THE BIRDS’ HARVEST.
BY MRS. J. D. CHAPLIN.
IF “Restwood,” the little country-house to which we fly from the heat, and dust, and toil of the great city, were only large enough, we would invite all the young “Wide Awakes” to gather there. We would show them such scenery; we would wander with them through the deep pine-forest, whose whisperings are mingled with the wild roar of the dashing sea, and take them to sail in our fairy-like boat, over a bay that cannot be outshone by even the lovely Italian waters.
Near us are rich country squires, in great, square, white houses, where their fathers lived and died; farmers, who fight manfully against what inlanders call sterility, making fruitful the very sands by their energy; and a few retired city gentlemen, who fish, and sail, and hunt, and read, and ride, and eat, and sleep.
But the greatest among all these, a few years ago,—he may prove in the coming day one of the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,—was a tall, frail young man, whom his neighbors regarded as deficient in intellect. Everybody is weak in some direction. A wise man has remarked, that no one since the fall, when all humanity lost its balance, has been perfectly sane. It is sometimes very hard to tell who, taking all things into account, are the “weaker;” but there is little doubt that a jury of wise men would have counted our friend Jotham Belden among them.
What little balance-wheel was missing in that mind, He who made it only knows; but we rejoice that, while He withheld some powers common to most men, He also bestowed on him what He withholds from many—a powerful memory, and a delicately refined taste, and a strong sense of right.
Jotham was no pauper weakling. He was the cherished son of an honorable widow, who had ample means to gratify all his innocent desires; who speaks of him now with a sigh as well as a smile, and tells how he was the fairest and brightest of her fold, till the blight fell on him, and he rose from his sick bed shattered in body, and with a cloud over his mind. “He was never again the same Joe, whose bright speeches and merry pranks had been the pride of the farm-house, and the amusement of the village,” she tells you.
The Scotch have this beautiful saying: “The feckless (witless) are God’s peculiar care.” And it seemed as if this blighted one, Joe Belden, were, indeed, His peculiar favorite; as if, in the furnace of pain, with his worldly wisdom had also been consumed all of meanness, and selfishness, and hardness.
Jotham grew up very watchful of the interests of all about him. No fellow-being was too low or too sinful to claim his pity; no creature of God too mean to share his love and protection. Being weak in body, he had never toiled for his bread. When in the house, he read, in stammering accents, to his mother, held the yarn while she wound it, and performed any little task she required. This all done, he would stroll out, as he said, to see that all was right in town. He would go to a house where there was sickness, look anxiously up at the windows, and hang patiently round the gate till spoken to. Then he would ask, “Want anybody to go for the doctor? Want any jelly? Want burdocks, or horseradish, or anything?”
If sent for the doctor, or allowed to dig herbs for the sufferer, he was the happiest man in town; if nothing was wanted there, he would wander off to the lonely poor-house—a long, red building, in a barren waste, looking as if erected to teach men and women that they had no business to be old and poor, and that they must be punished for it. Here his were like angels’ visits in the joy they brought. His pockets were an unfathomable depth; heavy with jack-knives, gimlets, screws, nails, buttons, keys, chalk, cinnamon, cloves, and lozenges, and the thousand innumerable trifles which become treasures in such a blank as this poor-house was.
Jotham’s coming made more commotion than a peddler’s; for although he brought far less stores, either in quantity or quality, they could get his as they could not the other’s, for want of money. Newspapers, tracts, and, occasionally, a book, were among his gifts; and perhaps He who seeth not as man seeth, regarded and blessed these weak efforts as He does not always the gold and the silver which rich men cast into the treasury.
One spring day, after an unusually severe winter, Jotham presented himself before his mother in a blue farm-frock, with his pants tucked into a pair of two capacious cowhide boots.
“Why, my son, are you going to work?” the old lady asked, in surprise.
“Yes, Hans has plowed the three-cornered field for me, and I’m going to sow grain myself,” he cried, triumphantly.
“But that’s poor soil, dear boy, and it’s far from the house. There are stones there, and you cannot gather your crop if any grows,” said his mother.
“They’ll gather the crops themselves, mother; they don’t need any sickle, nor any one to teach them. God teaches them how to get in their harvest,” was Jotham’s reply.
“Whom are you talking about, Jotham,” asked his mother, in surprise.
“Of God’s birds, mother. The men said at the store last night, that lots of birds died round there in the fall and spring—starved to death, and all the grain is God’s. I’m going to sow a field on purpose for them, and nobody shall reap it but them. I love them because God loves them. I’ll feed them as he feeds me.”
Tears filled her eyes as she laid her hand tenderly on the brown head of her smitten son. Was she not happier than many a mother whose bright boy has wandered far from innocence and truthfulness?
One day, not long after this, Jotham’s minister saw him walking over the fields in a strange, circuitous manner, describing curves and angles like a drunken man. Waiting till he came up to the road, the gentleman asked, “What makes you walk in that way, Jotham?”
“For fear I’ll step on the ant-hills, sir. There never were so many ants before, sir; the fields and the roads are full of their little houses. They built them grain by grain; and what would God think of me if I trod on them just for carelessness,—as if a giant should tear our house down to amuse himself, or because he didn’t care! You know, sir,” he added, in a whisper, looking reverently up to the skies, “He hadn’t any home down here, though the foxes and the birds had; and He’s very careful of all homes now,—homes are such beautiful things, sir.”
“God bless you, dear boy,” said the minister. “It was for Christ’s sake you cast seed broadcast over that rocky field, for His sake that you turned your foot away from the home of the poor ant; and for this love He will never leave you hungry or homeless.”
“Thank you, sir,” was the innocent reply of poor Jotham.
“God’s birds” gathered one harvest under the eye of their grateful patron, and then he was called away from his simple work.
His step had long been growing weaker, and the hectic burning more brightly in his cheek, when, one evening, as he lay on the lounge beside his mother, in light slumber, he called her, and said, “Did you hear that, mother?”
“No, Jotham. What do you hear?”
“The fluttering of a great many wings—birds of every color; and all the other creatures I have loved, are enjoying themselves in the sunshine. The black ants have all turned to gold, and all the other creatures that men hate. I hear a voice, mother—hark! ‘Ye are of more value than many sparrows. Go to the ant; consider her ways.’ I never hurt anything God made—did I, mother?”
“No, my child.”
“Well, I told Him so, and He smiled on me.”
“You’ve been dreaming, Jotham,” said his mother, tenderly.
“Have I?” he asked; and it is no matter whether his vision was what we call “dreaming,” or not; he had dealt lovingly with the weak things of God, and was now receiving His approval, as “faithful over a few things.”
Before day dawned Jotham’s weak powers were expanding in the warmth of God’s love, and he is now, for aught we know, one of the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Many summers have brought birds and flowers since then; but if you should pass Willow Brook Farm to-day, you would see a wild-looking crop of grain growing rank and free in a three-cornered field, off to the east of the house. Perhaps you would also see an aged woman standing in the door-way, shading her eyes with her hand, as she looks off on this little memorial crop which she has caused to be planted every year, for the sake of him who planted it once “for Christ’s sake.”