CHAPTER XIX
A QUICK CONVERSION
It happened that morning that the old Bishop was on his daily round, visiting the sick of Cottontown. He went every day, from house to house, helping the sick, cheering the well, and better than all things else, putting into the hearts of the disheartened that priceless gift of coming again.
For of all the gifts the gods do give to men, that is the greatest—the ability to induce their fallen fellow man to look up and hope again. The gift to spur others onward—the gift to make men reach up. His flock were all mill people, their devotion to him wonderful. In the rush and struggle of the strenuous world around them, this humble old man was the only being to whom they could go for spiritual help.
To-day in his rounds, one thing impressed him more sadly than anything else—for he saw it so plainly when he visited their homes—and that was that with all their hard work, from the oldest to the youngest, with all their traffic in human life, stealing the bud along with the broken and severed stem—as a matter of fact, the Acme mills paid out to the people but very little money. Work as they might, they seldom saw anything but an order on a store, for clothes and provisions sold to them at prices that would make a Jew peddler blush for shame.
The Bishop found entire families who never saw a piece of money the year round.
There are families and families, and some are more shiftless than others.
In one of the cottages the old man found a broken down little thing of seven, sick. For just such trips he kept his pockets full of things, and such wonderful pockets they would have been to a healthful natural child! Ginger cakes—a regular Noah's Ark, and apples, red and yellow. Sweet gum, too, which he had himself gathered from the trees in the woods. And there were even candy dolls and peppermints.