HARBOR JIM

SIGNAL HILL, HARBOUR OF ST. JOHNS.

HARBOR JIM

OF NEWFOUNDLAND

By

A. EUGENE BARTLETT, D.D.

Author of "The Joy Maker," etc.

New York Chicago

Fleming H. Revell Company

London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1922, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue

Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.

London: 21 Paternoster Square

Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

To those Newfoundlanders who, in gathering
harvests from the sea for the world's hungry,
have garnered for themselves both faith and
courage, I dedicate this book.

Contents

[I.] Jim and Bob
9

[II.] The Conversion of Jim
20

[III.] An Engagement As Planned
30

[IV.] Some Miracles
40

[V.] "I Asked for Fish"
49

[VI.] Livin' Along
56

[VII.] The Heaven Home
61

[VIII.] Christmas with Jim's Friends
68

[IX.] Honey-Mooning on the Flakes
80

[X.] Jim and His Book
86

[XI.] Railroading with the Kid
93

[XII.] Through the Valley with the Little Fellow
100

[XIII.] The Queer One
107

[CHAPTER I]

JIM AND BOB

Bob McCartney was spreading cod on the flakes and I was watching him and estimating the chances of better weather. The sun had not succeeded in rolling back the fog and St. John's was still half asleep in blankets of mist. Signal Hill was altogether hidden and the harbor entrance could not be seen. In the water-soaked atmosphere the flakes were merged together and the tiny houses of the fishers were almost joined into one long rambling house. The air was heavy with the smell of fish and the morning was not conducive to enthusiastic conversation.

Bob McCartney was a Newfoundlander born and bred and had left with his ancestors in Ireland the gift of blarney. This morning in particular he contented himself with monosyllabic answers, that occasionally did not come even to the estate words, but ended only in an effective grunt. Finally he condescended to speak a whole sentence with some little life in his voice.

"Yes, I guess she's agoin' to lift, fer there goes Harbor Jim."

I strained my eyes to see thru the fog and could just discern a sail boat headed toward what I supposed was the harbor entrance.

"And who is Harbor Jim?" I asked.

"Why, he's my friend and he can knock spalls off'n any Lander in the Dominion," replied Bob and then lapsed into silence as he went on slowly laying out his cod on the flakes.

Just then the sun made a gain and succeeded in piercing thru the fog and I saw, suddenly, a little boat some seventy-five yards out from the shore, and standing out near the bow stood a man as erect as the mast behind him, and looking straight out to sea.

"There's Harbor Jim!" and Bob pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the boat as he spoke the words.

It gave me a thrill, as the light brought him sharply to my attention, to see him standing there, intently looking toward the harbor entrance. I looked from the shore even as he looked from his boat and the sun at that moment uncovered the rocks on both sides. He lifted his hand and the helper behind him brought the sail to the faint breeze that was springing up, and the boat headed for the harbor entrance and the open sea.

The sun seemed to lift Bob's spirit and the sight of Harbor Jim to warm the cockles of his heart, for he began in a good-natured drawl to tell me of the finding of his friend.

"It was the third week in March, eleven years ago, come next spring, that we were sealing down North. Harbor Jim and I were then on Cap'en Boynton's ship. I didn't know Jim then more'n any other fellow. It was an odd kind of a trip. For days it hung nasty and we couldn't have seen a seal if he had been within shot of us.

"Then, one day, I think it was a Friday, but that doesn't matter, it come bright and sparkling and grew cold. By noon our ship was frozen in the ice, and we were waiting and hoping the look-out would see seals. The ice had been piled up in some places and just south it looked like a town, a little village with houses and meeting house and school, all a sparklin' pretty. I never seed bluer sky, deep as chicory flowers and you could see fer miles, seems though you was a-goin' to see thru it almost to 'tother side o' the world.

"Long about two o'clock the look-out yelled: 'Seals to the nor-east!'

"No sooner did he yell than the Cap'en shouted: 'Look alive men! Over and after!'

"Then with gaffs and guns and ropes we went over the ship's side and after the seals. The ice was uncertain and some of the men went thru the crust into the sea, but we quickly pulled them out and were off agin.

"Now in the days before we had decided to make a contest of it, as we often did. It made good sport and we would get more seals. Harbor Jim and I had chosen up, like they do in a spellin' bee, and all the men had been divided into two sides to see which one on'em would bring the biggest load o' seals back to the ship.

"Unfortunately the seals were some distance from the ship and it was after two when we started. We were so intent on getting the catch that we failed to note it was not only beginning to snow, but also getting on toward the end o' the day.

"At the moment when we should have turned back, I saw an old hood, that's an old seal that pulls a visor over his eyes and fights to a finish. I'd been tender-hearted and passed by just then a young seal that looked kinder pitiful at me and begged for life and I resolved that I'd get the old hood, come what would. He lured me away from the crowd, and when I finally succeeded in silencing him, the men were gone, and thru the snow I could not see the ship.

"Worse luck still the ice-pan on which I stood was beginning to shake and break up. I thought of the woman at home and the boy, and I thought of freezing to death out to sea and I guess, too, I thought o' my sins. The other fellows had gone back to the ship and I was alone, facing the cold, the storm and the night. Then I began to shout in the hope that they were not too far away to hear me. After some waiting, that seemed longer than probably 'twas, I heared two words and I don't honest think, if I gets to Paradise and the good Lord says, 'Come, Bob, there's room,' it'll sound half so good as it did to me then when I heared ringing out:

"'Comin', Bob!' It was the shout of Harbor Jim. I kept hollering and he found me and together we made our way back. I don't know jes' how and I don't believe he does, but when we reached the rest, we joined hands and felt our way back to the ship.

"I have asked him about it, many a time, but he always says, 'He showed me the way, Bob, and He'll show you the way. Ask Him, Bob.'

"He went after me when all the rest said he was a fool and a riskin' of his life. That's how I found my friend and I don't believe Jonathan ever loved David more'n I love Jim. He never goes scow-ways; he always sails straight. But you mustn't think I am the only one that loves him. Jerusalem spriggins, I do believe the whole world would love Jim, if they only could know him."

The lethargy that had been born out of the morning had completely disappeared. Bob had become all animation as he told of the finding of his friend. If I had not known that Bob was a man who never showed his feelings, except in most orderly and measured fashion, I should have thought, once or twice, that the tears were starting, but it must have been the dampness of the morning, that the sun was now fast drying up.

The city of St. John's now stood out clear in the sunshine. Harbor Jim's boat had gone thru the narrow entrance and disappeared out to sea. Both sides of the bay stood out sharp, revealing a harbor that from many viewpoints is as beautiful as that of Naples.

Bob carefully laid out his last fish and left it to dry on the flakes. Rubbing his sleeve across his face, he abruptly turned and said:

"I needs a plug of terbaccy. Walk down town and I'll tell you how Jim got his name."

I did not need a second invitation and we started toward town.

"You see it was this-away. His mother gave him the Jim, but his friends and neighbors give him the Harbor.

"Jim was always one to take chances, 'specially if some one needed him. Didn't he take a chance—a big one—when he saved me on the ice-pan? But somehow he always pulled thru. Other boats would lie outside and wait but Jim would pull thru the Narrows and tie up and be home afore the others. The others dasn't come into the Harbor, a fear o' the rocks.

