Setting a Trap.
Ring, ring, ring!
The bell of St. John’s was busily swinging, flinging notes of gold and silver down upon the town, and in response, how many people came out into the streets as if to pick up the gold and silver shower. The bell was ringing for a temperance meeting. Many were immediately interested in the subject of temperance; but whether all would go, was a question. It was a serious doubt whether those that the meeting wanted would feel that they needed the meeting. There were several very important cases.
Case one—who?
Tim Tyler? He needed the meeting, but that is not the case here intended, but Dr. Tilton, the apothecary. Dr. Tilton? Yes. For some time it had been known he was in the habit of indulging in a glass, “only a glass.” As a result, he had been helped home drunk from his store. He did not feel desirous to attend the temperance meeting.
Case number two, Tim Tyler? Not yet, but—Will Somers! Ah, that was sad. If you could have seen Aunt Stanshy, you would have thought it was the saddest thing in the world.
“O, Miss Barry,” said Aunt Stanshy, bursting into tears, “I’m awful afraid I made an idol of that young man—so nice, you know. I’ve seen my idols break one after the other. I shouldn’t have said a word about it, but he was seen on the street, and it became town talk, and it’s all out and round. Dreadful, dreadful!”
“It is, and I’m afraid my uncle is responsible. It is bad every way. There is need of a temperance work here. We are all asleep,” replied Miss Barry, who was calling at Aunt Stanshy’s, the two women opening their hearts to one another during the call. Dr. Tilton was responsible for Will Somers’s fall. One day, when Will was complaining of an ill feeling, the apothecary had proffered wine as a remedy, and had offered it several times when he was tired, and Will had fallen under the influence of a seemingly innocent ally. People began to talk about Dr. Tilton and his clerk. Then they began to shun the store. Not all, though, for a line of red noses and trembling hands and unsteady knees filed into the store, and not the sick people sent orders, but old topers frequented the place more and more. Dr. Tilton noticed the change, and was alarmed. Still he did not change that habit of taking “only a glass.” Will Somers was unhappy. He saw his mistake, and knew that the community frowned upon him. He rarely whistled now. As for the musical instrument he once loved to perform upon, it was a silent piece of furniture. He had some fine qualities of character, and his vulnerable side was his susceptibility to outside influence. The enemy had found a weak wall on that side of his character, and there successfully assaulted him. Will knew that his misconduct grieved Aunt Stanshy. The club felt it, for by degrees the bad news reached them. It seemed as if each one was burdened by a load of guilt—as if having served in Dr. Tilton’s store, Charlie, Sid, Tony, and the rest had there sinned, and, in consequence, each had been seen tipsy on the street, and each carried a load that bowed him.
It was Charlie who happened to be at home when his teacher was calling on Aunt Stanshy, and he accidentally overheard a fragment of the conversation. When Miss Barry was fairly out of the house, and Aunt Stanshy was returning through the entry to her kitchen-work, sighing by the way, Charlie ran to her and excitedly said, “We—we—will get up a meeting!”
“A meeting about what?”
“Why, why, temperance.”
“Who get it up?”
“We—we boys—our club.”
Aunt Stanshy guessed at once the occasion and object of Charlie’s remarks, that he had heard the conversation between her and her caller, and that this proposition for a temperance meeting was to meet the grave necessities of the hour.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “let’s go and see teacher about it”
“What, go now?”
“Yes, you and she can talk it over.”
In a few minutes Charlie and Aunt Stanshy were hurrying down the street as if suddenly summoned by the pressing sickness of a friend.
“O, let’s get Sid,” suggested Charlie, as they neared Sid Waters’s house.
“Well,” replied Aunt Stanshy.
Sid, whose appetite never failed him, was eating a lunch, but he responded at once to Charlie’s invitation to “Come out.”
“What’s up, Charlie? I am the man for you,” replied the president, who had an abundance of resources at his command, and was prepared—in his own opinion—for any emergency. “What is up? Down-townies round?”
