University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
IN WHICH ARTHUR MAKES A GREAT MANY NEW FRIENDS, AND
LOSES THE MOST PRECIOUS FRIEND HE HAS.

Saturday night brought the expected visitor, and
the expected visitor brought with him his accustomed
fund of talk and high animal spirits, besides a couple of
friends, whom he left at the hotel, and whom he did not
speak of to Fanny. Fanny questioned him about his
family, inquired after Mr. Kilgore, and finally spoke of
“Rhododendron.” It had been a great success, and
continued to be. Then Fanny wanted to know what
brought him to Crampton. He had come, he said, to
pay to her her copyright on the books thus far sold,
and to urge her to write another book. Any thing she
would write now, the public would read. A wild sweep
of the old ambition passed through her soul, but it died
as the new motives which had found foothold there
asserted themselves. No—she should write no more
books—at least, not now, nor soon. Frank Sargent
affected great disappointment; he was “sorry to lose
his journey,” and so on, through a large amount of innocent
dissembling.

“By the way,” said the doctor, with an air of affected
chagrin and disappointment, “I understand that Arthur
Blague is to preach to-morrow. Sorry you can't hear
our regular minister.”

“What a pity!” exclaimed Mr. Sargent.

Fanny bit her lip. “I think you will have no reason
to regret the change,” said she.

“Does he amount to any thing?” inquired Frank
Sargent.

“If you wish to know my opinion of him,” replied
Fanny, “it is that he amounts to more than all the
Wiltons there are in the world. I certainly know of
no man in New York whom I consider his equal in
natural gifts, in natural eloquence, or”—and Fanny's
lips hesitated to pronounce judgment on a subject not
long used to them—“in Christian piety.”

“That is your candid opinion, is it?” said Mr. Sargent,
with a shrewd twinkle of the eye.

“That is my candid opinion. What do you look at
me in that way for?”

“Nothing;” and then Frank Sargent looked in the
doctor's face, and they both indulged in a hearty laugh,
which left Fanny very deeply puzzled.

Then Mr. Sargent went on plying Fanny with questions
with relation to the young minister; drawing her
out in regard to his social qualities; exciting her into
defending him from some disparaging remark, and keeping
her engaged in talking about him. At last, she
went into his history, and closed with the narrative of
her experience in the study. Then he inquired about
Jamie, and asked whether it was thought that he could
live long, and manifested such a marked interest in the

young man and his affairs, that Fanny became still more
puzzled over the matter. He explained himself by remarking
that he had heard Mary talk so much about
Arthur that he felt quite interested in him. In fact, he
was glad, on the whole, he was going to preach on the
morrow. Mary would be glad to hear from Arthur,
and to learn what kind of a figure he made in the pulpit.
Then Mr. Sargent and the doctor looked one another in
the face again, and laughed as before.

Fanny was much inclined to be offended. “Excellent
joke! isn't it, now?” said she.

As Mr. Sargent had pushed matters far enough, he
changed the subject, and spent the remainder of the
evening in a rattling conversation on a great variety of
topics, and, at last, went to bed.

After breakfast and family devotions the next morning,
Mr. Sargent announced his determination to go
over to the hotel, and see if there were not somebody
there whom he knew, promising to return in season to
accompany Fanny to church. He found at the hotel
his brace of New York friends—saints of his own pattern—specimens
of young America sanctified—one of
them a flashy gentleman, with a moustache on his lip,
and a cigar under it, and the other an overworked, lean,
wiry little man of thirty-five, prefaced by a violent diamond
breastpin.

“Made any discoveries?” inquired Mr. Frank Sargent.

“Yes, we've been pumping some—all right as far
as it goes—very popular—must draw, according to all
accounts,” replied the little man with the breastpin.

“Messenger breed,” responded the moustache and

cigar— strong, rangy, large, good bottom, handsome,
speed enough for all practical purposes, and kind.
Found out any thing, Sargent?”

“Well,” said Mr. Sargent, “I have had a talk with
the smartest woman in New Hampshire—with the
writer of `Rhododendron.' I would give a hundred
dollars to have you hear, as she told it to me, the story
of this man's life.” Then Frank Sargent went on in his
most eloquent style, to repeat the story, and it certainly
lost very little in passing through his lips.

Let no profane person suppose that these men—
talking so lightly, so jocularly, in fact, about the
young minister—were men who held his office in
low esteem, or regarded his work with indifference.
They were business men—Christian business men—
whose efficiency and practical devotion in pushing on all
Christian enterprises in their city home, had secured for
them the appointment to the mission in which we find
them engaged. They were workers and givers, with
busy hands and tongues, and open purses. Relieved
from the cares of business for the time, and thrown together
under such pleasant circumstances away from
home, their hearts were light, indeed, but they were
prepared to attend the ministrations of the day with
tractable hearts, and to judge of them with minds rendered
keen and catholic by large intercourse with the
world and a practical knowledge of its wants. A saint in
a moustache had never been seen in Crampton, and lively
religious people, in smart overcoats and good boots,
were by no means common, so that the errand of this
trio was not likely to be suspected by the multitude.

“Is he matched?” inquired Moustache, intent on

keeping up his equine figure. (Moustache drove a very
fine horse at home, and loved him.)

“Well—doubtful,” replied Mr. Frank Sargent.

“Ought to be. Girls will all be after him. Besides,
it will take a double team to do our work.”

“Never mind that,” responded the breastpin, very
decidedly. “All decent men get married, of course;
and any man who is good enough to be a minister will
attend to all his Christian duties, in time.” (Breastpin
married young, and was the father of six children.)

“The old man had got it all fixed, had he?” inquired
Moustache.

“Every thing arranged,” replied Mr. Sargent, “and
nobody suspects any thing. If we don't like him, all
we've got to do is to go back, and take a new trail; and
nobody here will be the wiser for our visit. If we do
like him, why, then we'll try to make him like us—
that's all.”

After an hour spent with his New York associates,
the first morning bells rang out from the church belfries,
and Frank Sargent walked back to the house of
Dr. Gilbert, to fulfil his pledge to Fanny. When Arthur
Blague mounted the pulpit that morning, there
were three strangers in the church, who not only measured
his form and gait, but who noticed the manner in
which his hair was parted, examined his neck-tie, scanned
his linen, and criticized the squeak of his boots. These
strangers did not sit together, but were distributed in
different parts of the church—one at the extreme rear,
for the better measurement of the power of his voice.

Arthur rose, and invoked the divine blessing in
calm words that seemed to come from the depths of his

soul, as if—conscious of his weakness and his dependence
at all times—he could absolutely do nothing then
and there without aid. When he pronounced his
“Amen” over the hushed assembly, Moustache looked
at Breastpin and gave a slow wink, and Breastpin responded
with a little nod. Arthur had made an impression.
As for Frank Sargent, he forgot all about
his mission and his New York associates, in his interest
in the services of the morning; and Fanny, who sat by
his side, was no less interested than he. The sermon
was well calculated to make critics forget to criticize,
because it was written to accomplish a purpose infinitely
higher than the satisfaction of a critical judgment. It
was a revelation of the great motives of a great life;
and the audience was moved by it as a forest bows to
the breath of a mighty wind. They felt its power, forgetting
for the moment over what sea it came—on what
cloud it rode—and conscious only that it was from
heaven.

After the morning exercises were finished, the New
Yorkers quietly took their way to the hotel without
speaking to each other, and met in their common parlor.
Moustache was in a state of profound excitement, which
he undertook to modify in some degree by lighting a
cigar. “I told you he was Messenger stock,” said he—
“Gospel Messenger, and no mistake.”

“Well, on the whole, what do you think of him?”
said Mr. Sargent, through whose influence entirely his
friends on the “Committee of Supply” had visited
Crampton.

“What's the use of asking?” said Breastpin.
“What prayers! Now that man prays for what he

wants, and not for what he thinks he ought to want.
What is a prayer good for that scatters all over Robin
Hood's barn?”

