tongues were all loosed by it. They all wanted to talk at once, and they all wanted to say a great deal. They kept hopping up all over the room and trying to get in their word, and the leader had to call them to order. Said I to Jesse, that's for all the world the way your Uncle Solomon acts when he gets in the house a little before dinner is ready. He looks at the clock, and he watches me, and he gapes, and he acts as though there is nothing in the world he was so near ready for as his dinner, till I get it all on the table and say, come Solomon, and then he's off. He finds out that the gate isn't shut, and that the stove in the front room needs a stick of wood, and his hands need washing, and there's no end of the things that he seems to think he must do while the dinner sets there in spoils. Sometimes I say to him, Solomon, what a pity it is that you couldn't have found some of those things to do while you sat there waiting. And so I say of these men, if they could only have found their tongues before it was time to keep still. I believe men are all alike. I didn't think I was talking so loud till the pleasant-spoken gentleman began to laugh so hard he shook the seat, and then I saw that Jesse was blushing again. Well, wasn't it queer that they should act like that, and that man a-coaxing them for dear life, and they having plenty to say all the time? Then you never see the beat of that convention for arguing. They just liked it. There was two or three of them who sat already bristled, waiting for a chance to say, I don't agree with Brother Jones. And then their eyes would glisten, and they would talk and talk, and argue about whether it was so or wasn't so, till I couldn't help thinking some of them forgot which side they begun on, and just went on talking because they was kind of wound up, you know, like a clock, and couldn't stop till they ran down. I never did like eight-day clocks, and I'm dreadful glad they've gone out of fashion. Some of the things that they argued about was just as plain as that two and two make four, and some of them argued as though it didn't make no difference to them whether two and two made four or forty, and they just went right along with just as much vim when the thing wasn't of a might of consequence as they did when it was important. I really think they did it because they liked to, just as boys wrestle, you know, and I must say they kept their tempers first-rate. My sakes, says I to Jesse. If these were women talking like this in about three minutes more they would pull each other's hair and scratch each other's eyes. I don't believe it would be a good idea for women to have conventions. These men, some of them, looked pretty fierce, and talked so, but if you will believe me the whole thing ended in a laugh at last. I didn't get a hold of the joke and I'm sorry for that, for Solomon does enjoy a good joke. But I laughed with the rest. It seemed so kind of pleasant to see them get good-natured and give it all up and turn to something else as nice as if they all thought alike. And for the matter of that, who knows but they did. Men are such queer creatures. There was one man who was in powerful earnest. I shan't ever forget him. He lectured to the teachers about helping their scholars to come to Christ, and I tell you he did make solemn work of it. Grand work, too. I felt like I would give almost anything to know enough to teach or to be young again and learn it all. And I looked around on that young thing that I took there and I prayed to the Lord to let me do some of my work through her. I can't help wishing you could all have heard that lecture. The tears just run down my cheeks. I couldn't keep them back I felt so solemn like, and yet so glad and happy. For he told about heaven and about the glory and the lasting forever and all that, in a way that made us feel as though we couldn't think of running any risk of missing it. That was in the evening and I sat by my pleasant-faced young man again, and when we were coming out I couldn't help holding out my hand to him. I felt exactly as if I knew him, and says I, my eyes shall see the king in his beauty. I'm sure of it, young man, and I hope you are. And I'm beat if there wasn't tears in his eyes, too. He catched hold of my hand and shook it hard, and says he, I am indeed thank the Lord. And then what did he do but turn to Jesse, and says he, you too I trust? And Jesse's voice was all of a tremble, and her cheeks like roses, and she said, oh I hope so. Don't leave it that way, says I. Make a sure thing of it, child. I couldn't help it. It did seem dangerous, as well as kind of sad, not to feel certain as you were alive about it, and I knew I did. But I'll never forget that lecture. It was worth all the money we spent just to hear it, and I know it will do me good forever. What is that man's name, says I, and I gave Jesse my program. You mark your pencil all around it, says I, for I want to thank him when I see him in heaven for this night's work, and I mean too. But I tell you, it takes all sorts of folks to make a world. Some of the people didn't like that speech. He was dry, they said. I heard one woman say that two or three times. She sat right before me, and she kept wetting up her throat with candy all the evening, and giving some to the man that sat next to her. And then they would whisper and giggle. She was nothing but a girl, and I told Jesse if she had been mine I should have felt like whipping her and sending her to bed. And I do think mothers ought to keep their girls by them till they learn them how to act. It does put me out of all patience to see folks whispering and laughing at the meeting. If the lecture or preaching or whatever it was was as dry as chips, and I won't deny but that some of those men were dry enough, and those that had the most letters at the end of their name seemed to be the driest. But I'd pretend I understood just for the looks of the thing and give other folks a chance to hear. It was curious though about them titles. They stand for learning, and the more they have of them the more learned they are. D.D.'s you know, and L.L.D.'s and P.H.D.'s, and the land knows what. I didn't understand the letters, nor the men either, some of them, and says I to Jesse. I suppose they've got to prove that they deserve all them letters, and so they don't dare to come down and use words that we ever heard before. More is the pity. But for all that, if there's any one thing more than another that I do despise, it is whispering and laughing, and bringing folks's meals to the meeting-house. Why, some of those people munched candy and nuts and chewed gum the whole living time. There was two girls, and sometimes a boy, that seemed possessed to sit somewhere near me. I suppose because they aggravated me so. Did you ever see them orientals? The same man showed them. No, they ain't pictures, they are real live folks. He took them right there out of the convention. But land, you'd never have known them in the world. They were dressed up just like the folks used to dress in Bible times, and they talked like them and acted like them. You knew it was just as they talked and acted then because they fit right into the Bible as complete as though they had been living when it was written. The women