“No—have you found work? If you could get me a little nourishing food, I should regain my strength.”
The man gazed upon her pale face a moment, and again taking up his saw and cross, went out. He had not gone far before a woman met him, and said she wished him to follow her and saw some wood for her. His heart bounded with hope and gratitude, and he went after her to her dwelling, an abode but little better than his own for its poverty, yet wearing an air of comfort. He sawed the wood, split and piled it, and received six shillings, with which he hastened to a store for necessaries for his sick wife, and then hurried home to gladden her heart with the delicacies he had provided. Till now he had had no work for four days, and his family had been starving; and from this day his wife got better and was at length restored to her family and to health, from a state of weakness to which another day’s continuance would probably have proved fatal.
These six shillings, which did so much good, were paid him by the poor woman from the five dollars she had received from the store-keeper, and which the sailor had paid him. The poor woman’s daughter, also, was revived and ultimately restored to health; and was lately married to a young man who had been three years absent and returned true to his troth. But for the five dollars which had been so instrumental in her recovery, he might have returned to be told that she, whose memory had so long been the polar star of his heart, had perished.
So much good did the five-dollar bill do which Peter Chancery, Esq. so reluctantly paid to Mr. Last’s apprentice boy, though little credit is due to this legal gentleman for the results that followed. It is thus that Providence often makes bad men instruments of good to others. Let this story lead those who think a “small bill” can stand because it is a small bill, remember how much good a five-dollar bill has done in one single day—and that in paying a series of twenty bills, they may dispense good to hundreds around them.
The Lark.
A GERMAN ALLEGORY.
In the balmy morning of a spring day, a farmer walked with his son into the field. The cool morning wind played with the silver locks of the old man, and lifted the blooming stems of the field, so that they appeared like a cloud over the waving grain.
And the old man said, “Behold how active nature is for our good! With the same breath which cools our cheeks, she makes our fields fruitful, so that our barns are filled.
“Eighty years have I witnessed this, and still it is as pleasing to me as though I saw it to-day for the first time. It may easily be the last! For have I not reached the limit of human life!”
Thus the old man spake. Then the son pressed his hand and was grieved in his heart.