One of those excellent, self-sacrificing Christian women, loving and lovable, whose whole life was devoted to helping and encouraging those in distress. Her vocation especially among the worthy poor, where her heart was ever willing, and her activity constant in their behalf; striving to bring hope and efficient aid to those who were struggling against adversity, kindness where it was most needed, affection where it was seldom met. Among many friends she had a small coterie of gentlemen whom she called her boys. To these she appealed in emergencies, and was sure to receive without further inquiry, simply because “Aunt Mary wanted it.” As sometimes the case with Christian women of her active, sympathetic, sanguine type, she had been led to join a few others in the work of redemption conducted under the auspices of the Midnight Mission. Aunt Mary was returning from the Mission when she caught sight of the Doctor, her heart full to overflowing about some hopeful cases among the unfortunate outcasts she had met. Like an Angel of Mercy she had been spending her evening talking with purity of thought and action to some, and waiting for others who might wander in from the streets. She had been holding out her arms to welcome, to give shelter in the Home—Christ-like—“Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
As the Doctor left Aunt Mary at the door of her own modest home, his thoughts reverted irresistibly to his evening’s experience considered as a whole.
The lights and shadows of city life, the contrasts, the changes that a day may bring forth. Then of the countless fields of work for truth as each one sees it in his own environment. Surely the Christ life was the most beautiful and helpful of all.
He recalled how Adele Cultus had once experienced an ardent desire to work in the slums and been prevented by circumstances, yet continued to progress in her own sphere. He thought he detected a spiritual similarity between her and Aunt Mary, yet to outward view there was little to suggest such comparison; yet again there was, for the elderly sympathy for others might have once in youth taken a youthful form of expression,—and the present youthful girl who began by sympathy for others might yet attain to her ideals.
Then his thoughts wandered off in quite another direction. The fresh foliage in the park had forcibly reminded him of the coming season for travel, the time had arrived to make final arrangements for a contemplated trip abroad. Paul and he had so decided during the winter, and already engaged state-rooms. They had often spent summers in England and on the Continent, and this time looked forward to a longer absence than usual,—a visit to Greece, and possibly to the Far East. The Doctor had longed to stand upon a pinnacle of the Himalayas, having then about as much idea of what a pinnacle in that region might prove to be, as many possess of the veritable north pole.
His thoughts were certainly vague, yet again quite definite after their kind. When he turned in to bed and began to enter the domain of Travellers’ Hope, he thought he saw Aunt Mary attending meeting in Exeter Hall, London, and Adele Cultus playing golf with the divinities on Olympus. He was hoping Adele would win, when—he forgot to notice whether she did or not.
VI
AN AVATAR IN THE OCCIDENT—THE THEOPHANY OF SPRING
THE advent of spring brought with it the spirit of locomotion to many others besides the Doctor and Paul,—it generally does to a sane mind in a healthy body. With the resurrection of new life comes the exuberant desire to live in the open, more freely, and have one’s being in action, to exercise “thought, being and joy” to the fullest extent.
To none was this more forcibly true than to Adele Cultus, whose whole being responded when the sun shone forth and the birds sang. This condition of things had been greatly strengthened in her limited experience thus far, by a conversation she once had with her father, when she sought his advice in connection with teaching a class in Sunday-School. It was soon after she graduated, and although she was by no means ignorant of academic phraseology in regard to certain matters, she was not satisfied; she wanted a simpler, useful way of expressing facts involving doctrine, and had asked her father a direct question which might have proved a poser to some parents, but certainly not to Professor Cultus, who earnestly desired that his daughter should be spared the mental strife in his own experience over moral and ethical questions involving discussion which really did not help towards better living. The Professor detected that she wished to talk with him seriously; so he drew her towards him, made her sit upon his knee that she might feel near him in love and affection,—comfortably at home while her spirit sought the truth.
“Well, my daughter, what can Father do to help you? Any college conundrums? Life is full of conundrums, you know!”