carrying waterpots on their heads, you know, and gleaning in the fields, and the bridegroom coming at midnight, and they are going out to meet him with lamps and all that. I'll complete just as the Bible tells it. And, if you'll believe it, the folks out in them countries are at that same kind of life yet, veils and all. Such looking beings as they are, and such actions. I tell you what it is, we ought to do more for the heathen. I joined the missionary society first thing I did after I got home, and I mean to work for it too with all my might. I never thought much about it before, but I couldn't get them women out of my mind, nor the men either for that matter. I believe they looked the most outlandish of the two. I know it was all-natural, because it fitted into the Bible, and made you understand what some of the verses meant. I tell you, them folks need converting. We must set right to work and do our best for them. But, oh, I wish you could have seen the Holy Land. Soft, pretty paintings of the sky and the water, and the grass in the country where the Lord Jesus Christ was, you know. I declare it made me feel so queer when the man was pointing out the well where he sat, and the road to Bethany, and the palm trees, and all. I most couldn't keep the tears back. There was a picture of Jerusalem, lying still and pleasant there in the sunshine, and the great hills all around it, and as we sat gazing at it, the man who was showing them said suddenly, in his strong, solemn voice, as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people. I never felt so safe before. There they was, you know, the great mountains, looking stronger than time itself, and there was the promise, and it seemed the silliest thing not to trust him. You needn't go to thinking it is because I am old and foolish that it had such a power over me. There was Jesse, with her young face all shining, and the tears just ready to drop, and says she, Oh, Auntie, I'd like to go there. You shall, child, says I, to his own country. He has gone to prepare a place for you, you know, and he will come back and get you. All you've got to do is to see to it that you are ready when he comes. I tell you, the whole thing seemed realer to me than it ever did before. After that, how do you suppose we felt to hear two women say, just as we was going out? Why in the world do they want to spend so much time over those pictures of Palestine? They are nothing but outlines anyway, and I don't think they are interesting at all. The description of them is always so dry. There was quite a good many people there who were troubled with dryness. They wanted something funny the whole blessed time, but they didn't like to own it, and so when things wasn't funny they just lumped them and called them dry. The Bible readings was dry, and the lectures on Bible history was dry, and the lessons on Bible geography was dry, and the normal classes was the most dreadful dry of anything. And I'll venture to say that if them kind of folks had been willing to own it, they thought the Bible itself was as dry as dust. Oh well, of course folks of that kind creep in. They like to get to places and see the sites and hear the funny things, and what harm does it do? Maybe now and then they get an idea, who knows. The folks wasn't all of that kind I can tell you, only here and there one thrown in, and them convention people know enough to understand that there is no kind of use in trying to please everybody all the time. There's no trade on earth so easy to learn, as grumbling you know. I shouldn't wonder if more folks got to be head workmen in that line than any other. Why, if I had really set out for it, I could have found something to grumble at most of the time. There was one man that most made me feel like flying out of the window. He was real smart, and I wanted to hear all that he said, but when he got into about the middle of his sentence he was sure to drop his voice away down into his boots, so that I couldn't make anything out of it. I did get so provoked. For the land's sake, says I, I do wish he would take breath enough once to carry him through a whole sentence, so I could hear the end of it. But he didn't. He went on that way to the very last. I told Solomon that I could give him the first half of a good many good things, and if he had brains enough to finish them out they might help him. But that seems to me like downright cheating. The last part of them sentences all belonged to me, and he had no right to go and mouth them up, and finally swallow them without giving me a chance. They said he was the finest orator at the convention. Well, says I, when we was at our boarding house eating dinner, the first half of him is a good deal of an orator, but the last half is a dead failure, I think. Still, I said, and I say it yet, if I couldn't have heard the first word that he said, I wouldn't have got up and squeaked and rustled out, as so many of them did. When I got commenced I'd have stuck it out, if it most choked me. I do hate to see folks nipping out of church during a meeting. They kept doing it there all the time. It did seem queer to me that a few of them couldn't have made up their minds to go together and have it done with. But no, right in the middle of somebody's speech, up would Bob a woman and rustle herself out, and that would seem to give another one the notion that she would like to do the same. But, mind you, she would wait until the other had got down the aisle and opened the door and shut it, and had time to get to the foot of the stairs, and then she would start, and she would suggest the idea to another one, and so they kept it a going by spells all day. Says I to Jesse. Now, if I faint dead away and don't appear to be coming to after five minutes or so, why I suppose you can have me carried out. But for anything less than that I won't go out of this house till after the benediction is pronounced. And I didn't, though some of the speeches was most mortal long. Chapter 4 of Mrs. Solomon Smith Looking On by Pansy This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4 What Solomon Learned I had one queer time, said Mrs. Smith after a careful pause during which she had set the heel in the gray stocking. It worried Jesse dreadfully, but it didn't, me a mite. We heard ourselves talked about. I have always heard it said that listeners never hear any good of themselves, and so far as my knowledge goes it's true. There was two women walking along up the street, real slow, spreading out so that you couldn't get by them. They were talking about some convention folks, and don't you believe one of them went on and described me to the very life, dress bonnet knoll. They was to be pitied, I think, for they had the worst of it. My dress was clean if it hadn't an overskirt, and my bonnet was last year's shape to be sure, but it was paid for in good honest money, and so long as I don't mind wearing it I don't think they had any call to worry. Well, they went on talking, and they said that was the way with these conventions. A lot of people came to see the country, and to do shopping along the way, and didn't know nothing about Sunday schools, nor care nothing about them, and didn't have brains enough to understand what was said, and wanted to get boarded for