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A feeling of awe crept over her, that a human voice could so reach the ear of the Infinite, and draw down an answer to its petition. She was almost frightened at the thought of the responsibility such an answer laid upon her. O, the childishness with which we beat against the portals as we importune high Heaven for opportunities, and then shrink back when the Almighty hands them out to us, afraid to take and use what we have most cried for!

CHAPTER IX.
A JUNIOR TAKES IT IN HAND

IT was a sultry morning in August when David Herschel took his place in the law-office of Porter & Edmunds.

The sun beat against the tall buildings until the radiated heat of the streets was sickening in its intensity. Clerks went to their work with pale faces and languid movements. Everything had a wilted look, and the watering-carts left a steam rising in their trail, almost as disagreeable as the clouds of dust had been before.

Miss Caroline had insisted on Jack's remaining at home, and Bethany's wearing a thin white dress in place of her customary suit of heavy black. They had both protested, but as Bethany went slowly towards the office she was glad that the sensible old lady had carried her point.

To shorten the distance, she passed through one of the poorer streets of the town. Disagreeable odors, suggestive of late breakfasts, floated out from steamy kitchens. Neglected, half-dressed children cried on the doorsteps and quarreled in the gutters.

A great longing came over Bethany for a breath from wide, fresh fields, or green, shady woodlands. This was the first summer she had ever passed in the city. August had always been associated in her mind with the wind in the pine woods, or the sound of the sea on some rocky coast. It recalled the musical drip of the waterfalls trickling down high banks of thickly-growing ferns. It brought back the breath of clover-fields and the mint in hillside pastures.

A strong repugnance to her work seized her. She felt that she could not possibly bear to go back to the routine of the office and the monotonous click of her typewriter. The longer she thought of those old care-free summers, the more she chafed at the confinement of the present one.

She sighed wearily as she reached the entrance of the great building. Every door and window stood open. While she waited for the elevator-boy to respond to her ring, she turned her eyes toward the street. A blind man passed by, led by a wan, sad-eyed child. The sun was beating mercilessly on the man's gray head, for his cap was held appealingly in his outstretched hand.

"How dared I feel dissatisfied with my lot?" thought Bethany, with a swift rush of pity, as the contrast between this blind beggar's life and hers was forced upon her.

There was no one in the office when she entered. After the glare of the street, it seemed so comfortable that she thought again of the blind beggar and the child who led him, with a feeling of remorse for her discontent.

A great bunch of lilies stood in a tall glass vase on the table, filling the room with their fragrance. She took out a card that was half hidden among them. Lightly penciled, in a small, running hand, was the one word – "Consider!"

"That's just like Cousin Ray," thought Bethany, quickly interpreting the message. "She knew this would be an unusually trying day on account of the heat, so she gives me something to think about instead of my irksome confinement. 'They toil not, neither do they spin,'" she whispered, lifting one snowy chalice to her lips; "but what help they bring to those who do – sweet, white evangels to all those who labor and are heavy laden!"

She fastened one in her belt, then turned to her work. She had been copying a record, and wanted to finish it before Mr. Edmunds was ready to attend to the morning mail. Her fingers flew over the keys without a pause, except when she stopped to put in a new sheet of paper. When she was nearly through, she heard Mr. Edmunds's voice in the next room, and increased her speed. She had forgotten that this was the day David Herschel was to come into the office. He had taken the desk assigned him, and was so busily engaged in conversation with Mr. Edmunds that for a while he did not notice the occupant of the next room. When, at last, he happened to glance through the open door, he did not recognize Bethany, for she was seated with her back toward him.

He noticed what a cool-looking white dress she wore, the graceful poise of her head, and her beautiful sunny hair. Then he saw the lilies beside her, and wished she would turn so that he could see her face.

"Some fair Elaine – a lily-maid of Astolat," he thought, and then smiled at himself for having grown Tennysonian over a typewriter before he had even heard her name or seen her face.

At last Bethany finished the record, with a sigh of relief. Quickly fastening the pages, she rose to take it into the next room. Just on the threshold she saw Herschel, and gave an involuntary little start of surprise.

As she stood there, all in white, with one hand against the dark door-casing, she looked just as she had the night David first saw her. He arose as she entered.