"Folks come to say, 'Jim always makes the Harbor.' Then jes' naturally they come to call him Harbor Jim. It's so now that the women folks are always glad if their men can go with Jim, for they feel that then they'll sure come back. Everybody who lives yere loves Harbor Jim."

"I would like to meet Harbor Jim and have a talk with him," I said, when Bob ceased talking and trudged on in silence. "I am sure he has a philosophy worth hearing about and adopting."

"You can meet him all right," replied Bob, "but as for talkin' much with him, I don't know. He isn't very strong on talkin'. He says some folks talk so much, they set their tongue to goin' and go off and leave it runnin' and it does a heap a mischief. Another time he sed to me that he thought most folks would do more if they talked less.

"I remember a year ago a white-washed Yankee was here travelling for some soap concern. He heared about Harbor Jim and wanted me to take him over to his house and introduce him and I did. That Yankee started right in doing all the talkin'. He had a tongue that was balanced and would wag easy. He told Jim he was making a mistake in not having a bigger garden, that he ought to farm more and fish less. He told him what the Dominion needed and when at last he began to get out of breath he turned to Jim and said:

"'What do you think?'

"And Harbor Jim just said kind of slow like and deliberate:

"'Guess you have said it all, sir, but mebbe when everybody goes to farming they will need a little fish to change off from potatoes and cabbage, and I guess I better bid you good day and go fishing.' That was every word Jim said and that Yankee watched him go out of sight and what that Yankee said then want a credit to him nor favorable to the Dominion."

I smiled at the thought of the discomforted travelling man and wondered if my own luck or my own tact would succeed any better, for I was already convinced that Harbor Jim was a man worth knowing.

"Suppose we go and meet Mrs. Harbor Jim," I said to Bob when the tobacco had been purchased and his pipe was doing right.

"If you say so, but meetin' her ain't the same as meetin' him. She's all right, but she's jes' learning from Jim, she says so herself," answered Bob.

Their home was in a little town a few miles out from St. John's and it was kind of Bob to go out with me. After a walk of about an hour we stood looking down upon a little fishing village with great, brown-stained rocks protecting it a little from the sea.

"This is his town," said Bob, "can you find his house?"

But they looked alike to me; for all were small rectangular affairs, flat-roofed, shingled and painted white. Jim's house was evidently no different from his neighbor's.

"I guess I'll have to tell you," Bob chuckled, as we went down a lane and saw two rather dirty children at play in front of a house where a woman was bending over a tub of clothes.

"Hello, Bob, did Jim go out?" the woman called, as soon as she recognized Bob.

"Yes, he went out a couple of hours ago. Here's a man who wants to meet Mrs. Harbor Jim."

She wiped her hands on her wet apron, pushed the hair back from the baby's face as she passed her and beckoned us to follow her into the house. Extending her hand she said:

"I think, sir, you want to see my husband, but he's a fishin' and may not be back afore tomorrow. Can I do anything for you, sir? There's some brewse,[1] on the back of the stove, if you care to eat. I am wondering what you can be awantin' this time of a working morning? Is it that some one has fell sick and wants Jim to watch or pray?"

"We were a bit tired with walking and thought we would like to rest and see you and the children in passing," I said none to easily, for the little woman was searching us hard to find the reason of our visit.

Bob came to our rescue by starting a conversation about the promise of prices for fish and what Bill Coaker was doing for the Fishermen's Protective Union. Relieved by the shift in the conversation I looked about the room. It was positively no different from other fishermen's homes that I had visited; no better furniture, no more of it; the house was no cleaner; and the woman, who was Jim's wife, was on a par with other women of the neighborhood; only she seemed a little brighter and a certain light was in her eyes when she spoke of Jim. There was just one object that attracted my attention, a spruce tree in one corner, and I asked the purpose of it.

She replied: "Jim keeps a tree in that corner. He says it keeps him remembering how beautiful the world is. He says it connects us with out o' doors and Jim loves the open country just as he does the sea."

Then after a pause she added: "But you must come again when Jim is home. I want you to know him. I wish every one could know Jim; he is so good, so true, so kind!"

That was all I could find out about Harbor Jim that day, but I did not forget that tribute to her husband, spoken simply, out of her heart, and it made me feel as I went back to the city with Bob, that perhaps I had under-estimated her ability and worth. It was more than a week afterward that in unexpected fashion and without introduction, I met Jim, But there was not a day of that week that I did not think of the little woman in faded blue, her flaxen hair falling over her face in confusion, because of wind and work, as I had seen her that morning over the white-picketed fence of Jim's house. I knew that I should not leave St. John's until I had seen Harbor Jim and his wife again.

[CHAPTER II]

THE CONVERSION OF JIM

The pressure of my own work, during the following days, postponed my intended visit to Harbor Jim's. Then, one afternoon, I started for a walk, not to Jim's, but to Signal Tower by way of the flakes. The path I chose, wound around among the little fishermen's summer homes and past the flakes now heavy with fish curing in the sun; then across the little valley, near the end of the promontory, up back of the hospital to Cabot Tower and down around the reservoir back to the city. St. John's offers many attractive walks. There is the road out to Quidi Vidi, past the little lake where the regattas are held. There is the road to Bowring Park that gives one the quiet of woods there, with many flowers and a little, singing brook; but for one who loves the sea and the fishers, the walk that goes along the flakes must ever be the favorite.

The afternoon of my walk was clear and the deep, blue water of the harbor was in sight most of the way. I had reached Cabot Tower and had been looking across the unhindered sea toward Ireland, the nearest land beyond, and was turning to go down toward the city, that lay comfortably upon the hills in the mellow, warm light of late afternoon, when I noticed a rather tall, bronzed fisherman, standing close by, evidently sharing the view with me.

I turned and looked squarely at him and thought, "John Cabot himself might have been such a one as you are."

I nodded and the fellow returned it and said, removing his hat as he spoke:

"Don't you think we had better uncover before such a view as that?"

I did as he suggested and drawn to the fellow by his winsome smile I decided to go back to the city with him; but there was a certain reserve in his manner, that did not make it quite easy to go with him unbidden. I hesitated and then asked:

"Have you any objection to my walking back to the city with you?"

"Not in the least," he replied, "provided you do not spoil the last of the day with too many words. You see, sir, I need some time to let that scene sink into my soul."

For a New Yorker who had been interviewing Dominion leaders and talking politics in the interests of a newspaper, the command to keep silent was at least a surprise, but no doubt altogether wholesome.

We started toward the city. The hill drops rather rapidly, you may remember, and then winds more leisurely. Forbidden to spoil the afternoon with words, I could at least watch my unknown companion who chose to practice the vow of silence like a Trappist monk.

He was a fisherman. His clothes told me that, but there was to his walk an elasticity, a certain springiness that the fishermen I knew had lacked. He carried his head higher, his back was straighter. He walked as the son of a King might have walked, who had decided for the time to travel incognito and had chosen the garb of a fisherman.

Now and then I would get a little ahead of him for the chance of looking back and up into his face. The very smile with which he had closed my mouth lingered and lit his face, just as light sometimes lingers on clouds at sunset. I fell to wondering how long it would last, just as sometimes I had estimated the length of sunsets.

We came to a house and a little girl, seeing him, came running down and, without a word, slipped her hand into the man's and walked on some three rods and then left him and went back into the house from which she had come. She also smiled and seemed glad to walk and be silent.

