In one of the side-streets near the East River has stood for thirty years a little mission church, called Hope Chapel by its founders, in the brave spirit in which they built it. It has had plenty of use for the spirit since. Of the kind of problems that beset its pastor I caught a glimpse the other day, when, as I entered his room, a rough-looking man went out.
“One of my cares,” said Mr. Devins, looking after him with contracted brow. “He has spent two Christmas days of twenty-three out of jail. He is a burglar, or was. His daughter has brought him round. She is a seamstress. For three months, now, she has been keeping him and the home, working nights. If I could only get him a job! He won’t stay honest long without it; but who wants a burglar for a watchman? And how can I recommend him?”
A few doors from the chapel an alley sets into the block. We halted at the mouth of it.
“Come in,” said Mr. Devins, “and wish Blind Jennie a Merry Christmas.”
We went in, in single file; there was not room for two. As we climbed the creaking stairs of the rear tenement, a chorus of children’s shrill voices burst into song somewhere above.
“It is her class,” said the pastor of Hope Chapel, as he stopped on the landing. “They are all kinds. We never could hope to reach them; Jennie can. They fetch her the papers given out in the Sunday-school, and read to her what is printed under the pictures; and she tells them the story of it. There is nothing Jennie doesn’t know about the Bible.”
The door opened upon a low-ceiled room, where the evening shades lay deep. The red glow from the kitchen stove discovered a jam of children, young girls mostly, perched on the table, the chairs, in one another’s laps, or squatting on the floor; in the midst of them, a little old woman with heavily veiled face, and wan, wrinkled hands folded in her lap. The singing ceased as we stepped across the threshold.
“Be welcome,” piped a harsh voice with a singular note of cheerfulness in it. “Whose step is that with you, pastor? I don’t know it. He is welcome in Jennie’s house, whoever he be. Girls, make him to home.” The girls moved up to make room.
“Jennie has not seen since she was a child,” said the clergyman, gently; “but she knows a friend without it. Some day she shall see the great Friend in his glory, and then she shall be Blind Jennie no more.”
The little woman raised the veil from a face shockingly disfigured, and touched the eyeless sockets. “Some day,” she repeated, “Jennie shall see. Not long now—not long!” Her pastor patted her hand. The silence of the dark room was broken by Blind Jennie’s voice, rising cracked and quavering: “Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?” The shrill chorus burst in: