All He Knew(@@), John Habberton [good beach reads .txt] 📗

all kinds, but he frequently confided to his wife that one of the most satisfactory proofs to him of the divine origin of the church was that those already inside it were those most in need of spiritual ministrations. He had reclaimed some sad sinners of the baser sort from time to time with very little effort, but people concerning whom he frequently lay awake nights were men and women who were nominally in good standing in his own denomination and in the particular flock over which he was shepherd.

He had therefore made no particular haste to call on Sam Kimper, being entirely satisfied, as he told his wife, his only confidante, that so long as the man was following the course which he was reported to have laid down for himself he was not likely to go far astray, whereas a number of members of the congregation, men of far more influence in the community, seemed determined to break from the straight and narrow way at very slight provocation, and among these, the reverend doctor sadly informed his wife, he feared Deacon Quickset was the principal. The deacon was a persistent man in business,--"diligent in business" was the deacon's own expression in justification of whatever neglect his own wife might chance to charge him with,--but it seemed to some business-men of the town, as well as to his own pastor, that the deacon's diligence was overdoing itself, and that, in the language of one of the store-keepers, he had picked up a great deal more than he could carry. He was a director in a bank, agent for several insurance companies, manager of a land-improvement company, general speculator in real estate, and a man who had been charged with the care of a great deal of property which had belonged to old acquaintances now deceased. That he should be very busy was quite natural, but that his promises sometimes failed of fulfilment was none the less annoying, and once in a while unpleasant rumors were heard in the town about the deacon's financial standing and about his manner of doing business. Still, Dr. Guide did not drop Sam Kimper from his mind, and one day when he chanced to be in the vicinity of Larry Highgetty's shop he opened the door, bowed courteously to the figure at the bench, accepted a chair, and sat for a moment wondering what he should say to the man whom he was expected by the deacon to bring into his own church.

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"Mr. Kimper," said the reverend gentleman, finally, "I trust you are getting along satisfactorily in the very good way in which I am told you have started."

"I can't say that I've any fault to find, sir," said the shoemaker, "though I've no doubt that a man of your learnin' an' brains could see a great deal wrong in me."

"Don't trouble yourself about that, my good fellow," said the minister: "you will not be judged by my learning or brains or those of any one else except yourself. I merely called to say that at any time that you are puzzled about any matter of belief, or feel that you should go further than you already have done, I would be very glad to be of any service to you if I can. You are quite welcome to call upon me at my home at almost any time, and of course you know where I can always be found on Sundays."

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," said the cobbler, "but somehow when I go to thinkin' much about such things I don't feel so much like askin' other people questions or about learnin' anythin' else as I do about askin' if it isn't a most wonderful thing, after all, that I've been able to change about as I have, an' that I haven't tumbled backwards again into any of my old ways. You don't know what those ways is, I s'pose, Dr. Guide, do you?"

"Well, no," said the minister, "I can't say that my personal experience has taught me very much about them."

"Of course not, sir; that I might know. Of course I didn't mean anything of that kind. But I sometimes wonder whether gentlemen like you, that was born respectable an' always was decent, an' has had the best of company all your lives, an' never had any bad habits, can know what an awful hole some of us poor common fellows sometimes get down into, an' don't seem to know how to get out of. I s'pose, sir, there must have been lots of folks of that kind when Jesus was around on the world alive: don't you think so?"

"No doubt, no doubt," said the minister, looking into his hat as if with his eyes he was trying to make some notes for remarks on the succeeding Sunday.

CHAPTER XII page 74

"You know, sir, that in what's written about Him they have a good deal to say about the lots of attention that He gave to the poor. I s'pose, if poor folks was then like they are now, most of them was that way through some faults of their own; because every body in this town that behaves himself an' always behaved himself manages to get along well enough. It does seem to me, sir, that He must have gone about among folks a good deal like me."

"That view of the matter never occurred to me," said the reverend gentleman, "and yet possibly there is a great deal to it. You know, Mr. Kimper, that was a long time ago. There was very little education in those times, and the people among whom He moved were captives of a stronger nation, and they seem to have been in a destitute and troubled condition."

"Yes," said Sam, interrupting the speaker, "an' I guess a good many of them were as bad off as me, because, if you remember, He said a good deal about them that was in prison an' that was visited there. Now, sir, it kind o' seems to me in this town--I think I know a good deal about it, because I've never been able to associate with anybody except folks like myself--it seems to me that sort of people don't get any sort of attention nowadays."

The minister assumed his conventional air of dignity, and replied, quickly,--

"I assure you, you are very much mistaken, so far as I am concerned. I think I know them all by name, and have made special visits to all of them, and tried to make them feel assured of the sympathy of those who by nature or education or circumstance chance to be better off than they."

"That ain't exactly what I meant, sir," said the cobbler. "Such folks get kind words pretty often, but somehow nobody ever takes hold of them an' pulls them out of the hole they are in, like Jesus used to seem to do. I s'pose ministers an' deacons an' such folks can't work miracles like He did, an' if they haven't got it in 'em to pull 'em out, why, I s'pose they can't do it. But I do assure you, sir, that there's a good deal of chance to do that kind of work in this town, an' if there had been any of it done when I was a boy, I don't believe I'd ever have got into the penitentiary."

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Just then Dr. Brice, one of the village physicians, dropped into the shop, and the minister, somewhat confused, arose, and said,--

"Well, Mr. Kimper, I am very much obliged to you for your views. I assure you that I shall give them careful thought. Good day, sir."

"Sam," said Dr. Brice, who was a slight, nervous, excitable man, "I'm not your regular medical attendant, and I don't know that it's any of my business, but I've come in here in a friendly way to say to you that, if all I hear about your working all day and most of the night too, is true, you are going to break down. You can't stand it, my boy: human nature isn't made in that way. You have got a wife and family, and you seem to be trying real hard to take care of them. But you can't burn the candle at both ends without having the fire flicker out in the middle all of a sudden, and perhaps just when you can least afford it. Now, do take better care of yourself. You have made a splendid start, and there are more people than you know of in this town who are looking at you with a great deal of respect. They want to see you succeed, and if you want any help at it I am sure you can get it; but don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Don't break yourself up, or there won't be anybody to help. Don't you see?"

The shoemaker looked up at the good-natured doctor with a quick expression, and said,--

"Doctor, I'm not doin' any more than I have to, to keep soul and body together in the family. If I stop any of it, I've got to stop carryin' things home."

"Oh well," said the doctor, "that may be, that may be. But I'm simply warning you, as a fellow-man, that you must look out for yourself. It's all right to trust the Lord, but the Lord isn't going to give any one man strength enough to do two men's work. I have been in medical practice forty years, and I have never seen a case of that kind yet. That's all. I'm in a hurry,--got half a dozen people to see. Don't feel offended at anything I've said