He sits down, and a hymn is given out and sung, but the truth which has found lodgement in our hearts is the living truth of a human life reclaimed. We have listened to the story of the prodigal from his own lips. We have heard again the cosmic parable of wandering and return; the mystery of creation, and fall, and re-creation by a power divine; the great, irrefutable witness to the Truth in the history of a lost soul come to itself and returning to the Father’s house.
In the midst of the singing the leader walks quietly down the aisle to the rear. Two ladies are there struggling in a vain effort to quiet an old man. They have come to help in the conduct of the service, and the old man has increasingly claimed their care, for he is drunk and is growing violent. I have noticed him in his restless movements. Upon his stooping figure he wears an old army coat and cape that are dripping with the rain. His gray mustache and beard are long and matted, and stained all round his mouth with the deep brown of tobacco-juice. His unkempt hair falls in frowsy masses about his ears, and his lustreless eyes, inflamed and expressionless, bulge from their swollen sockets.
In an instant the leader’s strong hand is upon him, and with no commotion above the sound of song the old man is soon without the hall, and the leader back in his place again singing as heartily as ever.
When the meeting ends the crowd moves slowly and listlessly toward the door, as though its prevailing mood were aimless beyond the dull necessity of passing the time. The fine rain and melting snow are still falling through the mist. The men drift away singly or in groups of twos and threes, under the flickering lights, their heads bent slightly forward and their bare hands thrust into the side-pockets of their trousers.
In the crush about the foot of the aisle a young man speaks to me:
“You are pretty wet, aren’t you?” he says, quietly, as the jam presses him against me.
I see at a glance that he is far more respectable than I, and my first mental attitude is one of hospitality to further evangelizing effort. But I shift at once, for without waiting for a reply from me, he adds:
“It’s d—— tough to go out into that,” as he turns up the collar of his light covert coat in the blast of piercing dampness which strikes our faces through the open door.
“It is tough,” I agree, as I study his face. He is about thirty, I should say, and almost six feet high, but of rather slender figure. He is smooth-shaven, and an effect of pallor is heightened by yellow hair and pale blue eyes, with dark arcs beneath them and a bluish tinge about his mouth. Plainly he has been little exposed to the outer air, but he is an habitual workman, as his hands attest unmistakably when he lifts them to adjust his coat-collar.
“Ain’t you got no place to go to?” he asks.