next to nothing, so they just made the meeting an excuse, and for their part they thought it was an imposition. Now it happened that I had seen both them women before. They sat right behind me all the four noon, and bothered me most amazing, keeping up a whispering about how they preserved plums and canned tomatoes all the time that man was telling us about the Holy Land. They were the ones who thought the lecture was so dry. I made up my mind it was my Christian duty to help them women a little, so I spoke right up, though Jesse she twitched at my sleeve. See here, says I, it's no more than right that I should let you know that I'm just behind you with the very dress on that you've been describing. Only you didn't get it quite right. The side-breasts ain't cut goring at all. I always make mine straight, and it doesn't cost but twenty cents a yard instead of twenty five as you thought. But now I want to tell you, I do know a little bit about Sunday schools. My husband, Solomon Smith, is the superintendent of the one at the hollow. He couldn't come himself, at least he thought he couldn't. So he sent me, and I've been a listening every single minute. When I could get a chance for the whispering, and I shall tell Solomon all about it as soon as I get home. I didn't come to do no shopping. Every living thing I've bought since I left home is a tin horse to send to my daughter's baby, and it stands to reason that I couldn't have come a hundred and thirty-two miles just to buy that. As for getting my board cheap, I have got it cheap, good board too, and I'm thankful for it. I know the folks I'm stopping with ain't grudged me a mite of anything. They've about promised me that they will stop next fall on their way out west, and spend a few days with me. And if they do, I shan't grudge them a sight of the country, and they may go a shopping to the store at the corners if they want to. I'm glad I come. I listened to every word of that lecture when you was doing up your plums and canning your tomatoes over again at the hall this morning. I didn't think it was a bit dry, and I mean to help Solomon along in his Sunday school work by that and some other things as soon as I get home. Weren't they beat though? They went to work trying to apologize. Didn't mean me, they said, though how their consciences could let them say that after describing of me to my face and eyes, I don't know. Jesse, she cried a little about it, and Solomon says he thinks I was rather hard on them. Solomon is sort of chickenhearted, you know, where people's feelings is concerned. But I really shouldn't wonder if it done them good. I didn't bear them no malice, not a speck, and I told them so. What do you think Solomon said to me the other night after I had been talking about that meeting to him for an hour on the stretch? Maria says he, it's all just as interesting as can be, but it's getting near to Sunday, and what I want to know is, what am I to do next Sunday that will make our school better? As near as I can make out, you ain't told me anything yet that will help the school along. Now do you know for about a minute I was beat? Then says I, why Solomon, yes I have. Haven't I told you a dozen things that you want to stop doing? For one thing, you are never to go and have devotional exercises on purpose to fill up, making a prayer about things that you ain't thought of before in a month, and won't think of again in another month. It's disgraceful. Long prayers ain't devotional anyhow. I always thought they wasn't, and now I know they ain't. And you are apt to make just a trifle too long prayers Solomon, now that's the truth. At this point Laura broke the spell which had held us by laughing immoderately. I can't help it, she said when I shook my head. I've kept it bottled up all afternoon, but this is too funny. Bless your heart child, said dear Mrs. Smith. Laugh away, I like to hear folks laugh in the right places. Then Mary called us to order and started Mrs. Smith again by asking what Solomon said. Why, he thought about it a spell and then he said in that thoughtful way of his, well, I don't know but you're right. So while I was about it, I made up my mind I'd mention a matter that has bothered me some, and says I, there's another thing Solomon, you can stop when you get through. Some of the convention folks would say, but my time is up and I must close. Then they would move along without any more idea of closing than a clock has of not ticking. Stealing other folks's time and easing up their consciences and kind of encouraging folks by owning of it every few minutes. Now Solomon says I, I have thought that you now and then used up some of the time that rightly belonged to the teachers. And if I was you, I wouldn't do it. Then you can stop picking out a tune every little while that no living being but you and Job Simmons can sing. And then you can give up that habit you have of squeaking them heavy boots of yours up and down the aisles attending to some business while Mr. Brown is summing up the lesson. I never knew how kind of aggravating that was till the men and women, especially the women, squeaked through that hall times when I wanted to hear. Not but that I wouldn't most as soon hear your boots squeak as to hear Mr. Brown sum up the lesson. But that's neither here nor there. It don't look like the right thing. Why Solomon says I, I could keep on all night. There's hundreds and hundreds of interesting things in the Bible and about the Bible that you never dreamed of and you want to know them, history and dates and all them things. It proves that you can't be mistaken. It makes you feel as sure of there being such a place as Bethany as that there is such a place as the hollow and the four corners. And Peter and John and all them as real as Job Simmons and John Stackhouse and heaven itself seems realer than the solid earth. There's no use in saying that such things don't save souls. Neither do sermons, but they make things look plainer and seem truer. Least ways they ought to. There ought to be a lot of Bible studying done by anybody that undertakes the Super and tend to Sunday school and a great deal of praying too. Nothing ever seemed more certain than that. Solomon says I, if you could have been at that closing meeting and heard them pray for the Sunday school superintendents and teachers and scholars that they might all work just as the Lord Jesus Christ would have them work, you would have gone to Sunday school next Sunday holding your head steadier than you ever did before in your life because you would know that it was being held up for you with that kind of praying and you'd have been a better superintendent than you ever was before because after joining in them prayers you would now know that you had promised before the Lord to do your best and you would have gone to work to get ready for it. I tell you it's solemn business. That's one of the things I learned anyhow. The long and short of it is, said Solomon, after thinking of it over, you've learned at the convention that a Sunday schoolman must study the Bible a great deal and pray a great deal and think about his work a great deal and do the very top most that he can every time. Yes, says I, that's about it. Well, says he, getting up and going over for the big