“But mine has not been an easy life, Mr. Cosgrove. I walked three miles to the academy and back every day. I can work just as well, for all that?”
“No, indeed; books spoil every one for work. There never was a better boy than Farley Steadman, till he took it into his head to go to college; and now I would not let him drive a cart through a pair of bars. He don’t know any thing; it has just spoiled him;” and the old man drove the nail into the fence he was strengthening, with more force than usual.
“Do you know of any one, Mr. Cosgrove, likely to want help?”
“Why, yes, every one wants help if he can get it; I do, but I don’t want school-boys.”
I walked away not a little disconcerted. To get work would, I thought, be an easy matter. I had never for one moment supposed my going to school would be the least drawback. The next place was Mr. Colton’s; he had just engaged all the help he would need for the summer. “Farmer White on the hill might hire you,” he said; so I trudged off to farmer White’s. “No, I have rented my farm, and keep no one myself.”
What to do I hardly knew; I had walked all the morning, and was tired. Besides, I did not know of any one else that would be likely to want extra help for the summer.
“There’s Mr. Wyman at the Cross,” said farmer White; “I shouldn’t wonder if he might want you. You can try him; he is a mighty fine man, and his wife is a good Christian woman.”
I started for Mr. Wyman’s. It was five miles from Mr. White’s, and the hot June sun was pouring down his strongest beams. I walked fast, but I could not help thinking; and almost before I was aware, I seemed to feel the visible presence of Mr. Kirby, to hear again the prayer he made in the mountain temple. I remembered too that he had told me how much distressed he was when the doctor first told him to go into the mountains. He had laid out his summer’s work, and was not willing to leave it. Days passed; he grew worse, and again his physician advised him to spend a few weeks among the hills. “I called it so much waste time,” he said—“time in which I could do nothing for myself, or for others. Yet it has not proved so.”
No, I knew it had not, for it was his constant aim to serve his heavenly Father, and if he had for a time left his work in one place, still he labored for souls wherever he was; consequently his daily life among the hills blossomed into sweet charities which would ripen into sweeter fruit.
What did I not owe him? Jennie too had remembered his words, and studied the little Bible he gave her, first because he had given it, and afterwards because its teachings responded to her spirit’s need. It is hardly possible for one to be a constant reader of that blessed book without a marked effect on heart and life. The diligent student of the Bible will have his tastes refined, his affections made more pure, his aspirations elevated, and his whole moral and mental tone immeasurably exalted. I could see this in Jennie, and I trusted there was something of the like in my own case. But as yet I knew nothing of the pardoning love of the Redeemer.