"Nonsense!" rejoined the master; "go to your work, and let me hear no more of that."
So to work he went, and kept his situation, and a good conscience. When our informant heard the anecdote from him, he had become a successful trader, God having blessed his youthful conscientiousness.
This incident reminds us of another of somewhat the same character, which was told us by a gentleman, now dead, who at the time held a very important position on the staff of one of our great religious societies.
"When I was a youth," so his narrative ran, "I was sent by my friends to one of the principal towns in an island in the West Indies, to be apprenticed as an articled clerk to a firm of solicitors there. My connections at home, although not Evangelical Christians, respected religion, and when I left, they counselled me to be always particular in observing the Lord's Day and reverencing it.
"WELL, WHAT DO YOU WANT?" (See page 252.)
"On getting to my new situation, the managing clerk, at the close of the first week, told me that I should be expected to put in my appearance at the office on Sunday. I told him that I had been always taught not to do any work on that day, and that I meant to go to church. To church I accordingly went. On the Monday, when I returned to the office, one of the partners, a lively little man, looked hard at me, but said nothing. The next Sunday and the next I pursued the same course, without any objection being made to it. There were other articled clerks in the office, and they, seeing what I did, gradually did the same, without any opposition from the principals. In course of time, some of the partners ceased to come, until at last the little man I have named was the only one who came, and that for an hour or two. Even this in time ceased, and the office was shut up on the Sunday. Then, more curious still, the other solicitors in the town followed the example that our office had set, till, ere long, no business at all was done on the Lord's Day by any solicitor in the place."
A third anecdote connected with the Lord's Day may here also appropriately be given. The incident occurred to the grandfather of the gentleman who narrated it to us.
The late Lord L—— was well known as a brave warrior during the Peninsular War. His lordship, on his return to Scotland, was anxious to have some timber on his estate cut down, that he might discharge certain pressing debts. Without giving any notice of his intention, he called one Sunday morning upon my friend's grandfather, just as he was preparing to go with his family to church, and asked him to walk with him over the estate, that they might together see what timber was fit for cutting.
The grandfather respectfully replied that that day he had another Master whom he must serve, but that he would be ready at any hour on a working day to be promptly at his lordship's service. His lordship merely said, "Very well," and named another day, when the agent attended him, and did the work that was wanted of him, apparently to his lordship's satisfaction.