Mr. Edmunds was not usually a man of quick perceptions, but he noticed the look of admiration in David's eyes, and he thought they both seemed a trifle embarrassed as he introduced them.

They had recalled at the same moment the night in the Chattanooga depot, when she had distinctly declared to Mr. Marion that she did not care to make his acquaintance.

For once in her life she lost her usual self-possession. That gracious ease of manner which "stamps the caste of Vere de Vere" was one of her greatest charms. But just at this moment, when she wished to atone for that unfortunate remark by an especially friendly greeting, when she wanted him to know that her point of view had changed entirely, and that not a vestige of the old prejudice remained, she could not summon a word to her aid.

Conscious of appearing ill at ease, she blushed like a diffident school-girl, and bowed coldly.

David courteously remained standing until she had laid the record on Mr. Edmunds's desk and left the room.

Mr. Edmunds glanced at him quickly, as he resumed his seat; but there was not the slightest change of expression to show that he had noticed what appeared to be an intentional haughtiness of manner in Bethany's greeting. But he had noticed it, and it stung his sensitive nature more than he cared to acknowledge, even to himself.

Nothing more passed between them for several days, except the formal morning greeting. Then Jack came back to the office. He had gained rapidly since the new brace had been applied. During his enforced absence on account of the heat, he found that he could wheel himself short distances, and proudly insisted on doing so, as they went through the hall. He was a great favorite in the building. Everybody, from the janitor to the dignified judge on the same floor, stopped to speak to him. He was such a thorough boy, so full of fun and spirits, despite the misfortune that chained him to the chair and had sometimes made him suffer extremely, that the sight of him oftener provoked pleasure than pity. He was so glad to get back to the office that he was bubbling over with happiness. It seemed to him he had been away for an age. The cordial reception he met on every hand made his eyes twinkle and the dimples show in his cheeks.

Mr. Edmunds had not come down, but David was at his desk, busily writing. Bethany paused as they passed through the room.

"Allow me to introduce my little brother, Mr. Herschel," she said. "Jack is very anxious to meet you."

He glanced up quickly. This friendly-voiced girl, leaning over Jack's chair, with the brightness of his roguish face reflected in her own, was such a transformation from the dignified Miss Hallam he had known heretofore, that he could hardly credit his eyesight. He was surprised into such an unusual cordiality of manner, that Jack straightway took him into his affections, and set about cultivating a very strong friendship between them.

One afternoon Bethany was called into another office to take a deposition. She left Jack busy drawing on his slate.

David, who had been reading several hours, laid down the book after a while, with a yawn, and glanced into the next room. The steady scratch of the slate pencil had ceased, and Jack was gazing disconsolately out of the window.

As he heard the book drop on the table he turned his head quickly. "May I come in there?" he asked David eagerly.

David nodded assent. "You may come in and wake me up. The heat and the book together, have made me drowsy."

Jack pushed his chair over by a window, and looked out towards the court house. It was late in the afternoon, and the massive building threw long shadows across the green sward surrounding it.

"I wanted to see if the flag is flying," said Jack. "I can't tell from my window. Don't you love to watch it flap? I do, for it always makes me think of heroes. I love heroes, and I love to listen to stories about 'em. Don't you? It makes you feel so creepy, and your hair kind o' stands up, and you hold your breath while they're a-risking their lives to save somebody, or doing something else that's awfully brave. And then, when they've done it, there's a lump in your throat; but you feel so warm all over somehow, and you want to cheer, and march right off to 'storm the heights,' and wipe every thing mean off the face of the earth, and do all sorts of big, brave things. I always do. Don't you?"

"Yes," answered David, amused by his boyish enthusiasm, yet touched by the recognition of a kindred spirit. "May be you will be a hero yourself, some day," he suggested in order to lead the boy further on.

"No, I'm afraid not," answered Jack, sadly. "Papa wanted me to be a lawyer. He was in the war till he got wounded so bad he had to come home. We've got his sword and cap yet. I used to put 'em on sometimes, and say I was going to go to West Point and learn to be a soldier. But he always shook his head and said, 'No, son, that's not the highest way you can serve your country now.' Then sometimes I think I'll have to be a preacher like my grandfather, John Wesley Bradford, because he left me all his library, and I am named for him. Jack isn't my real name, you know."

"Would you like to be a preacher?" asked David, as the boy paused to catch a fly that was buzzing exasperatingly around him.

"No!" answered Jack, emphasizing his answer by a savage slap at the fly. "Only except when we get to talking about the Jews. You know we are very much interested in your people at our house."

"No, I didn't know it," answered David, amused by the boy's matter-of-fact announcement. "How did you come to be so interested?"

"Well, it started with the Epworth League Conference at Chattanooga. There was a converted Jew up there on the mountain that spoke in the sunrise meeting. Cousin Frank went to see him afterwards. He took Bethany with him to write down what they said in shorthand. O, he had the most interesting history! You just ought to hear sister tell it. You know the two old ladies I told you about, that live at our house. Well, may be it isn't polite to tell you so, but they didn't have the least bit of use for the Jews before that. Now, since we've been reading about the awful way they were persecuted, and how they've hung together through thick and thin, they've changed their minds."

"And you say that it is only when you are talking about the Jews that you would like to be a preacher," said David, as the boy stopped, and began whistling softly. He wanted to bring him back to the subject.

"Yes," answered Jack. "When I think how that man's whole life was changed by a little Junior League girl; how she started him, and he'll start others, and they'll start somebody else, and the ball will keep rolling, and so much good will be done, just on her account, I'd like to do something in that line myself. I'm first vice-president of our League, you know," he said, proudly displaying the badge pinned on his coat.

"But I wouldn't like to be a regular preacher that just stands up and tells people what they already believe. That's too much like boxing a pillow." He doubled up his fist and sparred at an imaginary foe.

"I'd like to go off somewhere, like Paul did, and make every blow count. We studied the life of Paul last year in the League. Talk about heroes – there's one for you. My, but he was game! Thrashed and stoned, and shipwrecked and put in prison, and chained up to another man – but they couldn't choke him off!" Jack chuckled at the thought.

"Did you ever notice," he continued, "that when a Jew does turn Christian he's deader in earnest than anybody else? Cousin Frank told us to notice that. There's Matthew. He was making a good salary in the custom-house, and he quit right off. And Peter and Andrew and the rest of 'em left their boats and all their fishing tackle, and every thing in the wide world that they owned. Mr. Lessing had even to give up his family. Cousin Frank told us about ever so many that had done that way. So that's why I'd rather preach to them than other people. They amount to so much when you once get them made over."

"You might commence on me," said David.

Jack colored to the roots of his hair, and looked confused. He stole a sidelong glance at David, and began to wheel his chair slowly back into the other room.

"I haven't gone into the business yet," he called back over his shoulder, recovering his equanimity with young American quickness, "But when I do I'll give you the first call."

David was so amused by the conversation that he could not refrain from recounting part of it to Bethany when she returned. It seemed to put them on a friendlier footing.

Finding that she was really making a study of the history of his people, he gave her many valuable suggestions, and several times brought Jewish periodicals with articles marked for her to read.

"My Sunday-school class have become so interested," she told him. "They are very well versed in the ancient history, but this is something so new to them."

"I wish you knew Rabbi Barthold," he exclaimed. "He would be an inspiration in any line of study, but especially in this, for he has thrown his whole soul into it. Ah, I wish you read Hebrew. One loses so much in the translation. There are places in the Psalms and Job where the majesty of the thought is simply untranslatable. You know there are some pebbles and shells that, seen in water, have the most exquisite delicacy of coloring; yet taken from that element, they lose that brilliancy. I have noticed the same effect in changing a thought from the medium of one language to another."

"Yes," answered Bethany, "I have recognized that difficulty, too, in translating from the German. There is a subtle something that escapes, that while it does not change the substance, leaves the verse as soulless as a flower without its fragrance."

"Ah! I see you understand me," he responded. "That is why I would have you read the greatest of all literature in its original setting. Are you fond of language?"

"Yes," she answered, "though not an enthusiast. I took the course in Latin and German at school, and got a smattering of French the year I was abroad. Afterwards I read Greek a little at home with papa, to get a better understanding of the New Testament. But Hebrew always seemed to me so very difficult that only spectacled theologians attempted it. You know ordinary tourists ascend the Rigi and Vesuvius as a matter of course. Only daring climbers attempt the Jungfrau. I scaled only the heights made easy of ascent by a system of meister-schafts and mountain railways."