The houses increased in number as we came down the hill. Two boys came and, grabbing each a hand of my companion, walked a little way with him. This time he bestowed upon the boys, not words but a marble a piece. The boys utterly ignored me, kept their eyes rivetted upon him and left, giving him a hearty "Thank you!"

When we came to the last dip of the hill that descends into the city, he paused and, keeping his eyes on the western sky, said:

"Hard on you, sir! I didn't intend to be rude, but since I was converted I have to have more time to myself. Seems only fair that a fellow should have a little time now and then to enjoy his own company. Here's a good place to watch the Lord as He blesses the city at the close of the day."

He waved me to a seat beside him and we sat watching. The silence was not as oppressive. I was a little nearer to my companion and the great gray clouds suffused with pink rivetted my attention. As the sunset waned and the cold, gray of night came on, he got up and, starting toward the city, said:

"Thank you for praying with me."

Now I had not been aware of having said anything at all, but I remembered that prayer may be uttered or unexpressed and ventured no reply.

"Words often weigh down as well as lift. A lot of folks are smothered with them." He was breaking the silence which he had stipulated should be maintained until the view had sunk into his soul. "Words have to be well chosen, then they lift their pound. I'm not averse to talking on occasion; only, I find, when I'm talking too much, I'm thinking too little. Then, again, God wants to have His say now and then, and how can He, if we are sputtering all the while? Guess He talks still to some folks in the cool of the evening just as He did in the old garden."

Released from the command to be silent and no longer with the opportunity of seeing my companion clearly, for it was fast growing dark, I felt that I would very much like to know something more of this strange, yet likable, fellow, and the words that he had spoken about his conversion prompted me in turn to break the silence.

"I think I have received more out of this walk and this sunset than any I can remember, but my conversion was evidently not the same as yours. I would like to know about your conversion. Maybe it would open my eyes wider and let me see more as you do."

I spoke now, not curiously, but earnestly, for I wanted to know how he could find so much on the old familiar hill and how I might find what he was finding.

He laughed heartily and his laugh left the situation less tense and made him seem more human.

"Maybe my conversion won't interest you," he said, "then again, it may help you. It was on this very road, I was converted. Only it was in the morning at half past nine. It was a foggy morning. Newfoundland has a good many of them. I used to think, too many, before I was converted, but now it seems to me best, for it just curtains the beautiful world and each time the curtain lifts it seems a little fairer than before for the waiting.

"Now I've always loved the hills and the sea and enjoyed a good view, as most fishermen do, but that morning I was scuffing along, out of patience with a poor catch of the day before and seeing nothing but fog. The sea and the hills were out of sight. Suddenly I heard a voice say:

"'Why don't you look at yourself, Jim?'

"I stopped stock still in the middle of the road, like a hand had been put upon me and detained me. The voice was no more but the question was for me and it had to be answered.

"It would take some time, so I decided to sit down and consider it. I could show you the very rock, sometime, if you cared to see it. I had never done much thinking 'till that morning. I said to myself:

"'James, you don't know yourself well enough to call yourself by your first name. You have peeped into your neighbors' affairs. You've criticised other folks but you've never really gotten acquainted with yourself.'

"So I stood myself up and asked myself questions in a real, down-right, honest desire to see just what I was and what I was doing here. First I says:

"'Who are you, Jim?'

"And I figured out that I had the right answer, though I had forgotten it and lived in contradiction of it. I was and I am a child of the Father.

"Do you know, sir, the knowledge of that will ask a man a good many more questions and answer 'em, too.

"'Where are you living, Jim?' I said to myself and the answer came, 'You are living in His world and it's a good world. He made it for you and His other children. He's put fish in all the seas and if it ain't one kind it's another. There is enough in His world for all the children, and if any on'em starves, it's because some on'em is blind or the other children has forgotten they are to share His things. It's a fair world, with blue sky and little birds that sing, and little flowers that praise Him, too.'

"It's a cheery thought, sir, that we're a livin' in His world. It makes it worth while to live right. Then the next question I put myself was this:

"'What are you worth?'

"I reckoned up and found I was worth five quintals of salt fish, a half a barrel of cod liver oil and twelve lobster pots, most of 'em empty. I owned no house and aside from the fish I had $149 in the bank and an extra suit of clothes that wouldn't count for much.

"'Is that all you're worth,' I said, and I saw it wasn't enough to count me rich. I remembered, I could really think that morning, that Job's riches were not in camels and sheep. So I might be rich in other things beside codfish and oil, but I grew ashamed of myself that morning when I come to see how little I could count up that was worth carrying with me for eternity.

"Bob McCartney's friendship, the part I'd given, counted a little; but when it come to counting faith and hope and truth, it didn't show up very well. I was poor and I had come to know it and that was the best part of it. There was hope then for me and a chance I might become rich.

"'Where are you going?' again the Voice asked me a big question. I meet folks who have forgotten, just as I had done. But it helps to keep a fellow on the right track to remember where the road ends.

"'What are you doing here?' was the next question and I put myself to answer it there on the rock that morning I was converted.

"Fishing, I answered first, but what for, and is that all, came the questions. Now I take it fishing or farming, writing or preaching, it don't make much difference, so long as we're each just where He wants us to be and are doing just what He wants us to do. And every man has got to find out if he is where the Father wants him to be.

"It didn't take me long to find out that I might be where He wanted me to be, but I knew I wasn't doing all He wanted me to do and I was adoin' a good many things He didn't want me to do.

"Then I made some resolutions. Some folks don't believe in 'em, I know, but they always seemed to me to be good crutches, till a man could manage to get on without them and learn to walk straight. I resolved to be the best fisherman ever put out to sea, to clean my fish thorough, to salt 'em well and sell 'em honest weight.

"Then I resolved to know more of His world since He made it for me and the other children. Then, I remembered that since He had sent His Son to show the way, I'd better listen to Him and go His way.

"The next day I went over to Parson Curtis' and said to him:

"'Yesterday was my day o' grace, and I was converted at half past nine. I'm not saved, but I'm on the way to salvation and I'd like to be broughten just as near to His Son as I can be. I'm just a learnin', but no child ever wanted to learn more than I do now.'

"So when it come Sunday, he took me into the fellowship of Jesus and I've been learnin' ever since."

I think I have given you almost his words. You see they were short, real words, and the only fear I have is that in repeating them I may have lost the quiet, deep-seated earnestness that was in his voice. He spoke that night from his heart. We were on Water Street now and it was time for us to part.

"Thank you," I said, and I spoke as sincerely as he had spoken, "and if you don't mind I would like to know your name. It is James, what?"

He reached out a big hand and took a firm grip of mine and said: "I'm Jim. Harbor Jim they call me." And then I remembered that I had been looking for him.

[CHAPTER III]

AN ENGAGEMENT AS PLANNED

"Come," came a voice from within and I opened the door and stepped into Harbor Jim's cozy home. Its warmth and cheer were in sharp contrast to the evening without. It was raining hard and everything was saturated with water. Out of the chill and wet, I stepped across the threshold into warmth and dryness.

I thought at once of the Cotter's Saturday night. In the centre of the room at a little table, close to a kerosene lamp, was Harbor Jim reading from the Bible, and sharing the rather uncertain light with him was his wife with a pile of stockings to be mended, in her lap. Beyond them, a small fire-place with rough stone dogs. A spruce fire crackled like pop corn and did its best to dissipate anything of disconsolateness that might have crept in from the night's cold rain. At the right of the fire-place, on a roll of comforters, lay a little girl of perhaps two years, breathing gently in her sleep.