“Well, now—that's so!” responded Moustache.
“There are some prayers that seem to me like a man
out with a lantern in the night, trying to find an
`Amen,' and looking into all the dark corners, and
poking over the stones, and going up hills, and diving
into valleys, and climbing up trees, and rummaging
things miscellaneously, till he finds it, if it takes him a
week. You can't follow such a prayer as that. You
always go to looking after the `Amen' yourself, and
find it first, sure.”

“And then,” said Breastpin, “those prayers that
seem to be chapters out of the Cyclopedia of Useful
Information.”

“For the benefit of the Deity,” suggested Mr.
Frank Sargent.

“Now there is nothing of the kind in this fellow,”
resumed Moustache. “Straightforward talk—lifted right
up from the lower shelf. I looked at him, and cried all
the time. He's a—he's a magnificent man, and we
might just as well make out a programme of exercises
for his ordination, as any way. Sargent, draw up a
call. What's the use of being lazy?”

Mr. Sargent and Breastpin laughed. “First catch
your hare,” said the former.

“Previously having your cooking utensils ready,”
responded Moustache.

“There's time enough for all these things,” said
Frank Sargent, and, taking up his hat, he left his companions

in a very happy frame of mind, and walked
over to dine with Dr. Gilbert.

The afternoon services passed off like those of the
morning, confirming the good impression already produced,
and convincing the New York “Committee of
Supply” that if they could supply such material as they
had discovered to their congregation at home, it would
be the best thing in their power to do. In the
evening, Frank Sargent asked liberty of Dr. Gilbert
and Fanny to invite his New York friends over; and
they came, passing the evening in the discussion of the
sermons and the young man who had preached them.
Fanny had already begun to suspect the nature of their
errand, and lent her tongue gladly in favor of her
friend.

Before they retired, it was arranged that the whole
party should dine with Dr. Gilbert the next day, and
that Arthur should be invited to meet them, so that they
could have an opportunity of judging of his social
qualities.

At the appointed hour, on Monday, Arthur Blague
walked into Dr. Gilbert's parlor, and was presented to
the New Yorkers. Mr. Frank Sargent had already
called upon him as an old acquaintance. Fanny, conscious
of her power to engage the conversational faculties
of her friend, quietly took the business into her own
hands, while the New Yorkers, with a modesty quite
unusual with them, became listeners, so far as possible.
Ah, Fanny! She did not dream that those keen, quiet,
critical eyes were examining her qualifications for a
minister's wife, all the time. It did not enter her
thought, at all, that above that dark moustache was an

eye that was measuring her power to “match” that of
Arthur. It was a very pretty exhibition, and abundantly
satisfactory. A heartier, happier tableful of
friends had never gathered about Dr. Gilbert's board.

Dessert came on, and then Dr. Gilbert, according
to previous arrangement, said: “Arthur, these gentlemen
came from New York to hear you preach yesterday,
with a view to giving you a call to a new church
which they have been instrumental in gathering in their
city. We have fairly entrapped you, and now I shall
let them speak for themselves.”

Arthur smiled. No shadow of surprise passed over
his features. He was as cool and collected as possible.

“You receive the news as if it were an every-day
affair,” said Miss Gilbert.

“It is not news,” Arthur replied.

“Who told you?”

“My good friend Tom Lampson, the conductor, who
said,” continued Arthur, laughing, “that he could tell a
pack of minister-hunters as readily as he could a bridal
party.”

There was a general laugh, at the expense of
the “pack;” the “pack” itself joining very heartily
in it.

“Well,” said Mr. Sargent, “as we understand one
another, we may as well proceed to business.” Then
he revealed the nature of the enterprise in which he proposed
to engage Arthur Blague. He and his companions
had been members of an old, overgrown, lazy
church, full of inert material, and so crowded with men
and money that it could not stir. In fact, it had become
a very slow institution—one in which they could

not feel at home at all. They wanted more work, and
had accordingly swarmed, with a large number of the
younger portion of the church and congregation, and,
“roping in” a goodly company of others, belonging to
different societies, had built a new church edifice, organized,
and got ready for operations. They had all
“bled” profusely, and proposed to bleed to any desirable
extent for the success of the enterprise. All they
wanted was a minister. There were plenty of ministers
in the market, but they were all slow. Mr. Sargent,
for himself, and on behalf of his associates, wished
to express his entire satisfaction with the young man
who preached for them the previous day, and to institute
some practicable measures for getting him to New
York.

Thus the business was opened for discussion. There
was no more levity among the members of the deeply
interested group. The “Committee of Supply” had
made its decision, and they were ready to talk in earnest.
They did talk in earnest. Arthur presented the difficulties
in the way of his leaving Crampton for the present, and
they set themselves vigorously to work to bear them
down. At last, he felt himself compelled to compromise
with them. He would accept no call from them; but if,
in the course of the winter, he could leave his brother long
enough, he would preach for them a few Sabbaths; and
then, if they did not change their mind, and the congregation
seconded them, he would agree to consider a call.

Miss Gilbert was ready in a moment. “You can
go any time when you will, and I will assist your
mother in taking care of Jamie,” said she.

At this, they all rose from the table and returned

to the parlor. There Mr. Sargent took Arthur by the
button-hole, and enlarged upon the desirableness of the
situation to which they invited him, and the field of usefulness
that would be opened to him, assuring him that
he would find in Moustache and Breastpin a pair of the
most splendid workers in New York. Then Moustache
took him by the button-hole, and assured him that he
would look after his health, giving him an airing every
day on the Avenue, if he liked it, after a horse that had
constitutional objections to being passed on the way.
He closed by assuring him that Frank Sargent and
Breastpin were the most efficient and desirable men in
a church that it was possible to conceive. When Moustache
relinquished the young minister, the vacated button-hole
was seized by Breastpin, who told him how
reluctantly he had come to see him, how much and how
happily he had been disappointed, how sorry he was to
leave Crampton, how he could not go unless Arthur
accompanied him, how he hoped at no distant day to
make the acquaintance of Mrs. Arthur Blague—their
new minister's wife—how he—Breastpin—must not be
taken by Arthur as a fair specimen of the church, what
a fine building they had to worship in, and how, had it
not been for Frank Sargent and Moustache, the enterprise
never could have succeeded in the world.

There was no escaping these importunities without a
definite promise of some kind, and it was finally given.
Fanny having agreed to share with Mrs. Blague the
care of the invalid boy, Arthur promised to be in New
York on the following Sabbath, and to spend a few
weeks in the city, meeting the people, examining for
himself the condition of their enterprise, and leaving

all permanent arrangements for the future to the indications
of Providence.

It lacked but a quarter of an hour of the time for
the departure of the afternoon train. No sooner was
the decision declared, than the New Yorkers, having accomplished
their business, made their hasty adieus.
Frank Sargent ran up stairs, packed his valise, came
down, kissed Fanny and Aunt Catharine, said “God
bless you” to the doctor, and ran for the station-house.
Moustache and Breastpin flew to the hotel, paid their
bills, seized their carpet-bags and shawls, ran to the
depot, swung themselves upon the last platform as the
train moved off, greeted Frank Sargent with a cordial
“hullo!” as they took the seats he had reserved for them,
and all commenced their homeward journey in high spirits.
They talked all the way to New York, Moustache leaving
the car several times on the road, and coming back from
certain interesting conferences with the baggage-master,
smelling of smoke; and the next morning all were immersed
in business, as if nothing unusual had occurred.

They left their acquaintances in Crampton—especially
Arthur Blague—with sufficient food for reflection.
To tell the truth, his heart leaped within him as he
caught a glimpse of the work thus opened to him. To
take his stand in the metropolis of the country, among
the best minds of the age, where mental food and stimulus
abounded, seemed to him a great privilege. But
little Jamie! What could he do, if tied to him there?