“We want to have a temperance meeting. Come down to teacher’s.”
“All right. Temperance meeting? The club get it up?”
“I don’t just know, but we can talk it over.”
“If they want a meeting, we can give ’em one,” said Sid, confidently.
Thus re-enforced, Aunt Stanshy and Charlie presented themselves at Miss Barry’s door.
“Come in, come,” said the teacher. “I have just got home myself.”
“We—we have come,” exclaimed Aunt Stanshy, “to see if we couldn’t have a temperance meeting! You know we need it.”
“O, I see; and the boys?”
“The boys,” said Sid, proudly, “think you could rely on them to—to—pull an oar.”
He felt it might be prudent not to propose to do the whole of the rowing, and offer the town a meeting managed wholly by the “Up-the-Ladder Club,” but modestly—to—pull an oar.
“Splendid!” said the teacher, her enthusiasm charming the boys. “Among us all, I guess we can manage it.”
“I don’t know as I can do any thing except to get people out,” said Aunt Stanshy, fearful that she might be called upon to speak in the meeting.
“Let us go and see Mr. Walton,” suggested Miss Barry.
“It would be the very thing,” declared Aunt Stanshy.
Very soon Aunt Stanshy, Miss Barry, Sid, and Charlie started for the minister’s. On the way, Juggie and Tony were secured as new members of the column, and thus augmented, this eager temperance band appeared at Mr. Walton’s door. Ushered into the study, Miss Barry told her errand.
“We need a temperance meeting very much, and we will have it at St. John’s, and I want you boys—the club, Miss Barry—to do the most of the singing,” said Mr. Walton.
“We will,” said Sid. “I know I can speak for them.”
“And Miss Barry will teach them what to sing, perhaps?” asked Mr. Walton.
“Yes sir,” replied Miss Barry.
“I’ll have my choir to help, but I expect the ‘Up-the-Ladder Club’ to do the most.”
The boys were eager in their interest. To encourage them, Miss Barry said, “I’ll make a little blue cross to go inside each white shield. A little blue cross—that is a temperance sign—will look pretty on the white silk.”
“There, there, won’t they be proud of it?” said Aunt Stanshy.
“Of course we will,” declared Sid. “Knights, we must give three cheers for teacher when we get to her door.”
During this conversation they were passing down the street, and when Miss Barry’s door was reached, be assured that three hearty cheers were given for her.
“Now three for temperance!” cried Sid. Then they cheered for temperance.
“I feel that my boys are, indeed, mounting the ladder of the true and noble,” was Miss Barry’s thought, as from her window she saw the ardent young knights pass away.
The next day Aunt Stanshy met Miss Barry. “Miss—Miss—Barry,” said Aunt Stanshy, nervously clutching her companion’s shawl, “we must—pray for our meeting.”
“O, we will, we will!”
There were earnest prayers going to God in behalf of that meeting. As step after step might be proposed, prayer went up from the altar of those two women’s hearts especially, beseeching God to recognize and bless each step that might be taken. O in what a cloud of prayer that enterprise was enveloped!
Aunt Stanshy and Miss Barry were talking about the meeting one day.
“I wish, Miss Barry, we could make sure that every body would go to the meeting. Will Dr. Tilton go?”
“That’s what I am wondering about, and Will Somers?”
Aunt Stanshy shook her head sadly: “He says, No.”
“They must be there,” said Miss Barry, “and—and—we must set a trap for them.”
“A trap?”
“I’ll ask my uncle to help the choir sing, and—of course, he wont refuse. I don’t suppose he cares to come to the meeting because he needs it, but if others go he won’t want to be left out, and if he can sing, that will give him a chance to attend. He is my uncle, you know.”
The “trap” for Dr. Tilton worked successfully. He scorned the idea that he might need the meeting. This he said to himself. However, he would help the choir sing, he said, to his niece. But a trap for Will Somers! Who could make that?
“Won’t you come to the meeting to hear us sing?” asked Charlie, with a sad face.