Harbor Jim did not rise to greet me but with a motion of his hand expressed his desire that I should remove my wet coat and take the empty chair. He paused long enough for me to be comfortably seated and resumed his reading. He was in the midst of the Ninety-First Psalm, and he read slowly on, as one none too familiar with print and anxious that no word or meaning be lost.

"He shall cover thee with His wings, and under His feathers shalt thou trust. You understand it, Effie," he said, turning to his wife. "It's the picture you see every day when the mother hen tucks the little ones under her wings.

"You, sir, will remember," he turned now to me, "that our Master used the same thought of the cuddling power of love, when He stood on Olivet and looked down on the sin-blind Jerusalem. I would have gathered you as a hen doth her chicks under her wing.

"His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. This sentence puzzled me for a good while, chiefly because I didn't know what a buckler was. For a long time I couldn't find any Lander who did know. Finally I got an Englishman to look it up in a book he had and he told me it was something that went all around the body. Then I seed it plain. The Lord was to protect us at the one danger point, with the shield; but He doesn't stop there, He protects us at all points with the buckler."

He did not pause again in the reading of the Psalm until he came to the word angels, and then he spoke rather forcibly of his belief in angels.

"Yes, I believe in angels, travelling angels. Why shouldn't He let 'em travel? He let's us go about, then surely He must let them journey considerable more. Naturally they want to be where they are needed most and I reckon this world needs 'em. When we get the listenin' habit, we'll all hear 'em, and when we get to the trustin' habit, we'll obey 'em when they bring us messages. I reckon they've helped me a good deal. Sometimes they guide me to a big haul of fish, but more often they bring me to a passage of Scripture, that's like a draft of cool water on a thirsty day. I don't want you to think I'm looney, sir, but I fancy they walk with me sometimes and most often when no humans are with me."

At the last verse he paused and then read these words twice:

"With long life will I satisfy thee. This promise has troubled me a good deal. It don't seem to be coming true. Good little kids die; and tough, scaly old rascals live on poking fun at the righteous. I have been wondering what the Hebrews meant, for a good many of their prophets have said the same thing.

"Mebbe it's one of the delayed promises. But I imagine it is coming true oftener than we know. There is some connection between holiness and happiness and between contented days and lengthened days. It is natural to expect the man who obeys the law to find the benefit here and now in this life. Well, if the Lord had each one of us alone working out the promises, it would be very easy for Him and for us, but He's seen fit to let us live together and we interfere with one another considerable; but He thinks it best because we've got to get well acquainted with each other before we are really able to know Him. As we get so we can understand the laws for the many as well as the laws for the each, I guess we'll most of us live long, but now the main thing is to live well."

"But does it seem quite fair, Jim?" his wife questioned him, naturally, as though they were alone together.

"I've thought about that a good while, Effie," he replied. "If I had only one day to fish and only caught something on one hook in twenty-eight, it would be a sorry day for me and you 'uns; but since I've many days, it doesn't matter which day I get the fish, so long as I get 'em. Now, I take it, it doesn't make much difference whether the bounty and the blessing He's intended for each of us comes one day or another, so long as it never fails to come. If this earth day was all I couldn't believe in Him as I do, but when I remember that there are days that have no ending, why it seems all right to have some getting a little more this day and others a little more that day. It's all in the life time of the soul. How long we stay in this room of Hisn' and how much He gives us don't matter much in the long years o' eternity. Do you begin to see how it is, Effie?"

Then Jim closed his Bible and was silent. Without the rain came down and beat its loud tattoo upon the roof. The spruce log ceased to crackle and the little kerosene light seemed to relax its effort now that it was no longer necessary to read the print. I had learned in the few weeks that I had known Jim, that silence even more than speech hath her rewards. After a quarter of an hour of quiet, in which we could hear in the occasional let up of the rain the tick-tock of the little clock on the shelf, I ventured a question:

"How long have you been married, Jim?"

"Fourteen years," he answered, "and it was no mistake that we made when we built this home. There's been rain, but the sun came out the quicker because of the together-spirit we had. Would you be interested, sir, in hearing how we started out?"

My face answered him and he began to tell me such parts of his own love story as it pleased him to tell.

"I was not married until after I was converted, that was a good thing! There is a good many reasons why a man should be converted before he is married. If there is anything in this life, more'n another in which the hand of God should be felt it's marriage.

"I'd had friends among the girls before I was converted, but I'd never thought of settling down, until after that morning. Then I come to see that a man needed a home on shore as well as a boat on the sea; that a man would be likely to catch more fish if he had some one waiting on shore and that fish never tasted so well when eaten alone.

"I got to readin' the book of Genesis one night. I never read the Bible much till after I was converted, and then it became a new book to me and I began diggin' in it for treasure and I'm by no manner a means thru diggin' and findin' treasure. I come across the command in Genesis: To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. I halted there that night for a spell o' thinkin' and I came to the conclusion that I ought to do my part and leave some one else to take my place and fish when I lay down the hooks. The next thing was to find the right one. Now a Bible readin' man is a prayin' man. And I shut the book and I prayed, for if there is anywhere a man needs guidance it is in finding the right one and keepin' offen the rocks o' trouble and despair in such matters.

"The next morning I went fishing the same as usual. I've noted that the Lord never hurries an answer to a man who prays and then stands round idle waitin' for his answer. Seems the Lord loves to surprise a man with his answer while he's in the midst of work.

"So the weeks went by till one late afternoon I was walking along the flakes and I see a young woman splitting cod in the front yard of a house, and the western light rested on her hair and it shimmered and she looked up as I come by and we both smiled. Sir, then, I knew, just as plain as a straight, taut line that she was the one and I had my answer from the Lord, but I had still to get her answer. Some times you have to wait for a woman's answer same as you do for the Lord's.

"The next afternoon, about the same time, I come by her house, and just as I expected she was there splitting cod, and that afternoon we talked. I'd inquired and found her name was Effie Streeter. Now what I said and the walks we had together wouldn't interest you, and anyhow they belonged to us. But perhaps you might like to hear a little of our engagement day. It come out just as I planned only a little better.

"I was pretty sure then and it has been confirmed to me many times since that a woman likes to have her joys come as surprises. Now if I'd a proposed to her on the ordinary walk on an ordinary evening, she might have accepted but it wouldn't have come with the happiness that comes when you're not expecting, then it's like light out of dark cloud or flowers that come quick after a long winter's snow.

"One night I stopped in at her house and told her I had to go on business over beyond Brigus and would like to have her go with me on the train the next morning. It would be a short trip and we would be back at night, on the train.

"A fellow doesn't have much choice of trains here, but some seasons you can go somewhere and get back the same day, but not every season.

"It was the middle of July, but as I started for the station, thinks I, it might be colder up at Brigus and I took along my great coat, so she would be sure to be warm. We made the ride up, without event. It is a lovely ride to Brigus, as you know, sir.

"I don't remember much that we said on the way, do you, Effie?" and he turned to her acquiescing smile. "But I had the place all selected and I never expect to forget that day, either here or in Kingdom Come.

"Under the shadow of a spruce we sat down and before us were acres and acres of sheep laurel. The winter before had been cold and that summer the laurel was redder than ever I have seen it, before or since. Away beyond was Conception Bay with its hills and the wonderful blue water. I don't know, sir, what scenes there are over seas, but I doubt if there's a lovelier view anywhere in the world than that.

