[CHAPTER XIX.]
HIS PLACE AS A WORKER.
"Quit you like men."
The people of a city or country in which is some great natural wonder or some magnificent work of man become so accustomed to its grandeur that only the largest-minded of them continue to appreciate its excellence and gain culture from it. This is not true of men. A man who has the qualifications to instruct and the power to inspire his deemsmen will have renewed power, and will gain a stronger influence over all of them, as age brings matured wisdom. Few greater blessings can come to a community than to have a strong man working like leaven in the midst of it, and few posts of honor are more to be coveted than to be a part of all that is best in one's environment.
Eli Jones has decidedly influenced his township, and he has the satisfaction of feeling in his old age that he is without enemies and in possession of a numerous company of friends, the "uncle" of all who know him. He has had the good fortune—or, better, the good judgment—to know just what his place was. He has done each duty, never wishing that he might have found something greater to do, and now his services combined into one whole make a record which men of great fame often fail to gain.
One of the best tests of a man's power is his influence over the young. There is a time in early life when there is a longing for real help, when a young person feels groping in the dark for the right road, which he wants, but cannot find. Eli Jones has been at hand to throw, by his counsel and Christian advice, light on the right path, and many a man and woman stands to-day fixed firmly in a good place and on a high road to a better because he spoke a good word or reached out his hand when there was need of just that word or encouragement.
His love of education and his fondness for books have made themselves felt. He has been one of the foremost in founding and sustaining two schools—"Oak Grove Seminary" and the "Erskine High School." The latter partly owed its existence to him. He has started and built up a number of libraries, and he has wished to leave coming sons and daughters supplied with a fountain from which to draw. Not a few of the college graduates who have gone out from China received their first impulses to higher aspirations from him, in one way or another.
In temperance work he has taken his part. He began to speak for total abstinence as a boy, which has been his theme ever since, and he took active part in securing a majority for the Prohibition amendment in the State of Maine.