“Yes,” said grandma, “what fine speeches he used to make before the looking-glass, and how often he said he would never undertake a case that was not just, and then he would be sure to win.”
True, grandma’s words carried me far back into my boyhood. I could see now that I had been ambitious. Poor and friendless, I had read of others who had attained worldly preferment and riches, and I resolved to do the same. To be a successful lawyer seemed to me to be the height of intellectual attainment. This I would be, and for this did I first study. I was ambitious for myself, and I was equally ambitious for Jennie.
Once my great desire was to rise in the world; but now my aim was higher. As a lawyer, I did not intend that my knowledge and influence should become a screen for guilt. I would never be an oppressor of the poor and miserable. I had not the remotest wish to make vice appear virtue, nor to clothe transgressors in the garb of honorable men; neither did I expect to bury my conscience. I looked for a noble manhood.
Now it seemed to me my life could not be spent aright if I did not make the service of God my chief and direct aim, and that no other service would suit me so well as, in utter self-renunciation, to give myself entirely to the work of saving poor ruined sinners, spending my time, talents, health, all, in telling in the nooks and corners of the land, wherever I could find a listener, of the depth and fulness of His love for man. Compared with this, the fields of worldly ambition seemed a vast waste, without flowers or fruit.
“I am glad that you feel like this, Marston;” and grandma tottered across the room and laid her withered hand upon my head. “I have prayed earnestly for this. Young, earnest, persevering, you have the power of doing much good. I am thankful, Oh how thankful, that you see it in this light.”
The tears streamed over the cheeks of this aged saint. Jennie was weeping too, and I could not speak. I felt my own unworthiness and insufficiency, and only prayed that God would give me that ready tact and skill to say and do those things that would be pleasing in his sight, and enable me to win souls for his kingdom.
Still, I had only passed through my collegiate course; there were years of preparation before I could become fitted for the high and noble office of a preacher of his word. In the darkest lot there is some sunshine. With health, strength, some culture of mind, and the presence of my Saviour, the passing clouds only made the sunshine brighter.
Before the vacation closed I met Mr. Wyman. With his old frankness, he invited us all to spend the day with him, and more than this, sent his carriage to take us there. Considering that I had done nothing wrong, I was delighted with again meeting him, as well as Mrs. Wyman and Alice, in their old home.
My greeting was cordial, while his had all the tenderness of a father.
“I am glad to see, Marston, that you can forgive me for sending you away as I did. I knew that I was wrong, that I ought not to do it, that I was breaking a positive command; but I had always seen it done. My father I believed to be a good man; and though he did not work on the Sabbath, still, if his harvest or his hay-field was in danger of being ruined by a shower, he gathered it in, let the day be what it might. Then I was angry that you should reprimand me before all the hands.”