John Marvel, Assistant

by Thomas Nelson Page

God appeared very real to him, and also to his hearers, who hung on his words as simple as they were. I felt a seriousness which I had long been a stranger to. He appeared to be talking to me, and I set it down to tenderness for old John Marvel himself, rather than to his subject.

When the service was over, he came down the aisle speaking to the congregation, many of whom he appeared to know by name, and whose concerns he also knew intimately. And as the children crowded around him with smiles of friendliness, I thought of the village preacher with the children following, "with endearing wile."

His words were always words of cheer.

"Ah! Mrs. Tams! Your boy got his place, didn't he?

"Mrs. Williams, your little girl is all right again?

"Well, Mrs. McNeil" (to a rusty, thinly clad woman who sat with her back to me), "so your husband won his case, after all? His lawyer was an old friend of mine."

I had sat far back, as the church was full when I entered, and was waiting for him to get through with his congregation before making myself known to him; so, though he was now quite close to me, he did not recognize me until I spoke to him. As I mentioned his name, he turned.

"Why, Henry Glave!" Then he took me in his arms, bodily, and lifting me from the ground hugged me there before the entire remnant of his congregation who yet remained in the church. I never had a warmer greeting. I felt as if I were the prodigal son, and, although it was embarrassing, I was conscious that instant that he had lifted me out of my old life and taken me to his heart. It was as if he had set me down on a higher level in a better and purer atmosphere.

I went home with him that night to his little room in a house even smaller and poorer than that in which I had my room—where he lived, as I found, because he knew the pittance he paid was a boon to the poor family who sublet the room. But as small and inconvenient as the room was, I felt that it was a haven for a tired and storm-tossed spirit, and the few books it contained gave it an air of being a home. Before I left it I was conscious that I was in a new phase of life. Something made me feel that John Marvel's room was not only a home but a sanctuary.

We sat late that night and talked of many things, and though old John had not improved in quickness, I was surprised, when I came to think over our evening, how much he knew of people—poor people. It seemed to me that he lived nearer to them than possibly any one I had known. He had organized a sort of settlement among them, and his chief helpers were Wolffert and a Catholic priest, a dear devoted old fellow, Father Tapp, whom I afterward met, who always spoke of John Marvel as his "Heretick brother," and never without a smile in his eye. Here he helped the poor, the sick and the outcast; got places for those out of work, and encouraged those who were despairing. I discovered that he was really trying to put into practical execution the lessons he taught out of the Bible, and though I told him he would soon come to grief doing that, he said he thought the command was too plain to be disobeyed. Did I suppose that the Master would have commanded, "Love your enemies," and, "Turn the other cheek," if He had not meant it? "Well," I said, "the Church goes for teaching that theoretically, I admit; but it does not do it in practice—I know of no body of men more ready to assert their rights, and which strikes back with more vehemence when assailed."