Bible, I think that is about enough to learn in a week especially as it'll last a lifetime. I've learned another thing, says I, and that is, you're to go to the next Sunday school meeting that comes along if I have to wear my old great dress year in and year out and have to sell my speckled calf in the bargain. It's all very nice as far as it goes to tell you about it, but it won't do. You ought to be there to feel it. What about Jesse? Well now, do you know that's the cream of the whole thing? I can't think of her without the tears coming. That child's woke up. She heard the voice of the Lord himself speaking to her right there in them meetings. Says she to me. Auntie, I do thank you for bringing me here and I'm going home to work. I can do it. And I knew she could. The other night I had a letter from my sister Hannah, her mother, you know, and in it she says, What did you do to be which are Jesse? The child has gone to work as if all the children in town were dependent on her. She has even taken a class in Sunday school, dreadful little scamps who never behaved in their lives till last Sunday. But some way nobody knows how she contrived to be which them. It was just before family worship that we was reading the letter and Solomon he wiped his glasses a good deal while I was reading of it. Solomon sets great store by Jesse. I wish you could have heard him pray for her. My! I knew then, just as well as could be, that them boys of hers would behave the next day. I'm waiting to hear that they did. Yes, I've joined a class at the Hollow. Never too old to learn, you know. We had a real good time yesterday and Solomon didn't pray but four minutes by the clock and he never squeaked them dreadful boots of his around once. And the singing was nice old tunes. I never did see such a master hand as Solomon is for taking a hint. And he is dreadful set on my going. Jonas is the only kin he has left. They ain't been much like brothers so far as visiting goes. It must be nearly twenty years since they've laid eyes on each other. And as for writing letters Solomon is no hand to write. But he has a very warm heart towards Jonas and all his family. And he thinks a wedding is something uncommon that ought to bring the family together. And the long and the short of it is he wants me to go. Of course you ought to go, my Mary said, speaking in the first pause. I shouldn't think you would miss it for anything. A city wedding is a grand affair. I hope you will go if it is for nothing but to tell me about it when you get home. I suppose it will be ever so splendid. They are rich people, aren't they? As to that, I don't believe they've any too much to spend on flummeries, child. Mrs. Smith said, looking with such loving eyes on Mary, that, while the child blushed and laughed over the searching glance that went up and down the flummeries on her dress, she was in no wise displeased. Mary never was annoyed by Mrs. Smith's plain speaking. I don't know much about them. Never was there in my life. Jonas I knew when he was a young man, and Sarah, his wife, walked over from Deanville to see me once. She was dressed plain enough then, and was a meek and quiet body. They've lived in the city for more than twenty years, but I guess they've had hard rowing. Solomon has a note of his brothers that there ain't been no interest paid on for more than five years now, and Solomon thinks he wouldn't have done so if he had been forehanded. If I go, I shall take the child a nice little present to show them that we feel all right about the interest, as of course we do, for when a man can't pay, why, he can't. A singular combination of circumstances had made us, or rather was about to make us, what Laura called almost related to dear old Mrs. Smith. I had a gay young nephew in a distant city, a motherless, fatherless boy, whom in his quite early life I had mothered as well as he would let me. He had been, however, for ten years so independent of us that he rarely visited us, and more rarely wrote. Last week he had surprised us by a cordial invitation to his wedding, and the lady whom he was to marry was Solomon Smith's niece, Lyda, or Elizabeth, as Mrs. Smith called her. Jonas Smith's only daughter. Irving, my boy, had been very eager in his urgings that we, uncle, aunt, and cousins, should come to see him made into a grave old man. But his uncle could not get away from business, neither did Solomon Smith believe that he could. So, after many talks and numberless plans, it was finally settled that Mary should stay at home to care for her father, while Mrs. Smith and Laura and I represented the two families at the wedding. In view of the fact that our boy Irving had no home, our invitation to stop with the Smiths was most cordial, and made it very much nicer for our old friend. So imagine us one winter morning, duly packed, lunched, and with the usual number of bundles, seated in the eight o'clock express, ready for whatever experiences the next three or four days might have to furnish. Laura began the journey by looking volumes of indignation at those who dared to smile over Mrs. Smith's appearance. But really I did not blame them. The dear old lady certainly had the faculty forgetting herself up in a unique fashion. Her trim black dress was completely hidden by a long, heavy cloak of dark green cloth, an old-fashioned cloth such as I fancy our grandmothers might have worn. I think it was called camelot, and nothing like it, so far as I know, can be found in the stores of today. The shape in which it was fashioned was as quaint as the material. The bonnet which accompanied it was a velvet, and in its better days the pile on it had been heavy. Even now the velvet was of a rich, glossy black, not a thread of cotton about it. But the shape of the bonnet suggested at least ten winters of duty. I don't know but many more. The sweet old face looking out from the old-fashioned frill that gathered full about the old-fashioned bonnet was beautiful to us, but those who did not know her were apt to smile. Laura, with her flashing eyes and cheeks aglow over what she felt was disloyalty to a noble soul, had no idea what a pretty contrast she was. She had finished her dark green traveling suit but the day before, and it became her wonderfully. She had taken counsel of the dear old lady's taste somewhat, I fancy, for there were no furblows of any sort about it. She turned a seat and made herself comfortable, sitting backwards, establishing Mrs. Smith beside me, for protection from gigglers and simpletons generally, she whispered, as she leaned over to arrange my valise as a footstool. But before the day was done, many who had smiled learned to respect the figure in the dark green cloak and large bonnet. It was a curious study to watch her, so quiet and unobtrusive was she, yet so alert. Nothing escaped her keen gray eyes. To begin with, of course there was a baby on the car, and of course it demanded more than its share of attention. Now a sweet-faced, cooing baby, arrayed in fine white broidered garments, with bright eyes and dimpled chin, and mouth that breaks into radiant smiles whenever one looks that way, is an exquisite bit of enjoyment for anybody. I have seen Laura go into raptures over such and one, and borrow it of a doting mother, and kiss