"I had rehearsed pretty well what I was going to say and I have never forgotten it to this day, and I am glad I haven't. Some forget what they say before marriage and it brings a black shadow after marriage.

"It was so very beautiful, that we set a spell, a holdin' hands and lookin' with our souls as well as our eyes.

"'Effie,' I said, 'I've brought you here to say a great word and I felt it ought to be said in the fairest place in the world. This is the loveliest place I know and if I knew a fairer one I'd have taken you there. The word I am going to say is the one God said when it was dark and He decided to make it light. It's the word He said when the world was tired and He decided to send His Son and it's the one word the Son spoke that has been changing the world since. That word is, Love!' Then I felt my own unworthiness and I stammered and I lost something out o' my speech and I've never found it, but I added,—'I'm only a fisherman but what I want to give you is as much as I can of the very same love.'

"Sir, that was all I had to say and she understood. Right after that a strange thing happened. It had been clouding up and it began to snow. Yes, we have once in a while a snow storm in summer, and we did that year. Then I took the great coat I had brought and wrapped her tenderly up in it and I said: Love has a good many duties, but I guess one on'em is to keep you warm.

"The snow came down and it covered the earth, but it didn't cover the blossoms and there was a world of white with pink beauty scattered on it, all the spruce and firs standing and looking and worshipping, if trees worship. And I said: I guess it's the Lord's way of saying, He's glad it's all settled. Now, if He had sent the rain we might a doubted, but He's sent the snow so's we wouldn't doubt and we never have.

"Now our trains sometimes take an uncommon long time, and you folks from the States laugh at our railroads, but do you know I never went a journey where the train made such a fast time as that night. We were in St. John's afore we knew it."

[CHAPTER IV]

SOME MIRACLES

"You orter been here a short while ago," Jim chuckled, as he addressed his friend Bob McCartney, who entered soon after Mr. Jewett had left. "We had a queer one here who believed you and I and the rest o' the sinners were out o' sight of the Lord. Told us the Lord didn't know nothing except the good and this world was just shadows and delusions."

"Well," said Bob, "there's a few real things left and last night Harry Marchant got up agin one of 'em. Towards night I met him on the Bowring Road. He motioned to me afore I got to him to keep my side o' the road. He acted just as though he had leprosy. When he got within hearing he shouted:

"'Bob, you never did me a bad turn and I'm not agoin' to do you one. You keep your side of the road and don't ever speak to me when I go by. I was comin' along a spell back and I met some skunks, not one, but a mother and father and two children. They was walkin' separate and I tried to dodge, but I couldn't dodge four ways at the same time. I'm goin' home now to bury my clothes, scour my skin and try to forget myself.' Now, Harry Marchant didn't meet no shadow and he was bathed in the very oil o' gloom."

We all laughed, but Jim was the first to sober up. "See here, boys, we mustn't poke fun at the queer one. Some folks probably get a blessing without thinking straight. Mebbe he's on the way to a great faith. There's more'n one way across the sea and we all got to go thru the same narrows to get into the Harbor.

"There's this much to be said in favor of the fellow, he's beginning to read his Bible. Seems strange though that outen the same book men draw so many different things. Then, it was written by many a different one and it's intended for all. Perhaps when we get too far astray He'll send us another Son and a new Book.

"Though I don't believe in his notion of getting rid of a real world with real things in it, an' pushin' God out of this world, I do believe in miracles. Now some folks come to a miracle in the Bible and they sit down in front of it like the Marys at the tomb and they never are able to roll it away or pass it. Just beyond that miracle is a great truth, there always is, and these folks never get beyond wondering and doubting about how it happened to be there.

"Take the story of the miracle that happened to Jonah. I don't pretend to say whether he ever had a berth in a real whale or not. It may be the boat was called a whale and he took passage on her against orders. But either way it's a beautiful truth we find, after we get over worrying about the whale. The point, I take it, is, the man was trying to run away from his duty and the story tells how he fared and how he came back and was established as a prophet. A good many folks seem to be still worrying about the whale and forgetting all about the truth. I'm not sayin' it didn't happen. It could a happened and stranger things have happened, I am only saying that whatever you believe about the whale the truth is there to help just the same.

"I don't like the way a good many folks talk about miracles, anyhow. They look at 'em once or twice and then they say that it couldn't a happened. Why it doesn't follow because the Lord couldn't work a miracle on them He couldn't on somebody else. It may only prove they was too hardened in their sins and their doubts to be worked on, at least, for the present. Then it may be the thing has happened, right before their eyes only when it comes to great things and spiritual facts they are more'n half blind.

"Raisin' from the dead I suppose would be considered the biggest miracle of all, and perhaps it's about the hardest to believe. But at some time or other, I have never been able to tell when, and I don't knows any one else can either, the Lord God puts a soul into every child of His. It is something that a father or a mother cannot put in of themselves, and it is something that can't be destroyed. A good many have tried to destroy their souls; but it's my belief they haven't succeeded, not any one of all that have tried. Now, if He is the only one that can put a soul into this earth house, He's the one that knows best when to take it out, and it might be very easy, on an important occasion, for Him to slip the soul back in again for a few days. He did that in the case of His Divine Son and the Son did it on several occasions, when He thought the soul ought to keep in its earth house a while longer."

"Did you ever hear anything about reincarnation, Jim?" I inquired.

"Big word, isn't it," said Jim, immediately giving full attention to my subject. "No, I don't know as ever I did. What is it, a doctrine or a medicine?"

"It's the belief, Jim, that souls return to the earth again in new bodies. Some believe that only in animals and lower forms does this happen and others that even when souls have been on this earth, they return again to complete their experiences. I was thinking that your idea of the ease with which God might slip in or out a soul might make it easy for you to believe in this rather strange doctrine of reincarnation. What do you think of it?"

"Sounds fairly sensible to me, on first thought. I don't remember anything in the Book about it, though I don't pretend to say I know all that's in that Book. It might explain some things that's hard to explain now with our present eye-sight. There's old lady Farrar, that I was a'telling you about, who cured herself of weakness and was about twenty years younger at eighty-five than eighty. She never had any real luck or any great blessings until she cured herself. She was one of the unfortunate kind, most always ailin' and when you went to see her she had some new misfortune to tell you about. She lost every one of her children and two husbands besides. Folks said it wasn't any great loss, so far as the husbands were concerned, but then they were hers and she took on considerable. Yet she has always been a decent woman, kept the commandments far as her neighbors could judge; paid her bills, when she could; went to church and said her prayers; and she had only a triflin' amount of good fortune. She had to wash and scrub for the neighbors to make ends meet and the splicin' was often poor.

"Just compare her life with the lives of other women folks whose husbands usually had a good catch and got good prices, whose children never died and who prospered thru the years and even handled the commands in a slippery fashion. It is hard to think justice has been done in both cases or perhaps in either case. But if this miracle of slipping a soul back into a body and sending it to school again is true, that you are telling me about, why it clears up a lot of the problems. Mrs. Farrar didn't pass the examinations the first or second time she was here and she was sent back to study more and she is getting about what she ought to have in His judgment.

