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.