“O, you don’t want me, Charlie,” replied Will. “O, I can’t go.”
Aunt Stanshy made no remark. She sat silently, busily thinking, while Charlie and Will talked about the meeting. Aunt Stanshy was making a “trap.”
The day before that appointed for the temperance meeting, she went to her pastor.
“Mr. Walton, the meeting will begin at half past seven. If—if—say about quarter after seven—you should let Charlie and the other boys go down to the church door and sing one or two of their pieces, it might draw folks in.”
“Why, that’s a good idea, and I wish you would ask them.”
At a quarter after seven the next night the White Shields, each carrying a neat cross of blue on his badge, appeared at the church door and began to sing. It was the night when Dr. Tilton was accustomed to close his store earlier than usual, if customers did not appear; and at a quarter after seven Will Somers was accustomed that night to pass the church door on his way home. Would he fall into the trap that Aunt Stanshy had ingeniously set for him? The club began to sing their hymns. There was the touching plea containing the lines:
“O what are you going to do, brother?
Say, what are you going to do?
You have thought of some useful labor,
But what is the end in view?”
Tony sang this. It seemed that night as if some of Italy’s sweet singers must have lent him their notes. The people began to gather about the club. Aunt Stanshy was there on the watch, eager to see if Will Somers might be coming down the street. Tony’s voice warbled away. Now it was an exultant note that he touched, and then his voice sank to a plaintive appeal:
“Is your heart in the Saviour’s keeping?
Remember, he died for you;
Then what are you going to do, brother?
Say, what are you going to do?”
As Tony sang, there was a young man leaning against the fence adjoining the church door. It was somebody listlessly leaning, lifting to the light of the street lamp a face on which rested the shadow of a great sadness.
“It’s he!” said Aunt Stanshy, excitedly.
Charlie heard her. He guessed that it was some one out on the sidewalk whom she had discovered, and he stretched his small head beyond the ring of singers, anxiously looking out into the shadows. His sharp eye saw that form leaning against the fence. He could not wait until the song was finished. He ran out upon the sidewalk, and Aunt Stanshy followed.
“Do come, do come,” pleaded Charlie, as he seized Will’s hand and gently drew him toward the church.
“Yes, yes,” said Aunt Stanshy, “We all want you.”
And Will Somers irresolutely yielded to the gentle hands that were drawing him, and entered the church.
What a meeting that was!
“Never seed the beat of it in my life,” said Simes Badger, who was off duty at the lighthouse that night, and having attended the meeting, reported it soon after to a band of his old cronies. “Why, when the pledge was offered that meetin’, it seemed as if every man, woman, and child would go for it at once. No matter if they was as innocent of liquor as a baby a day old; they jest walked up and took that pledge. And Dr. Tilton, he couldn’t stand it, and he hopped down and he jined the pledge. And his clerk, that Will Somers, he did write his name handsome. O, it was a meetin’, I tell ye!”
Yes, it was a memorable evening. Dr. Tilton and Will Somers kept their word faithfully, and society recognized the fact and liberally patronized the doctor’s store, afterward.
“Got a new ’pothecary in our town,” said Simes Badger. “At any rate, he’s good as new, and new things draw. A ’pothecary can do amazin’ sight of harm if he aint jest the right sort of man in his business.”
Society, outside the store, recognized the new life that Dr. Tilton and Will had begun. They were received cordially by their old friends. The club gathered about Will, treating him after the fashion of the old enthusiastic friendship.
“He’s singin’ once more and a playin’,” Aunt Stanshy said to a neighbor, “jest as nice as can be. It does me good to see him.”
And Tim Tyler—where was he?
His sister Ann did hope he would be reached, but she folded her old shawl about her shoulders and went away from the meeting, saying sorrowfully to herself, “Tim didn’t come.”
No, he was not at the meeting. He did not show any interest in the movement.
“But—but we can’t give him up,” some of his praying friends whispered.
And when our prayers refuse to let the angel of blessing go, was that angel ever known to forsake us?