it and coo to it by the hour together. But this baby was not overclean, bearing about on its coarse dress the marks of a long journey. At his best he was not pretty, for he was wide-mouthed and toe-headed, and had dull unresponsive eyes. Besides, he was tired and sleepy, and yet would not sleep. Hungry, too, and the bill of fair spread out before him in the shape of watery-looking milk in a cinder-covered bottle, and a molasses-cookie seemed to disgust him. On the whole he was undeniably cross. He threw away the cookie, and tried to send the bottle after it. He pulled at his tired, discouraged mother's nose, and at her hair, which was in such disorder that it did not need this touch to add to the dreariness of her appearance. By turns he wind piteously or yelled outright. The mother lifted him from one tired arm to the other, and coaxed and petted as well as she knew how, and scolded a little, especially at the four-year-old toe-head who clung to her shawl and was in every way dirtier, homlier, and more objectionable-looking than the baby. This group sat nearly opposite us, the father absorbed most of the time in a newspaper. Laura watched them furtively, annoyed by their close proximity, annoyed by the molasses cookie on the floor, surrounded with puddles of tobacco juice which the father, from time to time, poured around it. Annoyed, apparently, that so forlorn a specimen of baby should turn all the poetry connected with childhood into disagreeable prose. Mrs. Smith watched them, too, but with an entirely different face. Intense sympathy with both mother and baby were so strongly written on it that I was not in the least surprised presently to have her give a brisk little spring forward and come back with the angry baby. His irritation was, however, held in check by astonishment. I am sure he was not used to motherly old arms. Poor little fellow, murmured his new friend. How tired he looks, cinders in his eyes and cookie in his mouth and nose. No wonder he cries. Laura, if you would just wet my handkerchief for me, I would make him more comfortable in a minute and rest his poor mother a bit. Very gravely Laura arose. Very slowly she drew off the dark kid glove that matched her suit and prepared to go to the water tank and wet the capacious clean handkerchief which was intended to cleanse baby's face. The deed was done, however, in process of time, and baby, far from resenting, seemed soothed and pleased with the entire performance. He actually smiled, and though his mouth was undeniably large, that lovely mystery which dwells in a baby's smile came instantly to glorify this one. Then he nestled in the comfortable arms and laid his little toe head upon the motherly bosom and was softly crooned to sleep. The look on the mother's face, meantime, must have paid Mrs. Smith. I know it softened the look of annoyance in Laura's eyes. The mother came presently with grateful, homely words. She was dead tired, had been traveling three days and two nights, all the clothes she had brought with her for the children were soiled, and they were both as cross as two sticks, and she was clean discouraged. She would take baby and lay him on the seat beside her, maybe he would take quite a nap. Poor thing! Mrs. Smith said, looking compassionately at the mother and cuddling the baby, she would lay him down herself and sit beside him. I won't let him roll off. She said with delightful assurance of strength in her voice. I've done the same thing for my children and grandchildren. Here's an empty seat right behind us. I'll make a nice bed for him, and I'll coax the other little fellow to me and keep him comfortable. There's a big apple in my satchel he'll like. Then you just lop down and take a nap. It will do you good. Johnny won't come, said the mother, looking volumes of thanks that she did not know how to express. He's awful bashful! But Johnny did come. He was magnetized. He had his face washed, too, and his dirty little hands with another corner of the capacious handkerchief that Laura obediently wedded for the purpose. Then he leaned against the old green cloak and listened to a quaint sweet story, beginning about a kitty and a naughty puppy, and changing. I hardly understand myself by what transition, only I know it seemed sweet and natural, to the story of a nice little unselfish boy who let his mother take a nap and was a help and comfort to her all through a long journey. Then the story branched again. Once there was a little boy, a beautiful baby boy, who started with his father and mother in the night and took a long, dangerous journey, not on the cars, no indeed, but sometimes on foot and sometimes in his mother's arms, on a donkey's back, and all the way that little boy did not once do a naughty thing. And I sat and listened, and heard the old, old story of the flight into Egypt grow into marvelously vivid power and beauty, and the four-year-old Johnny, who by this time was curled into a corner of the seat with a bit of the green cloak wrapped about him, listened as one spellbound. Evidently the old story was a new one to him. He had many questions to ask, wise little questions that hinted at thoughts hit away beneath that shock of yellow hair, thoughts which might someday grow into deep ones. Who knows to what extent our dear old lady was shaping and molding him that day. Presently the father roused from his tobacco and his paper sufficiently to remember that he had some responsibility in life and looked about him for his family. The distinct, steady breathing, if I should by courtesy call it breathing, of his tired wife told all her neighbors that she was making the most of her much-needed rest. The father seemed greatly astonished at the condition of affairs and came presently and leaned against the back of our seat and talked with Mrs. Smith. My youngster there will tire you all out. Not a mite, spoken in a hearty way that might have been a joy to any father's heart. Nice little boys don't tire me, and he is a nice little boy. He has been as good as gold and let his mother and little brother sleep. He has had a nice story, too, haven't you, Johnny? Johnny nodded. He's a first-rate listener, Johnny is, continued Mrs. Smith, and as the boy slipped away from her and gave himself up to staring at Laura, who had her watch out, she added, He did more than listen. You ought to have heard his wise little questions. I think they were real wonderful in such a little fellow. Johnny is a cute enough chap, said the gratified father, and the fatherly look that came into his eyes began to reconcile me somewhat to his appearance. Up to this time I had not liked him at all. He is as bright as a button. Was Mrs. Smith's emphatic statement? Too nice boys you've got! The baby is uncommon strung with his hands and feet. In just a little while you'll have them trotting about after you, copying every single thing you do. Boys is almost certain to copy their fathers. That's one reason I was sorry that mine were all girls. I wanted them to copy Solomon. He's my husband. And Solomon hasn't a habit about him hardly that a boy wouldn't be the better for copying. I think fathers ought to look out for that, especially if they've got bright boys. The father in question looked down at his boots and said nothing. I was glad