Arthur had seen enough of men to know himself.
He had no misgivings touching his power to sustain himself
among the competitions of city life. The only considerations
that drew him back from entering the door

thus invitingly thrown open to him related to his brother
and his mother. He could do what he had agreed to
do, at least, and God would take care of the rest.

Toward the last of the week, Arthur having made
his arrangements, left Crampton for New York. He
tried to explain to Jamie that he should be gone for a
long, long time; and Jamie either understood his language,
or correctly interpreted his affectionate parting.
The little fellow seemed to be sadly impressed, but tried
to smile upon Fanny as she took him in her arms. He
watched his brother from the window, as he walked to
the station-house; and when he disappeared, went into
a paroxysm of difficult breathing that quite frightened
Fanny.

It would be weary work to tell of the weary work
of the following month, in the house of Mrs. Blague.
As the days came and went, and Arthur did not return,
the invalid boy seemed to sink into sick and hopeless
discouragement. The voice of a man in the hall below
—the sudden opening of a door—would excite his expectations
for a moment, and then he would shut his
eyes to hide his emotions. When the train came in,
day after day, and he saw the passengers passing through
the street, his straining, eager eyes would watch until
all passed out of sight; and then they would close again,
and the breath that had been half-suspended would come
with redoubled difficulty.

To Fanny, these weeks were weeks of trial. A single
afternoon spent with the boy when she first saw
him had tired her; but when, day after day, she subjected
herself to his service, the task often seemed unendurable.
Yet she felt that the discipline was necessary

to her. She desired, above all things, to seat herself
within the secret of Arthur Blague's life and strength.
She longed to forget herself in devotion to others, until
benevolence should become the supreme expression of
her life. As the days went by, she felt her task growing
easier. She was with the invalid during the day,
but at night she relinquished him to his mother, and
she could not deny to herself the fact that, every evening,
as she walked homeward, she had won peace and
satisfaction from the toil of the day. She felt, too,
springing up in her heart, a love for the afflicted boy
which she had never expected to feel; and learned how,
out of compassion, and pity, and ministry, love for the
forbidding is born.

At last, a letter was received from Arthur by Mrs.
Blague, fixing the day for his return. They did not try
to explain the matter to Jamie until the welcome morning,
and then they told him that Arthur would be at
home before night. The news wrought a great change
in him. He was excited, and exceedingly happy.
Smiles played upon his face all day, and his mother
testified that he was more comfortable than he had been
for years. His eyes were very bright, and when the
long whistle of the incoming train reached his ear, he
became almost hysterical with joy. As the passengers
left the train, he caught a distant view of Arthur's form,
and the little, misshapen arm swung wildly to and fro
with his intense excitement. He watched him as he approached,
his little chest laboring heavily for breath,
and when he heard his steps in the hall, he sank back
upon Fanny's arm to wait the coming of the form and
face for which he had pined so long. Arthur entered

the room, threw himself upon his knees by the side
of the boy, took him in his arms, and pressed his
face to his. There he held him for a moment, and then
suddenly put him away. The cords of life—so long
tense—had snapped. A heavenly smile was on the face
of the child, but the laboring muscles were still. Jamie
had died of joy. Happy death! Thrice happy in that
his mission to the earth was fulfilled!

When manhood, in the pride of its power, and in
the midst of its unfinished enterprises, is suddenly laid
in the arms of death, and loving women and little children
are left without a protector, grief and pity are called
to their profoundest exercise. When budding woman
fades like a flower, and is carried out to sleep with
flowers upon her bosom, those among whom she grew
are touched with an ineffably tender sympathy and sorrow.
Grief and tears for such as these the world understands;
yet when some poor sufferer—some patient
bearer of the cross, climbing painfully up the rising
years—gives up the ghost, no darkness comes upon the
world, and no veil is rent in the temple of the world's
heart. Men say, “We cannot weep. It would be
wrong to weep. We should rejoice that a life so full
of pain is ended—that suffering is swallowed up of everlasting
peace and joy.”

