Yesterday morning I came out of a dilapidated dwelling in which I had spent the whole night, and scrambled away over some rocks. When I sat down my legs were hanging over a chasm at the foot of which grandly rolling waves burst into foam, keeping up the warfare waged during a million years against our sturdy cliffs.
Rays of dulled crimson sought to penetrate, feebly, through the fog, as if the sun knew only too well how often it had been defeated in its contest against the murky vapors of this hazy land.
My meeting with Mr. Barnett on the Rosalind was a most fortunate accident. The earnest little clergyman sat next to me at the table, and immediately engaged me in conversation. I gathered from him that he had been begging in the great city and had managed to collect a very few hundred dollars for his little church. He spoke most cheerfully of all that he meant to achieve with all this wealth.
"I am going to have the steeple finished," he said. "It will take but a few feet of lumber, and we still have half a keg of nails. Some day I expect to have a little reading room, and perhaps a magic lantern. I will try to give them some short lectures. I am ambitious, and hope that I am not expecting too much. We are really doing very nicely at Sweetapple Cove."
"Where is that?" I asked him.
The little parson gave me the desired geographical information and, finding me interested, began to speak of his work.
He was one of the small band of devoted men whose lives are spent on the coast, engaged in serving their fellow-men to the best of their abilities. The extent of his parish was scarcely limited by the ability of a fishing boat to travel a day's journey, and he spoke very modestly of some rather narrow escapes from storm and ice.
"If we only had a doctor!" he sighed. "Mrs. Barnett and I do our best.
Things are sometimes just heartrending."
At once I manifested interest, and angled for further information. This was just the sort of place I had in mind. It appeared that the nearest doctor was more than a day's travel away, and that the population was rather too poor to afford the luxury of professional advice.
"We sometimes feel very hopeless," he told me.