he could not see Laura's curling lip. She evidently was thinking of ways in which he might be copied that would not improve his boys. Mrs. Smith was silent only a moment, then she returned to the charge. I was thinking of that when I sat looking at your baby's fat little face and clean, sweet mouth after he had gone to sleep. What a dreadful pity it would be to have it all stained up with tobacco. They'll go to chewing before long, I suppose. Time flies fast and boys begin uncommon early nowadays. But doesn't it seem most too bad to think of it? He might have been an uninterested third person to judge by the innocent tones of Mrs. Smith's voice. It was certainly a bold experiment. I watched him curiously to see how he would take it. His dark reddish skin grew a shade redder, and his eyes flashed a little. But the wrinkled old face was so kind, and the large old hand padded his sleeping baby so tenderly, that, apparently without knowing it, his face softened. He moved uneasily, as one unwilling to leave the subject, yet unwilling to talk about it. I don't know as I care about my young ones taking to chewing. He said at last, not while they are boys anyhow. I calculate to bring them up about right, and smoking and chewing is no kind of business for a boy. Well, I don't know. Don't it seem kind of a pity that a boy couldn't be allowed to copy his father? It seems so natural like they begin it before they get their first boots, and they're always at it, trying to walk like father, and eat like father, and talk like father. That is, if they have good fathers. It seems almost as if it was what the heavenly father intended, one of the ways to teach them. Don't you think so? He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. This was evidently a new idea, and suggested other serious thoughts to him. There is no particular harm in chewing that I know of, said he at last in a dogged sort of tone. Well, said Mrs. Smith, tucking a plaid shell carefully about the baby, I always thought that depended on what you chewed. Tobacco now brings a good deal of harm along with it, besides spoiling of the breath and making things untidy all around. And whether she meant it or not, her eyes wandered to the baby's cookie, still swimming in the river of tobacco. It's injurious to health and expensive. I know all about it, you see. I had a cousin once who smoked and chewed up a whole farm well stocked. A farm? Repeated the father, his voice expressing astonishment and incredulity. Not a very large one, I guess. Well, as to that, it was pretty considerable of a farm for them times. Forty acres or so, all in good order, and cows and horses and farming utensils all complete, and he just made away with the whole thing. Smoking and chewing? Well, that was the beginning. You see, his father took to smoking soon after he was married. Then he went to chewing, and the boy, when he was a little fellow, liked the smell of tobacco, seemed to kind of hanker after it. Inherited the taste from his own father, you see. He wasn't to blame poor fellow, he wasn't fourteen when he could smoke a cigar with the best of them, and it worked just as it often does. By and by, tobacco didn't satisfy him. Nothing that he could smoke or chew was strong enough for the craving he felt. It was born in him poor boy. He'd tried beer, and then brandy, and after a while he couldn't seem to live at all without having a bottle in one pocket and a chunk of tobacco in the other. Of course he chewed up and swallowed down the whole of that farm. Didn't leave enough of it to buy him a coffin, or bury him, so the town buried him. The father's money was all gone, of course, but he is living yet, the father is, and manages to get enough money to keep him puffing and spitting. He's a queer father now, ain't he? When he looked on and saw all that, and just chewed and puffed away. He never drunk a drop in his life, so far as I know, the tobacco satisfies him. But when the next generation took the disease, they took it stronger, just as they're apt to, and tobacco didn't do. Some things is queer. Thus concluded Mrs. Smith, rubbing her chin meditatively with her disengaged hand, while with the other she padded the baby. I studied her quiet face and tried to decide whether she really knew that she had been reading the father the sharpest kind of a lecture on parental responsibility and inherited tendencies. Well, said the father at last, after turning quite to one side to eject a quid of tobacco. While, he continued, I've known boys who didn't smoke or chew, though their fathers did. That's true, said Mrs. Smith pleasantly. Oh yes, that's true. If there weren't a sign of a chance for the children, it would be awful. But then the chances are against them, dreadfully against them, and the curious part of it is, if they have nice, good fathers who do about writing other things, the chances against them are a great deal worse, because you see they can't help kind of wanting to follow father and be like him, and they can't see no harm in what he does. It seems a dreadful pity for a father to keep doing what he wouldn't want to have his boy do for a good deal. That's an uncommon fine-shaped head of your Johnny's. He is great on mimicking, isn't he? You ought to have heard him tell me how the engine went. He had it complete. This sudden transition from tobacco to Johnny surprised me, but the father answered with a gratified nod. He mimics everything and everybody like a monkey. Then immediately that dark red streak rolled up into his face again. He plainly saw that he had caught himself in the meshes of his own admission. He went back to his sleeping wife, and if I am a judge of faces he revolved two thoughts. What if the old lady is right and the little monkey should go to mimicking me? And, I don't want the little scamp to smoke or chew. I don't see the harm in it for me, but it is different with him. I'd just as soon he wouldn't. CHAPTER VI I couldn't do such things, Mama. Laura had said to me earnestly as she watched Mrs. Smith cuddling the baby. Nice sweet children I can fondle, but these are so disagreeable looking, and the father and mother are disagreeable. Besides, what is the use? She will wash their faces, but how long will they stay clean, and when will they be washed again? And what does it matter anyway? As she poured these questions out on me, seemingly irritated over her own thoughts, they amused me so much that I could only laugh in answer, and wonder who was arguing with Laura to convince her that she ought to be as benevolent as Mrs. Smith. But while the conversation between the father and his new friend was in progress, I noticed that Laura had drawn the boy Johnny to her side, had shown him the machinery of her watch, and the queer little picture set in the charm, had allowed him to finger the chain, and then to count the bright buttons on her sack, and finally seated him beside her and was in full tide of earnest talk. He really is an interesting little fellow, she explained to me with a slight blush and laugh as she saw me watching her. The baby took a long nap, and awoke in peace, was straightened out and kissed and made comfortable by Mrs. Smith before the mother roused from what had evidently been her first rest since the journey began. I had