Still remained that hopeless question: What should he do with himself? The sun was quite gone now, and a cold wind was blowing up freshly from the north. It blew directly through Dirk's threadbare garments. He turned suddenly and slipped inside one of the worst of the many saloons which literally lined this end of the street. He had refused to go with the boys to Poke's, an hour or two before, and this was several grades below Poke's in decency! But it was growing dark, and he was cold.
There was one young man who saw him dash down those cellar stairs, who stood still and looked at him, his face darkening the while with discouragement. This, then, was all the afternoon's Sabbath-school had accomplished for him. To be sure he was not disappointed at the result; it was no more than he had expected; but it was so discouraging to be an eye-witness to the degradation to which these young wretches had fallen! Of course the young man was Alfred Ried, and he went home, and was dreary, over all sorts of failures in Christian work, mission Sabbath-schools especially; and their own, more especially than any other.
Among the early shoppers on Monday morning came Mrs. Evan Roberts. Shopping, however, seemed to be a small part of her business. She came directly to young Ried's counter, and addressed him very much as though she had ceased talking with him but a moment before:—
“Mr. Ried, what can you and I do for those boys during the week?”
But Alfred was at his gloomiest.
“I don't see that we can do anything for them at any time,” he said, dismally. “What is an hour on Sunday, set against all the rest of the time? They go from the school-room to the rum saloons, and dawdle away the rest of the day. Yesterday I met that young Colson going into one of the worst saloons on Dey Street. They are not to blame, either.” This last in a fiercer tone, after a slight pause. “I don't blame them; they have nowhere else to go, and nothing to do; and it is cold on the streets, and warm in the saloons.”
If he expected the small lady, who was regarding him so steadily, to take the other side of this question, he was disappointed. She spoke quietly enough, but with the earnestness of conviction.
“Those are startling facts. I do not see how one could be surprised that the results are they are; and the practical question forces itself upon us, What are we to do under the circumstances? Mr. Ried, you have had your eyes open in regard to this subject for some time; what have you thought out?”
Now was Mr. Alfred Ried embarrassed. It was true that his eyes had been long open to the subject; it was true that he had given it a great deal of what he had called thought. But with those alert eyes fixed on his face, her whole manner indicating intense earnestness, he suddenly realized that all his thought had been to no purpose, had accomplished nothing, unless it had served to give him a feeling almost of irritation against the boys, and their teachers who made failures, and the people who folded their hands and let things go to ruin. Here confronted him one, whose hands were not folded, though they rested quietly enough on the counter before him. He began to feel that there might be latent power in them.
“I have nothing to say,” and he said it at last with flushed face and embarrassed voice; “I have thought out nothing. The whole thing seemed hopeless to me with my utter lack of resources. My sister had schemes, many of them, and they seemed to me good ones, even then; they seem better now, only I cannot carry them out.”