This was what the people of Crampton said about
the death of Jamie Blague. A hundred pairs of lungs
breathed easier because his lungs had ceased to labor.
A hundred hearts beat more freely and happily because
his had stopped. Those who loved Arthur, were glad
little Jamie was dead—not because they were hard-hearted,
but because they were tender-hearted.

But to Arthur the extinction of this painful little life
was like the going down of the sun. It left him in
darkness. In the first hour of his grief, he held him in
his arms, kissing his lifeless lips, and breathing out upon
him the wealth of his affection in endearing names and
tender expressions. Mrs. Blague was helpless under
this new calamity—the more so from the fact that Arthur
was unmanned. Fanny regarded the scene with
mingled awe and grief. She recognized, at once, the
hand of Providence in the event. The boy had done his
work for Arthur and for her; and when it was finished,
God had taken him. What a teacher had he been to
her!

Finding herself the only able to perform the
necessary offices relating to the child, she prepared his
couch, and then, kneeling before Arthur, she gently disengaged
the little body from his hands, and bore it to
the pillow on which it had breathed out so many nights
of pain. There she smoothed his hair, and composed
his limbs, and left him, with the same sweet smile upon
his features that lighted his passage into the land of rest.
Returning to her home, she bore the sad news of the
event to Aunt Catharine and the other members of the
family. In a few minutes afterwards, the facts had
found their way into the village, and willing hands came
in abundance to assist the family in their sad emergency.

When Fanny returned to the room of death, she
found Arthur kneeling at his brother's bedside, gazing
into the sweet, dead face. He rose to his feet as she
approached, and said, “Let us go down.”

The will that had submitted so long and so many
times to the Will supreme, had bowed, and he was calm.

The first shock past, there was to be no repining. He
had gone down into the deep waters of grief, with the
little foundered bark, but had risen and laid hold upon
the life-boat. The sea still tossed beneath him; and
rent and broken affections were strewn upon its surface,
but heaven was blue above him, and full of stars.

The next day a little coffin was brought into the
house, and the day following that, there was a funeral.
The house was filled in every part, and though the air
was biting, and the snow was drifting outside, the yard
was crowded with people. After a prayer was made
and a hymn sung, Arthur himself read from Paul's letter
to the Corinthians those wonderful revelations touching
the resurrection of the body which have been repeated
in the ears of so many Christian mourners. It
was with a voice full of emotion that he pronounced the
words: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption;
it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory;
it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.”

“I thank God for little Jamie,” said Arthur, as he
closed the book. “His feet were taken from him here
that mine might be trained to walk in the ways of righteousness.
His hands were palsied that mine might be
taught to give themselves in service to the weak and the
helpless. His body was racked with pain that I might
drink deeply of the cup of self-denial; but the little
body—so feeble and misshapen—which we sow to-day,
shall rise in immortal power and beauty. Then shall I
have him in my arms again, and then shall we, his lips
unsealed, thank God together.”

Arthur expressed his gratitude to the assembly for
the sympathy that had been extended to his mother and

to him, and for the multiplied acts of kindness rendered
to the little sleeper during his painful life. He intimated
that his continuance in Crampton would be of short duration—that
the work of life for which he had been so
long in preparation would soon be commenced in
another home. The only obstacle to his removal God
had taken out of the way, and he accepted the event as
the indication of his duty.

The little boy was borne out to the graveyard, to
take his place by the side of his father and the little
brothers and sisters who had long been dust. The sand
was shovelled back, and as the silent multitude moved
away, and separated, the snow came down, and covered
all the spot with its mantle of white.

Arthur walked into his still house, his mother leaning
upon his arm, feeling, for the moment, as if the
work of his life had been taken from his hands. He
wandered through the silent rooms, and paced up and
down his study, unable, in the strange circumstances in
which he found himself, to take up a book, or to engage
himself in any mental exercise. He sat down in his old
seat, took up his Bible, opened it, and read the first passage
upon which his eye fell—“Rise, let us be going.”

He cast his eyes upward, and said: “Lord, I am
ready.”