Janet's Love and Service

by Margaret M. Robertson

“Well, yes. I’ve always had the Bible, and I’ve read it considerable, but I never seem to get the hang of it, somehow. And it ain’t because I ain’t tried, either. There was one spell that I was dreadful down, and says I to myself, if there’s comfort to be got out of that old book, I’m bound to have it. So I began at the beginning about the creation, and Adam and Eve, but I didn’t seem to get much comfort there. There was some good reading, but along over a piece, there was a deal that I could see nothing to. Some of the Psalms seemed to kind o’ touch the spot, and the Proverbs are first-rate. I tell you he knew something of human nature, that wrote them.”

“There’s one thing you might have learned, before you got far over in Genesis,” said Mrs Nasmyth, gravely, “that you are a condemned sinner. You should have settled that matter with yourself, before you began to look for comfort.”

“Yes. I knew that before, but I couldn’t seem to make it go. Then I thought, maybe I didn’t understand it right, so I talked with folks and went to meeting, and did the best I could, thinking surely what other folks had got, and I hadn’t, would come sometime. But it didn’t. The talking, and the going to meeting, didn’t help me.

“Now there’s Deacon Sterne; he’d put it right to me. He’d say, says he, ‘Sampson, you’re a sinner, you know you be. You’ve got to give up, and bow that stiff neck o’ your’n to the yoke.’ Well, ‘I’d say, I’d be glad to, if I only knew how to.’ Then he’d say, ‘But you can’t do it yourself, no how. You’re clay in the hands of the potter, and you’ll have to perish, if the Lord don’t take right hold to save you.’ Then says I, ‘I wish to mercy He would.’ Then he’d talk and talk, but it all came to about that, ‘I must, and I couldn’t,’ and it didn’t help me a mite.

“That was a spell ago, after Captain Jennings’ folks went West. I wanted to go awfully, but father he was getting old, and mother she wouldn’t hear a word of it. I was awful discontented, and then, after a spell, worse came, and I tell you, I’d ha’ given most anything, to have got religion, just to have had something to hold on to.”

Mr Snow paused. There was no doubting his earnestness now. Janet did not speak, and in a little while he went on again.

“I’d give considerable, just to be sure there’s anything in getting religion. Sometimes I seem to see that there is, and then again I think, why don’t it help folks more. Now, there’s Deacon Sterne, he’s one of the best of them. He wouldn’t swerve a hair, from what he believed to be right, not to save a limb. He is one of the real old Puritan sort, not a mite like Fish and Slowcome. But he ain’t one of the meek and lowly, I can tell you. And he’s made some awful mistakes in his lifetime. He’s been awful hard and strict in his family. His first children got along pretty well. Most of them were girls, and their mother was a smart woman, and stood between them and their father’s hardness. And besides, in those days when the country was new, folks had to work hard, old and young, and that did considerable towards keeping things straight. But his boys never thought of their father, but to fear him. They both went, as soon as ever they were of age. Silas came home afterwards, and died. Joshua went West, and I don’t believe his father has heard a word from him, these fifteen years. The girls scattered after their mother died, and then the deacon married again, Abby Sheldon, a pretty girl, and a good one; but she never ought to have married him. She was not made of tough enough stuff, to wear along side of him. She has changed into a grave and silent woman, in his house. Her children all died when they were babies, except William, the eldest,—wilful Will, they call him, and I don’t know but he’d have better died too, for as sure as the deacon don’t change his course with him, he’ll drive him right straight to ruin, and break his mother’s heart to boot. Now, what I want to know is—if religion is the powerful thing it is called, why don’t it keep folks that have it, from making such mistakes in life?”

Janet did not have her answer at her tongue’s end, and Sampson did not give her time to consider.

“Now there’s Becky Pettimore, she’s got religion. But it don’t keep her from being as sour as vinegar, and as bitter as gall—”

“Whist, man!” interrupted Janet. “It ill becomes the like o’ you to speak that way of a poor lone woman like yon—one who never knew what it was to have a home, but who has been kept down with hard work and little sympathy, and many another trial. She’s a worthy woman, and her deeds prove it, for all her sourness. There’s few women in the town that I respect as I do her.”