An Arrow in a Sunbeam, and Other Tales

E-text prepared by Al Haines


The golden sunshine, vernal air, Sweet flowers and fruits, thy love declare; When forests ripen Thou art there, Who givest all.


he minister of a fashionable church had noticed Sunday after Sunday a little old lady with a sad, patient face, dressed in very shabby mourning, sitting in the strangers' pew.
Like Job this good man could say, The cause that I knew not, I sought out. He soon learned from the sexton her name and residence, and was surprised to find her in the very topmost room of a house, amid evidences of real poverty.
In the one little window bloomed a monthly rose and a vigorous heliotrope, and beside the pots lay half-a-dozen books, such as are rarely seen in the homes of the very poor. On the wall hung two fine engravings, and an old fashioned gold watch was suspended from a faded velvet case over the mantel piece.
Her story, when she was induced to tell it, was neither new nor startling. She had long been a widow. Her children had been called from her, till now she had but one, and he, being a cripple, could do little more than supply his own absolute wants by his work as a repairer of watches.
The pastor was charmed with her patient endurance of what others would call the hard discipline of life, and when he left her he felt that he had been a learner instead of a teacher in that poor room.
Being too delicate to allude to her apparent poverty, he said at parting, As you are a stranger among us, I will send some of the visitors of the church to cheer and comfort you.