"I think, however, that reincarnation idea that you mention, I would need to think a good deal about before I cared to tie too fast to it. I presume I'll end up in putting it into quite a big package of goods I am saving for shipping across the stream when I take passage. I've marked them 'For His Judgment' and when I get over there, I'll sort 'em and see if they're worth saving, and if I'm still doubtful about any on 'em I'll just get Him to pass judgment on them. That's seems to be a sensible thing to do.

"But we was talking about miracles here and now. To me the greatest miracles Christ worked were not in curing diseases, but in curing sins. I have always thought it a miracle that He could take Peter with his stubbornness and his habit of speaking up too quick and make him strong enough, sound enough, to be a real corner stone in His new church. I callate Peter was pretty well along in years when the Master called him and old folks ain't as easy to work on as those that are young and more pliable. I count it a miracle that He made over Peter so well.

"I have always been a good deal interested to find out what became of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Him. He wasn't a fisherman like Peter and he was harder still to work on. I know some of the ministers have got rid of him, by tossing him over board and letting him drown in perdition. But the Lord God that went after the sheep would a some day heared the moaning of Judas and a-gone to his rescue, seems though. If the Lord could work a miracle on Peter couldn't He some time, some how do it on Judas? He must a had some beginning points on him some wheres."

"I tell you the Lord has plenty a chances to work miracles if He wishes, right round here. There's Rascal Moore. He ain't been converted yet."

"Rascal Moore, did you say, Jim?" I interrupted.

"Well that wasn't the name his mother gave him, but she didn't know he would take all his father's bad points and add a few more evil ways. She named him, Pascal. But Rascal fits him better and everybody knows him by that name, and I have to think twice to remember he ever had another name.

"Rascal has done more to hurt the salt-fish business than any fisherman I know. He manages to get hold of the most ornery, two-cent fish there are in the sea. These fish have a hankering for Rascal, I guess, and they scoot straight for his nets. When he gets 'em, he never cleans well and he always hurries the curing, and he is none too particular about either counting or weighing. He'll sell a little cheaper or lie a little stronger and get rid of 'em, usually to an exporter and they go perhaps to Naples and they're so poor, the folks who buy them never want any more Newfoundland cod-fish. The government ought not to wait for the Lord to punish Rascal, they should get after him right away.

"Rascal has other sins to account for. Everybody feels, though they don't hardly dare say so, that he killed his wife, and he's so mean he's never married since. If there's been a piece of deviltry carried out anywheres within fifty miles of St. John's that he hasn't had a part in, I have yet to learn o' the fact.

"I say to convert Rascal Moore would be a real miracle. And it will be done and I would be glad to see it done on short order. I know it can be done, for I have seen other folks as mean, ornery and selfish as Rascal come meekly to the judgment seat, I have seen 'em rise outen their old selves and become new and clean as a sunshiny morning after the air has been washed in a fog. I have seen so much done by the Lord on His own account and working thru the hands of His servants that I never doubt that Rascal Moore will be made right.

"Yes, sir, I believe in miracles and I see them every day. Brown earth a-turning into blades and blossoms, in some wonderful way that He planned. No less wonderful I see bad men becoming good men; sick men becoming well men; and they that have been under the heels of sin and slavery standin' up on their own feet. When I can't explain something I still feel it is happening under the law and it's another of His miracles."

[CHAPTER V]

"I ASKED FOR FISH"

My business in St. John's had been brought to a conclusion and it was time that I crossed to Port-aux-Basques and made my way thru Nova Scotia and back into the States. There was only one reason for my staying, and that was the chance of seeing a little more of Harbor Jim and perhaps learning a little more of his philosophy.

So it happened that again I was in the little fisherman's cottage and Mrs. Jim was brewing tea for me, for she never permitted even an inquirer to come to her door without his cup of tea. I put a question to Jim that fortunately set him to talking about prayer. I had expected to draw out a fish story but I found him launching into an account of his belief in prayer and his ventures in talking with His Father.

"What was the best catch you ever had, Jim?" I questioned him.

"It was last April and it come in direct answer to prayer," Jim answered promptly and without the least embarrassment.

"In answer to prayer?" I said, and the tone of surprise was in my voice.

"Why not," said Jim. "You believe in prayer, I suppose, then why limit it. I needed a big catch. I'd had to paint the house and there had been many expenses and I had to have a big catch to tide things over. You will remember that the Bible takes for granted folks will pray for fish, for it says:

"'If ye ask for fish will he give you a stone.'

"No, the man that asks for fish and asks right gets fish and the man that asks for bread gets bread. It doesn't matter what you want, prayer will fetch it. You remember He said:

"'Ye shall ask what ye will in my name and I will give it you.'

"I don't pretend to set myself up to judge of what the parsons should or shouldn't do. I am more or less an ignorant man, so far as schools go, though I have read a heap since I was converted, and what's more important, I have looked and thought a good deal. And I've looked in more'n one direction. Old Mr. Squibbs who used to live out to Heart's Delight was an odd stick. His wife died and he took to livin' alone and he got kinder warped. He built him a house with only one window and he always had only the one view when he looked out. Thinks I, some folks are like old Mr. Squibbs, they have only one window and looking out o' that window they see only a few things and no wonder they're often a little lackin' in the loft. But I've tried to keep all the windows of my mind and soul open and to let the light in and to look out on all sides. The result o' all this lookin' and a thinkin' is that some parsons and some folks, parsons is folks, though they are commonly reckoned in a different class, don't understand the nature o' prayer. They take it the Lord has got kinder out o' touch with the doings of His children, and it's up to them to let the Lord on to the situation. I have heared some prayers in churches that sounded like a newspaper recounting the happenings. Strikes me they must have a queer notion of the Lord, to think He don't know what's happening to His own created children.

"There's other prayers appear rather impudent. They tell the Lord just what He ought to do. Who are we, poor creatures on the earth, who can't see back of us, or before us, but a very little way and then only when it's a clear sky, who are we that we should rise up in our conceit and tell the Lord what He had better do. It's turning the boat round and headin' it the wrong way. We are to ask Him what He wants us to do. We are to come to Him not to give knowledge but to get wisdom.

"Parson Curtis called me impudent because I asked the Lord for a mess o' fish, and a big mess, too. But I don't agree with the parson on this matter. I don't know why we shouldn't ask Him for what we think we need, but there's a right and a wrong way of asking. Mind you I didn't presume to tell the Lord how to send them or where. I just left it in His hands. I prayed something like this:

"'Kind Father, we were talking over blessings last night and I mentioned a good many that You had sent us; and then when I'd finished sayin' my thanksgivings, I asked that You make it possible for me to find a mess o' fish and a good-sized one. Now I know You'll say no, if it's best, and I'll not murmur or complain; but if it seems to You to be best, You'll know the way to send them and when it's best. It's all in Your hands and I'm not dictating to You, Father. But I want You to know that we are needing fish and that I'm a-goin' to keep my eyes open and my boat trim and my hooks and sinkers right and my nets all mended, and I'll be waitin' for the Word.'

"That's just about the way I pray. I am not afraid to come boldly to the throne of grace. He would never find fault with my grammar, for doesn't He encourage the little folks to talk with Him. Sure, that's just what it is talking with Him. When we talk to one another, it's conversation; when we talk to ourselves, it's thinking; and when we talk to God, it's praying.

"I never yet have told the Lord how to do anything, or how to fetch my gifts. For since all things and all powers and all means are in His hands, He doesn't need to be told. I most likely wouldn't know the best way for transporting His gifts. I have to ask humbly and faithfully and then to keep the doors open, so's whoever He sends will find me ready and waitin' to receive.

