It is not my purpose to take you wandering with John Morgan. Even if we had time for it, the experience would be anything but pleasant. He went into many places where you would not like to follow; he did many things that were better left undone, and are much better left untold. Yet I will be just to poor, silly, wicked John. He held back, or rather was held back by a force which he did not in the least understand, from many a place that otherwise he would have entered. There were depths of sin and folly into which he had abundant chance to sink, and from which nothing in his own depraved heart kept him from sinking, and yet into which he did not sink. He would have smiled in superior scorn over the thought that the incense of prayer, which had been rising day and night concerning him during the passing weeks, had anything to do with the unseen force that held him when he would have plunged headlong. Still he was held. He is not the first one who has been saved from self-shipwreck by a power outside of himself, unrecognized and unthanked.
Still it must be confessed that John Morgan took long enough strides in the road to shipwreck, and did what he could for his own overthrow, goaded meantime by an exasperating and ever-increasing sense of failure. Here was he at last, his own master, able to work, if he could find anything to do, or to let it alone, just as he pleased; no one to direct, or, as he had always phrased it, to "order." No one to complain, no one to question—a life of freedom at last. Was it not for this he had pined? It was humiliating to discover that it did not satisfy him. He could not, even for an hour, cheat himself into believing that he was happy in the life that he had chosen. A very vagabond of a life he led. He tried working and lounging and starving, and the time hung heavily. It was more than humiliating, it was exasperating; but the fact remained that he could no more get away from the memory of that clean, sweet-smelling, sweetly kept room, in which he had lately passed his nights, than he could get away from his own miserable self. Nay, the very smell of the wild-wood violets which had nodded on him from the tiny vase that last morning at home, and which he had affected to despise, seemed to follow and haunt him. How perfectly absurd it was in him here, in the very centre of this great centre of life, to actually long for a whiff of those wild violets! He sneered at himself, and swore at himself, and longed for them all the same.
So passed the days, each one bearing him steadily downward, and yet each one holding him back from the downward depths into which he might have plunged. And the summer heats came in all their fierceness and wilted him with their city-polluted breath; he had been used all his life to the free, pure air of the country. At times it was hard for him to believe that this crowded, ill-smelling city could belong to the same earth on which the wide-stretching harvest-fields lay and smiled. And the summer waned, and the rich, rare October days, so beautiful in the country, so barren of all interest to the homeless in a great city, came to him, and John Morgan had actually become a tramp! The work which he had at first despised and hated he now could not find; and if he would not carry his early threat into execution and literally starve, he must tramp and beg. Now starving had lost its charms somewhere among the parchings of those summer months; he had so nearly tried that way as to shudder over it; to ask for a bite at the back door of country-looking houses was more to his mind.
One never-to-be-forgotten October day he shook himself out from the shelter of a wrecked car, near which he had passed the night, and resolved upon a breakfast of some sort. I wish I could give you a picture of him. His own mother would not have recognized him. His clothing in the old days had been none of the finest, but whatever passed through Mother Morgan's hands was clean, and carefully mended. Now this bundle of rags and dirt would have been in danger of being spurned from her door without a second glance. "There is no excuse for filth!" she was wont to say grimly. Her son John had heard her say it many a time. He thought of it this morning as he shook himself; yet how could he help the filth? He had no clothes, he had no place in which to wash, he had nothing with which to brush, and very little left to brush! True, he had brought himself into this very position, but of that he did not choose to think; and besides, everybody knows it is easier to get into certain positions than to get out of them. I wish I could tell you how he felt. He did not understand his own mood. He was not repentant, not in the least; if anything, he was more bitter and defiant than ever. But he was disappointed: assuming control of one's own actions was by no means so comfortable or desirable a lot as he had imagined. There were days in which he believed that to have milked the gentle cows, and cared for the fine horses, would have been a positive relief. It was not work that John had shirked. Yet he had no idea of going home; his proud spirit and defiant nature would not let him even suggest that thought to himself.
On this particular morning he had resolved to try again for work. He managed to get on the last car of an outgoing goods train, and was thus whirled a few miles into the country. At the first station he jumped off, and began his search for work. He found a farmer who was compassionate, and gave him wood to carry into the already well-stocked shed by way of earning his breakfast. Presently the farmer came to the door and called:
"We are about ready for breakfast now. You can come in while we have prayers and then have breakfast."
"I don't want prayers," said John, stopping short midway between the door and the wood-pile, his arms full. "I asked for something to eat, not for praying."
"I know that, and you shall have the something to eat; but a little praying won't hurt you. Why, man, you can afford to be thankful that you have found a chance to eat again!"
"No, I can't," said John fiercely. "If I can't have the breakfast without the praying, I'll go without the breakfast."
"Very well," said the sturdy farmer, "I'm bound you shall then. I declare, if a fellow has got so far that he can't even listen to a word of prayer, he doesn't deserve to eat."