He laughed. "Hebrew is not so difficult as you imagine, Miss Hallam. Any one that can master stenography can easily compass that. There is a similarity in one respect. In both, dots and dashes take the place of vowels. I will bring you a grammar to-morrow, and show you how easy the rudiments are."

Jack was more interested than Bethany. He had never seen a book in Hebrew type before. The square, even characters charmed him, and he began to copy them on his slate.

"I'd like to learn this," he announced. "The letters are nothing but chairs and tables."

"It was a picture language in the beginning," said David, leaning over his chair, much pleased with his interest. "Now, that first letter used to be the head of an ox. See how the horns branch? And this next one, Beth, was a house. Don't you remember how many names in the Bible begin with that – Beth-el, Beth-horon, Beth-shan – they all mean house of something; house of God, house of caves, house of rest."

Jack gave a whistled "whe-ew!" "It would teach a fellow lots. What are you a house of, Beth-any?"

He looked up, but his sister had been called into the next room.

"Would you really like to study it, Jack?" asked David. "It will be a great help to you when you 'go into the business' of preaching to us Jews."

Jack tilted his head to one side, and thrust his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in an embarrassed way. Then he looked up, and saw that David was not laughing at him, but soberly awaiting his answer.

"Yes, I really would," he answered, decidedly.

"Then I'll teach you as long as you are in the office."

Mr. Marion came in one day and saw David's dark head and Jack's yellow one bending over the same page, and listened to the boy's enthusiastic explanation of the letters.

"I wish we could form a class of our Sabbath-school teachers," said Mr. Marion. "Would you undertake to teach it, Herschel?"

The young man hesitated. "If it were convenient I might make the attempt," he said. "But I do not live in the city. My home is out at Hillhollow."

Then, after a pause, while some other plan seemed to be revolving in his mind, he asked: "Why not get Rabbi Barthold? He is a born teacher, and nothing would delight him more than to imbue some other soul with a zeal for his beloved mother-tongue."

"I'll certainly take the matter into consideration," responded Mr. Marion, "if you will get his consent, and find what his terms are. Bethany, I'll head the list with your name. Then there's Ray and myself. That makes three, and I know at least three of my teachers that I am sure of. I wish George Cragmore were here. Do you know, Bethany, it would not surprise me very much if the Conference sends him here this fall?"

"Not in Dr. Bascom's place," she exclaimed.

"O no, he is too young a man for Garrison Avenue, and unmarried besides. But I heard that the Clark Street Church had asked for him. I hope the bishop will consider the call."

"Don't set your heart on it, Cousin Frank," she answered. "You know what is apt to befall 'the best laid schemes of mice and men.'"

CHAPTER X.
THE DEACONESS'S STORY

AUGUST slipped into September. The vase on Bethany's desk, that Mrs. Marion had kept filled with lilies, brightened the room with the glow of the earliest golden-rod.

"Isn't it pretty?" said Jack, drawing a spray through his fingers. "It makes me think of your hair, sister. They are both so soft and fuzzy-looking."

"And like the sunshine," added David mentally, wishing he dared express his admiration as openly as Jack. His desk was at an angle overlooking Bethany's, and he often studied her face while she worked, as he would have studied some rare portrait – not so much for the perfect contour and delicacy of coloring as for the soul that shone through it.

She had seldom spoken to him of spiritual things. It was from Jack he learned how interested she was in all her Church relationships. Still he felt forcibly an influence that he could not define; that silent charm of a consecrated life, linked close with the perfect life of the Master.

One day when he was thus idly occupied, the janitor tiptoed into the room, ushering a lady past to Bethany's desk. David looked up as she passed, attracted by her unusual costume. It was all black, except that there were deep, white cuffs rolled back over the sleeves, and a large, white collar. The close-fitting black bonnet was tied under the chin with broad white bows. She was a sweet-faced woman, with strong, capable looking hands.

David heard Bethany exclaim, "Why, Josephine Bentley!" as if much surprised to see her. Then they stood face to face, holding each other's hands while they talked in low, rapid tones.

The stranger staid only a few moments. After she passed out, David strolled leisurely up to Bethany's desk.

"I hope you'll excuse my curiosity, Miss Hallam," he said. "I am interested in the costume of the lady who was here just now. I've seen one like it before. Can you tell me to what order she belongs? Is it anything like the Sisters of Charity?"

