John Marvel, Assistant

by Thomas Nelson Page

As the strike proceeded and violence increased, those evidences of sympathy which came in the form of contributions grew less, and at last they began to fail perceptibly. In the commotion the foulest dregs of the seething community were thrown up, the vilest scum rose to the top. As in the case of Mr. Leigh's fire, whatever outrages were committed were charged to the strikers. The press, which had begun with expressions of sympathy with the strikers, had, under the impending shadow, changed its tone and was now calling on the authorities to put down lawlessness with a strong hand; demanding that the police should be ordered to protect the property and lives of citizens, and calling on the mayor to bestir himself and call on the governor for aid.

In this state of the case John Marvel, wishing to see what could be done to ameliorate the conditions about him, called a meeting of his congregation at his church one evening just before Christmas, and when the time came the little chapel was crowded to suffocation. It was a sombre and depressing-looking crowd that thronged the aisles of the little building. Poverty and want were in every face. A hopeless, sullen misery sat on every brow. The people thought that somehow some good would come of it, and many who had never been inside the walls before were on hand. I went in consequence of a talk I had with Marvel, who had casually mentioned Miss Eleanor Leigh's name in connection with the first suggestion of the call. And I was rewarded, for seated back in the crowd, with her face a little more pallid than usual and her eyes filled with the light of expectancy and kindness, sat Eleanor Leigh. She was dressed with great simplicity; but her appearance was not the less attractive, at least to me. She smiled from time to time to some acquaintance in the sad-looking throng, but I had a pang of jealousy to see how her gaze followed John Marvel, and one other member of the assembly, whose presence rather surprised me, Wolffert.

After a brief service John Marvel, in a few touching and singularly apt words, explained the reason for having called them together, irrespective of their church relation, and urged that, as the blessed season which was accepted by Christendom as the time of peace on earth and good-will to all men was drawing near, they should all try to lay aside personal feeling and hates and grievances, and try what effect kindness and good-will would accomplish. He asked that all would try to help each other as formerly, and trust to the Divine and Merciful Master to right their wrongs and inspire compassion for their sufferings. He referred to the terrible development that had just been made among them—the discovery of Elsa and the other poor girl who had been found at the Snow house—to the sudden arousing of the law after years of praying and working, and with a word of compassion for the poor creatures who had been misled and enslaved, he urged patience and prayer as the means to secure God's all-powerful help in their distress. His words and manner were simple and touching, and I do not attempt to give any idea of them or of their effect. But I somehow felt as though I were hearing the very teaching of Christ. He would call on one who was their friend as they knew, the friend of all who needed a friend, to say a few words to them. He turned to Wolffert. Wolffert walked forward a few steps and turned, made a brief but powerful statement of the situation, and counselled patience and forbearance. He knew their sufferings, he said—he knew their fortitude. He knew their wrongs, but patience and fortitude would in time bring a realization of it all in the minds of the public. What was needed was to make known to the world the truth, not as changed and distorted by ignorance or evil design, but as it existed in fact. They had a more powerful weapon than bullets or bayonets, the power of truth and justice. His own people had been preserved by Jehovah through the ages by the patience and fortitude He had given them, and God's arm was not shortened that He could not save nor His ear dulled that He could not hear. He used the same illustration that John Marvel had used: the unexpected arousing of the law to defend and save poor ignorant girls, who were being dragged down to the bottomless pit by organized infamy under the protection of men who had made themselves more powerful than the law. For these he had a few scathing words. He told of John Marvel's going to find Elsa, and referred to the aid he had received from others, those connected with the railway line on which the strike existed; and he counselled them to protect themselves, obey the law, keep the peace, and await with patience the justice of God. Efforts were being made to furnish them with fuel.

It may have been Wolffert's deep, flashing eyes, his earnest manner and vibrant voice, which affected them, for, though he held himself under strong restraint, he was deeply affected himself; but when John Marvel, after a brief prayer, dismissed them with the benediction, the people, men and women, passed out in almost silence and dispersed to their homes, and their murmured talk was all in a new key of resignation and even of distant hope. I felt as though I had shaken off the trammels of selfishness that had hitherto bound me, and was getting a glimpse of what the world might become in the future. This simple follower of Christ among his poor, threadbare like them, like them fireless and hungry and poor, illustrated his master's teaching in a way which I had never seen before, and it gave me a new insight into his power. I should have liked to go up to Eleanor Leigh and make peace with her; but while I deliberated Wolffert joined her and I walked home alone and thoughtful.

The press next morning had a fairly full notice of the meeting—the first that had ever been given to the work done through the chapel and its minister. The chief notices in it were the connection of the minister with the case of Elsa Loewen and the attack on the system made by a Jew. One paper had the heading:

"JEW AND CHRISTIAN."

Another's headline ran:

"PREACHER MARVEL VISITS A BAGNIO."

And it was only below that it was made plain that John Marvel had gone thither to rescue a lost girl. This, Kalender once informed me, was the true art of making headlines. "Half the world don't read anything but the headlines," he asserted, "and the other half don't remember anything else." The story made a sensation which Kalender himself might have coveted.

That day about noon Mrs. Argand received a call from her counsel, the Hon. Collis McSheen, who unfolded to her such a diabolical scheme to injure her property interests in common with those of every other important property holder in the city, by a wicked Jewish wretch and his fellow in mischief, who professed to be a preacher of the Gospel in a chapel which she had largely helped to build for the poor, that between fright and rage the good lady was scarcely able to wait long enough to summon the Rev. Dr. Capon to her house. The Hon. Collis did not mention the fact that one of his own houses was at that moment closed through the act of this scheming parson, nor that he was beginning to shake over the idea that the investigation beginning to be set on foot in consequence of the meddlesomeness of this same person might reach uncomfortably near his own door, and that he was sensible that a force was being aroused which he could not control.