CHAPTER XIV.
MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL.
It was on the corner of Merle Street and Mavis Place. The Reverend Hilary Vireo, as I have told you, was the minister.
It might have been called, if anybody had thought of it, "The Chapel of the New Song." For it was the very gospel of hope and gladness that Hilary Vireo preached there, and had preached and lived for twenty years, making lives to sing that would have moaned.
"Haven't you a song in your heart, somewhere?" was his word once, to a man of hard life, who came to him in a trouble, and telling him of it, passed to a spiritual confidence, such as Vireo drew out of people without the asking. At the end of his story, the man had said that "he supposed it was as good as he ought to expect; he hadn't any business to look for better, and he must just bear it, for this life. He hoped there was something afterwards for them that could get to it, but he didn't know."
"Aren't you glad of things, sometimes?" said Mr. Vireo. "Of a pleasant day, even,—or a strong, fresh feeling in the morning? Don't you touch the edge of the great gladness that is in the world, now and then, in spite of your own little single worries? Well, that's what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He never means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune. What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch. Don't mind the strain; believe in the note, every time his finger touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day, that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for."
The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began to be according to the life.
"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him; or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find out. If ever we do get it,—complete"—
"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo.