"He did it well, too; no mistakes. By and by he began to send out little notes with his bills: 'We owe it to our pastor to pay his quarter's salary on the day promised.' Well, sir, when the next quarter's salary was paid the morning of the day: on which it was due, without having been asked for or run after, that minister thought the millennium was about to dawn! He hadn't been used to that sort of thing. You never saw anything like the promptness with which pew rents were paid in the church. If a man was twenty-four hours behind time, he was almost sure to receive a call from Mr. Miller; no writing notes this time. That man understood human nature well. Just imagine a gentleman standing in his store or office, and trying to carry on a conversation with Daniel Miller about not having paid his pew rent. 'Money has been a little short with me lately,' he begins, 'and I thought a few days' delay—'
"'What is it?' interrupts Daniel, with his hand to his ear. 'I'm hard of hearing, you know; speak a little louder, please.'
"Do you suppose that man is going to yell out for the benefit of the passers-by that he is a little short of money, and had deliberately planned a few days' delay for his minister? The way it worked was for him to scream out, 'You shall have the money at noon to-day, Mr. Miller.' Very likely, he grumbled that he wouldn't get caught in that trap again, and he didn't. People didn't enjoy calls from Daniel Miller when they owed the church any money. I watched that thing with the greatest interest. It grew all the time. It made a wonderful difference in Daniel's life; he kept his head straighter, and walked faster on the street. The church was large, and there was a good deal of business to be transacted, and Daniel had no temptation to brood over his infirmity. Then he knew just what was going on; just what the church gave to Foreign Missions and Home Missions, and all benevolences. He had no need any more to wonder painfully what was being done, and after hesitating over it a good while make up his mind to ask somebody, and feel sorry for them all the time to think they had got to answer him. Instead, people had to come to him for information. Nothing could be paid for, not a cent of money could be sent anywhere or done anything with unless the thing passed through Daniel Miller's hands. And I tell you the treasurer's reports of that church were curiosities; they were managed with such exactness and clearness. He had a little witch of a daughter, Nettie her name was, as pretty as a picture.
"Do you remember her, my son?"
"Yes, sir, distinctly," came promptly from the table where the son was writing letters.
And the Doctor continued: "Her father made her his clerk almost as soon as she could talk plainly, and began to train her up to business habits and business terms; he took her with him a good deal. 'Daniel Miller's ears' we used to call the bright little thing; and she was as bright as a diamond. We used to notice that Daniel could hear her to the last better than anybody else, even his wife. 'She's got a voice like an angel,' he said to me once; 'I know by her that I shall be able to hear the angels.' His hearing grew steadily worse. For a good many years he was able to hear some of the sermon, the loud parts as he used to call them, but by degrees, he lost the power of doing that. 'Did you hear?' the minister would shout at him, after service, as he came up for the collection. He would shake his head, but his eyes would look bright as he answered, 'No, sir, not with my ears; but I've got it here.' And he would lay his hand on his great, noble heart. It was true, too, and he went out and lived it a great deal better than many who heard everything. You must understand, young man, that I am covering a good deal of ground with this long story. The years went by, and at each election Daniel Miller was re-instated, until at last that congregation would have laughed in the face of any man who had suggested a change. 'What should we do without Daniel Miller?' That is as near as they ever came to mentioning the time when they might have to do without him; and the time came when they said that in lowered tones and with a hint of tears, for he was growing an old man and the church couldn't afford to lose him.
"Bless you! I hope you don't think that keeping the finances of the church straight was all the man did? It would take all night to tell you half the things that grew out of it; and then it wouldn't be told; it can't be. The Lord of the vineyard is the only one who has the whole story. I told you, he took to writing little marginal readings on the church bills and receipts. Well, is there any reason why marginal readings on church bills can't be about other matters than money? The 'words in season' that this deaf man spoke in this way, in quiet hours, to one and another of the flock, and the fruit they bore, I know something of, a good deal of, in fact; but, as I tell you, the Master is the only one who has the entire record.
"One night he had a new idea, or rather, he worked out what was to him an old idea. He went on Saturday evening to the parsonage with the quarter's salary; he apologized for intruding on Saturday, but said he, 'According to date this money should be paid to-morrow morning, and of course I couldn't do that, so I made bold to come to-night.'
"Well, he happened to be one of those men who never intrude on a pastor, no matter what time they come; so his pastor told him he was glad to see him, and would talk with him while he finished and put up his sermon; but Daniel didn't seem to want to talk; he watched that sermon with a curious, wistful air. At last he spoke, 'I've been turning a ridiculous idea over in my mind for a long time; I don't suppose it could be done, but I've thought sometimes that I would just like to try an experiment, and read over one of your sermons before you preached it, and see if I couldn't follow you from the pulpit better after that.' It was a queer notion, but it took the pastor's fancy. The fact was, he loved Daniel Miller so much that almost anything he said took his fancy, and he handed over the sermon and told the old gentleman to try it, by all means, he could have it as well as not. It would have done your heart good to see Daniel Miller's radiant face the next day. 'It worked, sir, it worked!' he said to the pastor, and he rubbed his hands together like a gleeful boy; 'I could follow you right along a good piece at a time.' If you'll believe it, that thing grew into a regular custom; the pastor had a boy, a bright enough fellow, who was always ready to scamper over to Daniel Miller's with the sermon on Saturday nights as soon as the minister could spare it, and wait while Daniel Miller went over it. Fact is, as the years went by, he was more willing to do that than any other errand the father could get up, and he and Nettie went over church accounts, and some other accounts together, many a Saturday night. But I happen to know that that pastor came to have a queer feeling that he couldn't preach a sermon until Daniel Miller went over it! That might be in part because he discovered that the old man had a way of going over it on his knees, and every sentence he came to that seemed to him ought to do a certain person any good, he would pray, 'Lord, bless that to John Watkins,' and so on, you know. Little Nettie, she let that secret out to the boy one night; and the minister came to feel that Daniel Miller was the associate pastor, and was praying the sermon into the hearts of the people all the time it was being preached. When a minister really feels that, he preaches carefully, I believe.
"Well, sir, it was a wonderful life; and when it ended, as I tell you it did a little more than a month ago, I never saw anything like the demonstration; and I didn't wonder at it. Twenty-nine years they had elected that man to office, and the Lord had elected him to a much higher office here on earth; his little notes bore a big harvest; and when the Lord called him to his seat in the Church triumphant, the Church on earth looked around for some one on whom his mantle could fall, and I tell you it seemed for a time impossible to do without him. Why, I moderated the meeting for them when they met to try to fill his place, and they just spent the first half-hour in tears and praying! Such lives tell. 'Infirmity,' indeed! God grant us more men like Daniel Miller."