"Yes, something like it," she answered. "She is a deaconess. There is this difference. They take no vows of perpetual service to the order, but their lives are as entirely consecrated to their work as though they had 'taken the veil,' as the nuns call it. This friend of mine who was just here, is a visiting deaconess. She goes about doing good in the Master's own way, to rich and poor alike. She came in just now to report a case of destitution she had discovered. I am chairman of the Mercy and Help Department in our League."

"Is that all they do?" asked David.

"All!" repeated Bethany. "You should see the Deaconess Home on Clark Street. They have a hospital there, and a Kitchen-garten. It is the work of some of these women to gather in all the poor, neglected girls they can find. They make it so very attractive that the poor children are taught to be respectable little housekeepers, without suspecting that the music and games are really lessons. Homes that could be reached in no other way have some wonderful changes wrought in them."

"You have so many different organizations in your Church," said David. "Seems to me I am always hearing of a new one. There is an old saying, 'Too many cooks spoil the broth.' Did you never prove the truth of that?"

"Now, that's one beauty of Methodism," exclaimed Bethany. "The little wheels all fit into the big one like so many cogs, and all help each other. For instance, here is the deaconess work. It goes hand in hand with the League, only reaching out farther, with our motto of 'Lift Up,' for they have an 'open sesame' that unbars all avenues to them. Of all hard, self-sacrificing lives, it seems to me a nurse deaconess has the hardest. She goes only into homes unable to pay for such services, and whatever there is to do in the way of nursing, or of cleansing these poverty-stricken homes, she does unflinchingly."

"The reason I asked," answered David, "is that one day last week I went down to that terrible quarter of the city near the lower wharves. I wanted to find a man who I knew would be a valuable witness in the Dartmon murder case. I had been told that the only time to find him would be before six o'clock, as he was a deckhand on one of the early boats. I had been directed to a laundry-office in a row of rotten old tenements near the river. I found the room used as an office was down in a damp basement. It was about half-past five when I reached there. I went down the rickety old stairs and knocked several times. You can imagine my surprise when the door was opened by a refined-looking woman, in just such a costume as your friend wore, except, of course, the little bonnet. When I told her my errand, she asked me to step inside a moment. The smell of sewer-gas almost stifled me at first. There was a narrow counter where a few bundles were lying, still uncalled for. I learned afterward, that the laundry had failed, and these were left to await claimants. There was a calico curtain stretched across the room to form a partition. She drew it aside, and motioned me to look in. There was a table, two chairs, a gasoline stove, and an old bed. Lying across the foot of the bed, as if utterly worn-out with weariness and sorrow, lay a young girl heavily sleeping. A baby, only a few months old, was lying among the pillows, as white and still as if it were dead. The woman dropped the curtain with a shudder. 'It is the poor girl's husband you are looking for,' she said. 'He is a rough, drunken fellow, and has been away for days, nobody knows where. The baby is dying. I was called here at three o'clock this morning. A physician came for me, but he said it could not live many hours. O, it was awful! The cockroaches swarmed all over the floor, and the rats were so bad they fairly ran over our feet. The poor girl sank in a heavy stupor soon after I came, from sheer exhaustion. There is nothing to eat in the house, and the milk I brought with me for the baby has soured. It seems a dreadful thing to say, but I dare not leave the baby while she is asleep long enough to get anything – on account of the rats.' Of course I went out and got the things she needed. Then there was nothing more I could do, she said. The wretched poverty of the scene, and the woman's bravery, have been in my thoughts ever since."

"I heard of that case yesterday," Bethany said, when he had finished. "I know the nurse, Belle Carleton. The baby died, and they took the mother to the Deaconess Hospital. She has typhoid fever. Belle told me of another experience she had. Her life is full of them. She was sent to a family where drunkenness was the cause of the poverty. The man had not had steady work for a year, because he was never sober more than a few days at a time. They lived in three rooms in the rear basement of a large tenement-house. Belle said, when she opened the door of the first room, it seemed the most forlorn place she had ever seen. There was a table piled full of dirty dishes, and a cooking-stove covered with ashes, on which stood a wash-boiler filled with half-washed clothes. The floor looked as if it had never known the touch of a broom. The odor of the boiling suds was sickening. A slatternly, half-grown girl, one of the neighbors, stood beside a leaky tub, washing as best she knew how. Four dirty, half-starved children were playing on the bare floor. Their mother was sick in the next room. I couldn't begin to repeat Belle's description of that bedroom, it was so filthy and infested with vermin. She said, when she saw all that must be done, that repulsive creature bathed, the dishes washed, and the floor scrubbed, a great loathing came over her. She felt that she could not possibly touch a thing in the room. She wanted to turn and run away from it all. I said to her, 'O, Belle, how could you force yourself to do such repulsive things?'"

