A minister esteemed it his religious duty to visit an extreme frontier settlement to preach. To reach that settlement he had to pass through a wilderness infested with hostile Indians. When about to start on one of these journeys, he took his rifle from its rack and was about to depart with it on his shoulder when his good wife said to him: “My dear husband, why do you carry that great, heavy rifle on these long journeys? Don’t you know that the time and manner of your taking off has been decreed from the beginning of time, and that rifle can not vary the decree one hair’s breadth?” “That is true, my dear wife, and I don’t take my rifle to vary, but to execute the decree. What if I should meet an Indian whose time had come according to the decree and I didn’t have my rifle?”—Henry C. Caldwell.
(706)
DEED, THE GOOD
A man walked south on Main Street one afternoon recently. He had no overcoat and he shivered as the north wind struck him. Near the junction he stopped and picked something up. It was a bright silver dime.
“Wasn’t I lucky,” he said to a man who had seen the episode, who related the story to a reporter on the Kansas City Times. “I haven’t a cent and have had nothing to eat since yesterday noon. Now for the nearest lunch-wagon.”
A little girl came along at that moment. She, too, was poorly drest.
“I’ve lost a dime,” she half sobbed, as she inspected the pavement.
“I guess I’ve got what you were looking for,” said the man, as he handed the dime to the child, who danced away with only a “Thank you, mister.”
“Just my luck,” said the man with the stomach.
(707)