noticed with interest that, after the father took his seat again, he had carefully drawn his wife's head from an uncomfortable position and rested it on his shoulder, after which he sat in perfect quiet, neither spitting nor reading until the nap was concluded. The tired woman awoke with a start as if she had stolen time from duty, and her cheeks grew hot over the condition of things. I either saw, or fancied I saw, a shy sort of smile quiver for an instant on her face as she observed where her head was resting. If I am not mistaken, such care for her comfort was new, and was born of the example set by our old lady. She came with haste and thanks over to her smiling baby. He is as good as gold, said Mrs. Smith, and she made room for the mother to sit beside her, asking a question that detained her. There was some earnest talking after that. Baby accepted of his cleansed and newly filled bottle with a smile of satisfaction, and absorbed himself with its contents while the two women talked. Of course I did not hear the words, but the change on the younger woman's face was so rapid and so marked that there was a sort of a fascination in watching it. She ceased speaking presently, dropping into the role of a listener, and occasionally lifted an ungloved hand, seemed with many days of hard work, and wiped away a tear. Suddenly there was a commotion. Sooner than they had expected the station at which they were supposed to stop was called out, and it took us all, working rapidly, to robe the baby and Johnny, and see that no bundles or baskets were left behind. There was little time for farewells, though both mother and father managed to grasp Mrs. Smith's hand, and I am sure I heard the mother murmur low, God bless you, I will not forget. As for Laura, she kissed Johnny heartily, and bought an apple and a bag of nuts for his comfort. Poor thing, said Mrs. Smith, as the cars having filled up, Laura established her once more in the seat beside me. Poor mother! There she is, trying to bring up them two babies without any of his help. The pronoun was so reverently spoken that I acknowledged my stupidity and absent-mindedness in asking, who, her husband? No, spoken meditatively, I didn't mean her husband, though the Lord does use that name to make us feel how tender he is of us. I don't know as I ever thought of it that way before, queer I didn't, too, when I have Solomon. Thy maker is thy husband, them are his very words, and then, when he is calling on his people to turn away from their follies and do right, he says, for I am married unto you. Shouldn't you think that the young men and women would take right good care how they made the wedding promises, when they saw from that how much they ought to mean? Thy maker is thy husband, ain't that wonderful now? I suppose Solomon has thought about that verse a good deal, but it never came to me just like this before. No, child, I was thinking of her trying to get along without the Lord's help. Think of trying to bring up children in this wicked world without asking the Lord about it all. Boys at that! Satan seems to have a special spite at boys. I've often wondered whether it wasn't because they was apt to be out and out something. Girls now can slip along somehow, and be six of one and half a dozen of the other, and not much of anything. But boys are either downright good or downright bad. That's true, Laura. You needn't go to shaking your pretty head at it. Satan don't much care which side you are on, so long as he can keep you just about milk warm. That's the kind that sorta sickens folks. Violin hot water won't do it, and ice cold water won't do it. I tell you, it's the halfway between things that do the mischief. And are girls always halfway between Auntie? Oh, not all of them, bless the Lord. But then they're more apt than boys not to know what they think, nor which way they may happen to turn. So you can never be sure of them. That's the reason they do much mischief. A downright wicked man you can look out for. You know just about where he will stand on all questions, and you can plan accordingly. But a slippery sort of halfway one you may coax into a corner where you would like to have him stay a while, and when you go to look for him he ain't there. He has slipped out at some knot hole and gone. They was uncommon interesting folks somehow that family wasn't they? When I felt that little baby's heart beating away close to mine I couldn't help asking the Lord to keep him safe. There's such a lot of evil to keep him from. How that mother can stand it without running to him every few minutes I don't see. And there he is willing to be as interested in it all as even her husband could be. Thy maker is thy husband. I wish I had thought of that verse to tell her. If you had said it right out when you was thinking of it you might have done a sight of good. I winced under this unintentional rebuke. Mrs. Smith's mind ran so much on Bible words that the connection was complete to her, but I had not thought of the verse. Still, I said, it might not have done any good if I had. The woman did not impress me as one who had very refined ideas of the marriage relation. I doubt if the figure would have helped her. Mrs. Smith shook her head emphatically. Yes, she had. Real true ideas. When she talked of her trials she took great pains. Went out of her way, in fact, to show me that her husband weren't no ways to blame. Was as good a man as ever lived and provided all he could for the family. She's true enough to them promises. The trouble is she hasn't thought much of anything about the Lord all these years. Sent two babies to live in the other city, too. I asked her if she didn't feel grateful like to him for taking care of them for her and keeping of them safe for her. I told her I didn't see how she ever stood beside their graves and had them covered up, unless she was leaning on him all the while and hearing his voice a whispering, I've got them in my arms this minute and I'll carry them in my bosom. How do folks get through the dark places without the Lord? I don't understand it. If the sun shone year in and year out and there weren't any such thing as trouble seems to me it would be hard enough. But when the clouds are thicker than the sunshine it beats me. At this point there came one of those nuisances of modern travel, a peanut and candy and apple and orange and book boy, making his way through the car pitching packages of prize candy right and left. I thought there was a lot against gambling, complained Laura in a somewhat fretful tone. News agents on the cars always trouble her. There's no gambling about these, ma'am, explained the bright-faced young man respectfully. There's a prize in every single package. Where at Laura laughed but Mrs. Smith said, A prize in every one, eh? Nobody need go without unless they choose. Why, what a good illustration that is. A great many folks choose to go without, don't they? I that they do and complain of you for offering them a chance, he said significantly. So they do about the other prize, she said gravely. I've heard them many a time. They think folks are meddling with what don't concern them, and they wish they'd mine their own business, and all in life you are after is to get them to take a prize that's ready and