Dowling, Tinker and Colporter
A Veteran who Served in India under Havelock and Colin Campbell[ToList]
At this time he was living on a dollar a week, but every morning he had his little tea-party around the old stove, his word of greeting, and his final word of benediction to the men he had selected to share in his bounty as they slunk out of the bunk-house to begin the day.
Later, he had a large-type New Testament out of which he read a verse or two every morning at the meal. Very soon the three hundred lodgers began to look upon him with a kind of awe. This was not because he had undergone a radical change, for he had always been quiet, gentle and civil; but because he had found his voice, and that voice was bringing to them something they could not get elsewhere—sympathy, cheer and courage.
In the tenement region, particularly in the little back alleys around Mulberry Street, he mended pots, kettles, pans and umbrellas—not always for money, but as often for the privilege of reading to these people messages of comfort out of his large-type New Testament.
Going down Mulberry Street one morning in the depth of winter, I happened to glance up one of those narrow alleys in "the Bend," and I noticed my friend standing at a window, his face close to a broken pane of glass and his large New Testament held in front of him a few inches from his face. His tinker's budget was by his feet. The door was closed. In a few minutes he closed the book, put it into his kit, and as he moved away from the window, I saw a large bundle of rags pushed into the hole.
"What have you been doing?" I inquired.
He laughed. "There, now, God bliss her," he said. "I put a rib in an umbrella for her, but she said the house was too dirty to read the Bible in, so she let me read it through the broken window."
All that winter he tinkered and taught. All winter the little ragged audiences gathered around him in the morning; and often at eventime when he retreated into a quiet corner to be silent and rest, he found himself the centre of an inquiring group of his fellow-lodgers.
Instead of uniting himself to the mission, as such men usually do after their conversion, I advised him to join one of the prominent churches of the city, in the downtown district. I thought it would be good for the church. But we both discovered our mistake later. He was utterly out of keeping with his surroundings. The church he joined was an institution for the favoured few—and Dowling was a tinker.