FATHER GASPERIN.
Upon little children, who, though mebby they didn’t shine so much as the glass ones did, but who wuz human, and sorrowful, and needy. Little hearts that knew how to ache, and to aspire; innocent, ignorant souls whose destiny lay to a great extent in the ones about ’em; little blunderin’ footsteps that she could help step heavenward.
By the side of the plain but large and comfortable church in the colony there wuz a low white cross bearin’ Victor’s name.
But within the church, in the hundreds of souls who met there to worship God, his name and influence wuz carved in deeper lines than any that wuz ever carved in stun.
It wuz engraved deep in the aspirin’ lives of them who come here to be taught, and then went out to teach the savage tribes about them.
Many, many learned to live, helped by his memory and his influence; many learned how to die, helped by his memory and his example.
Good Father Gasperin, who went with the colony, has passed away. He preached the word in season and out of season. And his death wuz only like the steppin’ out of the vestibule of a church into the warm and lighted radiance of the interior.
He knew whom he had believed. He had seen the good seed he had sown spring up an hundred fold, and ripenin’ to the harvest, that sown agin and agin might yield blessed sheaves to the Lord of the harvest.
And when the summons come he wuz glad to lay down his prunin’ knife and his sickle and rest.
The same sunset that gilds the mound under which he sleeps looks down upon a low cottage not very fur away.