waiting for them. The flush on the young man's face led me to think that he understood the illustration, but he moved on without making any answer, and Mrs. Smith fingered the paper of candy curiously, read the statements concerning it carefully, and then got out her old fashioned leather purse that had belonged to Solomon since he was a young man, and counted out ten cents ready for the agent's return. I've decided to buy a prize, she said looking up at him with a smiling face, though my prize that I'm talking about is without money and without price. Not that it didn't cost enough, but a rich friend paid for it. It is impossible to give you an idea of the sweet earnestness on her face as she said these words. The young man seemed by no means displeased, yet he had no answer other than to say, you'll find the candy fresh and good, ideal in honest articles. Then Mrs. Smith fumbled for her key and unlocked with some trouble the old fashioned satchel at her feet, and got out and studied over carefully certain little paper-covered books, selecting one presently whose title was The Great Prize, and underneath was printed in black letters, with a hand pointing to it, so run that ye may obtain. In the course of the next hour the busy young agent whisked through the car again, and was halted by a winning beckon from Mrs. Smith's hand. I tried your prize, she said briskly, and it's real good too. Nice fresh candy, the kind I like. Now I want you to look into the prize I was telling you about. If you'll read this little book, it will give you the whole story. Will you do it? Turn about his fair play, he said, laughing, albeit the color deepened on his cheeks. How much is to pay? Not a cent. Didn't I tell you the prize was free? You will be sure to read it? Remember, you promised an old woman. I'll read it, he said, and went on his way. I hope I'll meet that young man in the father's house. Was Mrs. Smith's simple comment? I wish I had asked him his name, but then I'll remember the face. In the due course of time we spread out our lunch and dined. Mary had pleased herself in preparing a sumptuous one, which Laura arranged on the seat in as dainty a fashion as her limits would allow, bewailing meantime the fact that there was no palace car with its portable tables on this train. Mrs. Smith had also a capacious basket, from which she produced generous slices of bread and butter sandwiched with baked beans. I think we never told Mary how delicious those sandwiches were, nor how we neglected the cream biscuit and cold chicken to enjoy them. A ready-faced German family, seated a few seats forward of us, had claimed our attention more than once. They were neat and clean and quiet looking. Two of the children had petitioned with hungry eyes for fruits and candies from the passing baskets. Their appeals, however, being always denied by wise shakes of the head from father or mother. I believe those children are hungry. Laura said as we were spreading our meal, see how wistfully they watch us. Mrs. Smith said nothing. I had not thought that she heard, but she suddenly laid down her own sandwich, dived into the bottom of her basket for three others, large, thick, substantial, and went toward the German group. Eager words followed in a jargon that the old lady did not in the least understand. Knottings of heads, smiles, German thanks, and she came back richer with the gratitude of warm hearts. While she was absent, Laura made this brief comment. I think of things to do, and Mrs. Smith does them. I was just wishing I had the courage to give those people some of our lunch. The courage? Did the act call for any special grace in that direction? Oh, I don't know. Suppose they had been indignant, thought I was offering them charity, and refused it. Wouldn't that have been dreadful, I said. I don't think you could have survived such an affliction. Laura laughed. The child is a little inclined to moral cowardice in these minor directions. Mrs. Smith trotted back presently with some bright-looking cards, illuminated texts in the German language. There are so many little Germans live in that lain back of our house. She explained to me, half apologetically, as I watched her selecting them with care. I keep a lot of these on hand. The children like them, and seeing they are the Lord's own words, there is no reason why he can't use them for his glory if he thinks best. Laura said I as she trotted away with them. Mrs. Smith gives more than lunches. They are only to prepare the way for that which she believes the Lord will use. Yes, I'm, Laura said, looking at me with laughing eyes, in which they're shown tears. I couldn't do that part, but I might have helped to prepare the way. I wonder if some of this cake would have any influence in that direction. Then, after a moment of silence, Mama, there is another thing that keeps me back quite as much as the danger of being misunderstood and harshly repulsed. I'm afraid of ridicule. See how that elegantly dressed lady, sitting just behind those Germans, is watching her and whispering to the gentleman at her side. They are enjoying themselves at her expense. When they get home tonight they will tell how she looked and acted, and repeat all the queer things she's said, and make their audience shout with laughter. Now I'm afraid of ridicule. It shrivels me all up, and it makes me indignant to think that she is the subject of their fun. You draw on your imagination for facts, I said. Remember you are by no means certain that they are ridiculing her. But Laura gave her head a positive shake. Yes, I am, as sure of it as though I heard what they are saying. They look like people of that class. Mrs. Smith came back to us presently, but her ministrations were not over. The elegantly dressed lady and gentleman had by no means escaped her sharp eyes. She had designs on them. While I was up there, she began addressing herself to Laura. I heard that lady in the silk cloak say that she was so thirsty that it made her head ache, and that she would give anything for a bunch of grapes. He tried to get her some, but grapes ain't plenty this time of year, you know. I was thinking, dear, that if you would take her a few of that great big bunch you've got left, it might do a sight of good. Poor thing, she looks tired out. Poor Laura flushed to the temples. Her moral cowardice, or whatever it is that holds her back, came to the front at once. I couldn't do it! she said in a distressed tone. They would consider it an impertinence. She might have the grapes and welcome if she would come after them, but I can't get up courage to offer them. I don't believe she will come, said Mrs. Smith dryly. Maybe you could get up courage to give them to me, then, and I'll run the risk of her thinking me impertinent. Of course Laura was lavish at once with her grapes, and Mrs. Smith hurried away, not without stopping, however, to hunt over her package of little books. I like to slip in one of his messages for the thirsty soul whenever the Lord gives me a chance. She's said by way of explanation. Mama, I wish she wouldn't! Laura said, twisting nervously in her seat. The idea of offering a tract to such a stylishly dressed lady is that. Seems to me it is just another instance of casting pearls before swine. End of chapter 6