Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

know. As I said, he began with me on the crutches.” And once more Pollyanna told her story⁠—this time to a man who listened with tender eyes and understanding ears.

A little later Pollyanna and the minister descended the hill, hand in hand. Pollyanna’s face was radiant. Pollyanna loved to talk, and she had been talking now for some time: there seemed to be so many, many things about the game, her father, and the old home life that the minister wanted to know.

At the foot of the hill their ways parted, and Pollyanna down one road, and the minister down another, walked on alone.

In the Rev. Paul Ford’s study that evening the minister sat thinking. Near him on the desk lay a few loose sheets of paper⁠—his sermon notes. Under the suspended pencil in his fingers lay other sheets of paper, blank⁠—his sermon to be. But the minister was not thinking either of what he had written, or of what he intended to write. In his imagination he was far away in a little Western town with a missionary minister who was poor, sick, worried, and almost alone in the world⁠—but who was poring over the Bible to find how many times his Lord and Master had told him to “rejoice and be glad.”

After a time, with a long sigh, the Rev. Paul Ford roused himself, came back from the far Western town, and adjusted the sheets of paper under his hand.

“Matthew twenty-third; 13⁠—14 and 23,” he wrote; then, with a gesture of impatience, he dropped his pencil and pulled toward him a magazine left on the desk by his wife a few minutes before. Listlessly his tired eyes turned from paragraph to paragraph until these words arrested them:

“A father one day said to his son, Tom, who, he knew, had refused to fill his mother’s woodbox that morning: ‘Tom, I’m sure you’ll be glad to go and bring in some wood for your mother.’ And without a word Tom went. Why? Just because his father showed so plainly that he expected him to do the right thing. Suppose he had said: ‘Tom, I overheard what you said to your mother this morning, and I’m ashamed of you. Go at once and fill that woodbox!’ I’ll warrant that woodbox, would be empty yet, so far as Tom was concerned!”

On and on read the minister⁠—a word here, a line there, a paragraph somewhere else:

“What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened.⁠ ⁠… Instead of always harping on a man’s faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his real self that can dare and do and win out!⁠ ⁠… The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town.⁠ ⁠… People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes⁠—his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!⁠ ⁠… When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good⁠—you will get that.⁠ ⁠… Tell your son Tom you know he’ll be glad to fill that woodbox⁠—then watch him start, alert and interested!”

The minister dropped the paper and lifted his chin. In a moment he was on his feet, tramping the narrow room back and forth, back and forth. Later, some time later, he drew a long breath, and dropped himself in the chair at his desk.

“God helping me, I’ll do it!” he cried softly. “I’ll tell all my Toms I know they’ll be glad to fill that woodbox! I’ll give them work to do, and I’ll make them so full of the very joy of doing it that they won’t have time to look at their neighbors’ woodboxes!” And he picked up his sermon notes, tore straight through the sheets, and cast them from him, so that on one side of his chair lay “But woe unto you,” and on the other, “scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” while across the smooth white paper before him his pencil fairly flew⁠—after first drawing one black line through Matthew twenty-third; 13⁠—14 and 23.

Thus it happened that the Rev. Paul Ford’s sermon the next Sunday was a veritable bugle-call to the best that was in every man and woman and child that heard it; and its text was one of Pollyanna’s shining eight hundred:

“Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, ye righteous, and shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart.”

XXIII An Accident

At Mrs. Snow’s request, Pollyanna went one day to Dr. Chilton’s office to get the name of a medicine which Mrs. Snow had forgotten. As it chanced, Pollyanna had never before seen the inside of Dr. Chilton’s office.

“I’ve never been to your home before! This is your home, isn’t it?” she said, looking interestedly about her.

The doctor smiled a little sadly.

“Yes⁠—such as ’tis,” he answered, as he wrote something on the pad of paper in his hand; “but it’s a pretty poor apology for a home, Pollyanna. They’re just rooms, that’s all⁠—not a home.”

Pollyanna nodded her head wisely. Her eyes glowed with sympathetic understanding.

“I know. It takes a woman’s hand and heart, or a child’s presence to make a home,” she said.

“Eh?” The doctor wheeled about abruptly.

“Mr. Pendleton told me,” nodded Pollyanna, again; “about the woman’s hand and heart, or the child’s presence, you know. Why don’t you get a woman’s hand and heart, Dr. Chilton? Or maybe you’d take Jimmy Bean⁠—if Mr. Pendleton doesn’t want him.”

Dr. Chilton laughed a little constrainedly.

“So Mr. Pendleton says it takes a woman’s hand and heart to make a home, does he?” he asked evasively.

“Yes. He says his is just a house, too. Why don’t you, Dr. Chilton?”

“Why don’t I⁠—what?” The doctor had turned back to his desk.

“Get a woman’s hand and heart. Oh⁠—and I forgot.” Pollyanna’s face showed