"What did she say?" exclaimed Herschel.

Bethany's face reflected some of the tenderness that must have shone in Belle Carleton's, as she repeated her answer softly, "For Jesus' sake!"

There was a long pause, which Herschel broke by saying: "And she staid there, I suppose, forced her shrinking hands into contact with what she despised, did the most menial services, from a sense of duty to a man whom she had never seen, who died centuries ago? Miss Hallam, how could she? I find it very hard to understand."

"No, not from a sense of duty," corrected Bethany, "so much as love."

"Well, for love then. What was there in this man of Nazareth to inspire such devotion after such a lapse of time? I understand how one might admire his ethical teaching, how one might even try to embody his precepts in a code to live by; but how he can inspire such sublime annihilation of self, surpasses my comprehension. He was no greater lawgiver than Moses, yet who makes such sacrifices for the love of Moses? Peter suffered martyrdom, and Paul; yet who is ready to lay down his life cheerfully and say, 'I do it for the sake of Peter – or Paul?'"

"Mr. Herschel," said Bethany, looking up at him wistfully, "don't you see that it is no mere man who exercises such power; that he must be what he claimed – one with the Father?"

Cragmore's passionate exclamation that day on the train came back to him: "O, my friend, if you could only see my Savior as he has been revealed to me!"

Then he seemed to hear Lessing's voice as they paced back and forth in front of the tent, arm in arm in the darkness.

"Of a truth you can not understand these things, unless you be born again – be born of the Spirit, into a realm of spiritual knowledge you have never yet even dreamed of. Winged life is latent in the worm, even while it has no conception of any existence higher than the cabbage-leaf it crawls upon. But how is it possible for it to conceive of flight until it has passed through some change that bursts the chrysalis and provides the wings?"

The silence was growing oppressive. David shook his head, rose, and slowly walked out of the room.

"Sister," said Jack, a few days after, as she wheeled him homeward from the office at noon-time, "Mr. Herschel keeps teasing me all the time about something I said once about preaching to the Jews. He brings it up so often, that if he doesn't look out I'll begin on him sure enough."

Whatever answer Bethany might have made was interrupted by Miss Caroline, who met them as they turned a corner.

"Do tell!" she exclaimed in surprise. "You were in my mind just this minute. I wondered if I might not chance to meet you."

"Where have you been, Aunt Carrie?" asked Jack, seeing that she carried several small parcels.

"Shopping," she said. "Just think of it! Caroline Courtney actually out shopping in the dry-goods stores."

"What's the occasion?" asked Bethany. "It must be something important. I can't remember that you have done such a thing before since I have known you. Have you been invited to a ball, a wedding, or a wake?"

Miss Caroline beamed on them through her spectacles. "Really, my dears, that is just what I would like to know myself. That's why I had to make these purchases. Your cousin Ray came in this morning, just after you had gone, to invite us all to go to her house at half-past six this evening. She wouldn't tell us what sort of an occasion she was planning, only that it was a surprise for everybody, Mr. Marion most of all. He has been gone a week on a business trip, but will get home to-night at six. Sister and I have been trying to think what kind of an occasion it could be. I know it isn't their wedding anniversary, nor her birthday. Maybe it is his. So you see we couldn't decide just how we ought to dress – whether to wear our very best dove-colored silks and point lace, or the black crepon dresses we have had two seasons. Sister absolutely refuses to carry her elegant fan that she got in Brussels, although I want very much to take mine, especially if we wear the gray dresses. My second best is broken, and of course we wouldn't want to carry a palm-leaf. There was no other way but to take the second best fan down and match it. Then she had lost one of the bows of ribbon that was on her gray dress, and I had to match that, in case we decided to wear the grays. Here I have spent the whole morning over my fan and her ribbon."