"Then again, I seldom pray for an easy time or a smooth sea. I want to be strong and I don't mind wrestling like Jacob with the strange one, so long's I come out the winner. I don't mind if the sea is ruffled, or the waves mount, or the wind lashes the sails, so long as I know He has an eye on me and keeps me. I have found that if He sends me extra work, He always sends along extra strength, and the blessed part of it is that the strength comes at just about the time the work does.

"I pray sometimes for health for my body, but I am much more likely to pray for the health of soul. For I dread sickness of soul, more'en I do sickness of my body. It is far harder to get rid of selfishness than to get over a stomach-ache. I'd rather see my little Clara sick with the measles than to see her developing dishonesty."

"How long does it usually take the Lord to answer your prayers," I asked, and not jocularly, but in the hope of finding out what results had come to Jim as a result of his sincere prayers.

"How long does it take before it rains, do you know? Can you tell when the frost will take my cabbages or the snow heap up my door-way? Neither can I tell when the Lord will send what I ask. He knows better than I do. He knows the value of delays, and how long to try my patience. I wouldn't say He hurried, for the more I come to know of Him, the more I find it true that He has taken time to do most things He has done. You can get an idea of how He works by looking at this earth that He took so long to fix up for us. As I've told you before, I think the Lord loves to surprise us children and often He sends a blessing when we are least expecting it and the answer comes on a dark, stormy day when it's like a ray of sunshine breaking thru a cloud.

"I talk over all my needs with Him, but I don't devote all my praying to myself. I've done quite a lot of praying for Rascal Moore, and some day the Lord will surprise Rascal and me and he'll be converted. Of course I pray for my own wife and my own little girl and I pray for Bob McCartney and I also remember Spotty, my dog. If I had a cow, which I haven't just now, I'd pray for her. They are God's offspring, and they were planned by Him and they need His care to provide fresh green and abundant water. It's a responsibility for which we need help, the caring for the other children."

"You are wandering away from your fish story," I reminded him. "What about that big catch? How did it happen?"

"It was very simple. I went out to the fishing grounds. It would have been asking too much of the Lord to have demanded that He send them ashore. I went where I'd be likely to find fish. And when I got to the grounds, I heared a voice say, 'Let your nets down on the starboard side.' And I did as He told me and I had the best catch of the season."

[CHAPTER VI]

LIVIN' ALONG

Several months had passed without a word from Harbor Jim, when one morning going thru a batch of mail, that was given over to business matters, I came upon a rather soiled envelope that was post-marked "St. John's." I was quite sure that it was from Jim and I pushed aside the communications from firms that offered me oil stock and a fortune and the letters of others who were suing for favors of one kind and another and turned with the relish of a boy to read the message from my friend. I am willing that you should read it, but I have made some corrections in spelling and a few in grammar, that you may read it about as he would have read it aloud, about, I think, as he intended it to read.

"Dear One,

"It's a long time since we've seen you on the flakes. It's a long time since we've read the word o' the Lord together beside the evening lamp. I'm not thinking of coming to New York to see you. I know I have been invited manys the time, but I'm not risking a leg yet in your full streets. It's gettin' bad enough in St. John's with all the autos a-whisking down Water St. It's a fine thing that we can send a message up there to you. It was a kind Father that made it possible for us to get acquainted with each other as well as with Him. I often think of the Master's ideas on the subject. You remember He told us if we really got acquainted with our brothers we should know the Father, and without that acquaintance we couldn't really know Him.

"There ain't no great thing happened to tell of. I've just been livin' along. Eatin' and sleepin' every day and fishin' most days. But I've been prayin' every day and a receivin' of replies day by day. The Lord's been with me all the way. Yes, just as much as though I could write you of a great, sudden happening. There's a good many folks I find who recognize the Lord's doings in the big, flashing things of life and forget Him altogether except at them special times. It's rare that I sit up with a corpse, which I often do, without hearing a confession about the Lord's hand and the Lord's doing in the coming of the stroke; but it's most likely that same man who is very conscious and pitiful didn't have much thought or dealings with the Lord till his sorrows come upon him.

"Now the Lord is in the Valley of the Dark Times and He's on the Bright Height of Victory, but He's also along the Common Way, the level road that makes up the every day's travel. That's what I used to forget and that's what I'm beginning to remember and it makes heap a different in your knowledge o' life itself and the joy you get outen it.

"There's countless folks know He never fails in time o' need, but I'm one who finds that He never fails at any time and that every day is a day o' need.

"It may be I've met the wrong kind o' folks some of the journey, but I've found a good many that make a heap a trouble just out o' living. They remind me o' Martha who got so fussed up doing common housework she couldn't understand the need o' spiritual house-keeping at all. Folks don't seem to have time enough to live their lives easily. They start off with a hitch and they break down afore they get very far. Seems though they thought there want goin' to be another life after this one and they'd got to do all eternity's work in this little span o' time. Don't seem reasonable and natural to expect a man to do the work o' two worlds in one. The Lord don't expect it neither.

"The Lord Jesus had about the biggest task on hand that any man ever had. His job was to save the world. He had only three years for His ministry and if he had lived as some of the folks hereabouts are livin' He would have so consumed Himself with worry and fret that He would a died with a fever afore the first year was over. One thing I note as I read His story is that He moved majestic like He had time to do what needed to be done. I guess it's the things that we could get on with out that take the most time and gender the most worry.

"There's always time enough to do what the Lord intended to be done in this life, else He wouldn't have assigned it. He wouldn't run His universe on a leisurely and comfortable plan, if He expected us to wear ourselves out hustling. I take it He counts a thousand years are as one day not only for Himself but as well for us children. Thinkin' of His plan kinder takes the fever outen your veins, kinder makes you understand what His Son meant about the peace that passeth understandin'.

"Effie is the same as ever. She's just livin' along, same's I. The children are doin' well at school. Bob McCartney was over night afore last. His boy has got the rheumatics, but I guess tain't nothin' permanent. The government is thinkin' o' takin' over the railroad again. Our railroad has had a hard time and it's been found fault with a good deal, but it's got an iron constitution and I guess it can stand it. As I told you once, it's all the railroad we've got and it's a powerful lot bettern no railroad.

"I am thinkin' often these days of little Peter. I can think now without swallowin' hard and I'm beginnin' to get comfort instead of trouble when I think. I have been thinking about the conditions o' life over there. Sometime when your down here I'll talk with you about the Heaven Home, but it would take too long to write it out and then I don't knows you would be interested. Any how it would come out easy with your kind o' questions. I like you, but I do think your about the hardest questioner I ever knowed.

"Respectfully yours, that's how letters are signed when a man writes you for fish or bait or somethin', but I don't see why it ain't proper for a friend, for certain we ought to respect our friends, and the fact we can respect 'em makes us the more sure their friends.

"Jim."

"P. S. I saw Bob McCartney last night. He was lookin' well and had his behaviour (silk-hat) on. He had been to a party."

[CHAPTER VII]

THE HEAVEN HOME

When again the good fortune brought me to Newfoundland and led me out to the fisherman's cottage, I did not forget Jim's promise to tell me of his observations concerning the future life. We had, thru our increasing friendship, come to understand each other. I had learned when to keep silent and I knew Jim's moods and when to intrude would be the height of ingratitude and when to enter would be the act of an accepted friend.

The reading of the Book had been finished for the evening and there was yet a half hour before my friend would count it his time to retire. "How about the Heaven Home, I think that is what you called it," I asked, and Jim, without parleying, was ready to speak freely in answer.

"Yes," he said, "I like the word home, as applied to it. I couldn't think of Peter as wantin' to stay in a mansion. In the Comfort Chapter in John, I've always read the word 'home' in place of 'mansion.' The parsons tell me that there are some mistakes in the translatin' o' the Good Book, and I am sure that it's a mistake here. There ain't enough comfort in the thought of a mansion for most of us common run o' folks, and it was for us that He come and told of this life and the life to come.

"I'm sure it's a home. I think it must have in it things that match up with what we got here. I don't see how we could feel at home without something like tables and chairs. We had a parson one time who knew all about it over there, accordin' to his tell. He told us about the crowns and harps and the golden streets and the singin' that went on all the day long. But I callate no Lander would care for such a life as that, and if that's what it's like there's precious few of us 'uns over there.

"Now if it's a home as I think it must be since the Father has planned it, there must be homelikeness there. There must be somethin' that corresponds to tables and chairs and all the little things that go to makin' up a real home, else how could a man be happy over there, who had just left a happy home here. I'm not sayin' we shall always need them things, but I am a sayin' that in the very next life we must have things we are used to for a spell till we get to the point where we don't need them, but somethin' else. Sounds sensible to me to think that way.

"You remember that after the Lord was dead and Peter was plumb worn out and discouraged; there didn't seem to be no hope nowheres; he decided to go fishin'. I callate there are times when a man would rather go salmon fishing than to do anything else in the world, provided he knows what good salmon fishin' is. Now for these fishermen about the only thing the Lord can do, if He wants to make 'em happy as He promised to do, is to give 'em a chance at fishin'.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised some morning in Heaven to be trailin' along the bank o' some good stream fishin' and lookin' up sudden to see the Lord there a fishin' too.

"You smile, but why not? Do you think the Father is so foolish as to drop us down in a strange place where we don't understand and we don't know what to do. Does it appear to you that the Lord would take a little fellow like Peter and send him around with a harp. I'll tell you what Peter would want to do, he would want to jump rain barrels so as he would know how to jump ice pans when he got older.

"What good would it do to take any little fellow outen the primary school and put him right into college. It wouldn't do him or the college one particle of good. It would be a sheer waste for everybody concerned. I think the Father is wiser than that, and it's always kinder amused me and somewhat disgusted me that the parsons have imagined heaven to be so teetotally different from this life.

"I've seen so much of His wisdom here, I can't come to think that He's working blind and foolish over there. Will I know little Peter, sure I will, or it wouldn't be heaven. Then his new little body must look like the present one, only stronger and it won't hurt it so much when he pinches it.

"He'll get into the place that fits for him, not because he's sent, but because he just naturally goes where he belongs. And as it is with little Peter so it will be with every one. Perhaps by this time he has seen the Christ, for the kingdom is always found quicker by a child than by a grown man. Children see things that we older folks find it hard to see."

"How about Rascal Moore?" I asked.

"Just now he's taken his cat and dog and he's gone to the woods.[2] Mebbe there a stick will hit him and knock a little sense into him. He's by no means hopeless. I've seen worse ones than he is get sense afore they died. But you mean what would become of him if he went just as he is. Well, there must be sufferin' for the likes o' him. You can't, and I find the Lord Himself don't, seem to make a sinner into a saint all of a sudden. He may wake him up sudden and start him, but it takes time to get him rounded off. He'll go where he belongs just as the others; and if for a while he belongs in an uncomfortable, painful place why there's where he'll go. I never could see the sense in trying to think that everybody would go right off to one same place and be in heaven. There's too much difference in folks; there's the converted and the unconverted; there's the sinners and the saints; and though you put 'em in the same place, it wouldn't be the same place for them. It don't seem probable to me either that they can't never change their places when they get over there. There's a good deal o' changin' here, so there's likely to be over there.

"There are changes in the earth homes, there'll be changes in the heaven homes. And it will be well so long as the changes are for the better. I can't think that will always be the case, howsomever, for it ain't the case here. But gradual I'm expectin' conditions will improve and the handicaps are less over there. With the help o' Moses, Isaiah and the prophets and saints we ought to get on at a fair pace. A tremendous lot o' mothers is over there; they've been a goin' out one by one for a terrible long spell, makes me dizzy when I get to thinkin' o' some o' these subjects. Mothers don't loaf so long as there's chance to help kids, an' I'm callating that they'll do some pretty good work along lines o' convertin' over there.

"I expect to hear the baccaloo[3] over there and I'd rather hear a baccaloo than a nightingale or a lark for it would seem more like home. That's the big thing and the Lord ain't likely to disappoint me or any one who is lookin' for a home over there.

"The heaven home is a good sight nearer than most folks think. The journey is short and it's only our poor sight and our hearin' that has made it so far away. I know Peter's often near me while I'm at work and it's a comfortable feeling, not a scarey one to think he's liable to be around most any time and I must be on my guard not to let slip any string o' words that would be bad for him to hear. It chucks a fellow up to feel that he must be on his best for the little fellow sees and knows. I want to be such a father as he'll respect. It must be mighty oncomfortable for some folks when they get over there, for some folks don't do no growing after they lose their loved ones and how in sank they expect to be fit company for their folks when they themselves get over there is more'n I can tell.

"Because there's homes there don't in no way interfere with it's bein' a beautiful place. It don't have to have golden harps to make it worth while. There's probably rivers that are prettier than 'ourn, and there must be pink calmia, fox-gloves and sweet william, pansies, tea-bushes and a good many others that I don't happen to think of. There must be places in heaven that look like Deer Lake, Gaff Topsail, Kelligrews and Brigus. Mebbe there's places in heaven like New York, too, though from what you say it will need some changin' to be kept as a heaven city.

"I don't want you to think that I'm a gump[4] because of these ideas, but to me they've been a good deal of comfort and whenever I get to doubting at all about things over there I just recall it's a home and I settle back content."

[CHAPTER VIII]

CHRISTMAS WITH JIM'S FRIENDS

There was the calendar right before me on the wall, with figures big enough to mentally hit me and hit hard, and I should have remembered that the road of the year had turned toward Christmas. But before me was an unfinished news article that even a hungry and insistent stomach did not seem able to push to a conclusion. Beyond my desk out of the window I looked now and then down upon the hurrying throng who were making their way across City Hall Park to Brooklyn Bridge. It was the hour when you do not know whether to call it day or night. It was indescribable in another way,—it was either misting or raining. I suppose a Scotchman would have called it mist and an Irishman rain. I think that any one looking out that night would have found it hard to see in the gray view anything suggestive of Christmas. I turned from the wet view to my unfinished work only to be again interrupted.

A Western Union boy burst into my office with a telegram. It was from St. John's and I wondered as I tore it open if anything had happened to Harbor Jim. It was short and for once the operators had apparently followed the author's spelling.

come fur chrismus cant take no fur an answer no how biggest an best you or yourn hev ever seed come jim

A few days afterward a long letter came enforcing and elaborating the invitation. Jim wrote that he was already at work upon a Christmas that would eclipse anything New York had ever had. He had taken the idea out of a city paper that I had sent him a year before and had developed it and he wouldn't care to go forward with it, unless I could be there.