Stories Worth Rereading Part 28

"You don't mean the Hottentots,--the blacks! You are not waiting for them surely, or expecting to preach to them? You might as well preach to those dogs under that table!" A second time, and more angrily he spoke, repeating the offensive comparison.

Young as Mr. Moffat was, he was disconcerted only for a moment. Lifting his heart to G.o.d for guidance, the thought came into his mind to take a text suggested by the rude remarks of the Boer. So he opened the Bible to the fifteenth chapter of Matthew and read the twenty-seventh verse: "Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."

Pausing a moment, he slowly repeated these words, with his eyes steadily fixed on the face of the Boer. Again pausing, a third time he quoted these appropriate words. Angrily the Boer cried out, "Well, well, bring them in."

A crowd of blacks then thronged the kitchen, and Moffat preached to them all.

Ten years pa.s.sed, and the missionary was pa.s.sing that way again. Those work-people, who held him in the most grateful remembrance, seeing him, ran after him to thank him for telling them the way to Christ in that sermon.

His whole life in Africa was a witness to miracles of transformation. He had no scorn nor contempt for the sable sons of Africa. He found the most degraded of them open to the impressions of the gospel, and even the worst and unimpressionable among them were compelled to confess the power of that gospel to renew. One savage, cruel chief, who hated the missionaries, had a dog that chewed and swallowed a copy of the book of Psalms for the sake of the soft sheepskin in which it was bound. The enraged chief declared his dog to be henceforth worthless: "He would no more bite or tear, now that he had swallowed a Christian book."

This G.o.dly, devoted missionary preached and taught the warlike Bechuanas till they put away their clubs and knives, and farming utensils took the place of bows and arrows and spears. This strange change in African savages came to be talked over among the people. It was so wonderful that the other tribes could account for it only as an instance of supernatural magic.

There was nothing they knew of that would lead men like the Bechuanas to bring war to an end, and no longer rob and kill.

Mr. Moffat was especially warned against the notorious Africaner, a chief whose name was the terror of the whole country. Some prophesied that he would be eaten by this monster; others were sure that he would be killed, and his skull turned into a drinking-cup, and his skin into the head of a drum. Nevertheless, the heroic young missionary went straight for the kraal of the cruel marauder and murderer. He was accompanied by Ebner, the missionary, who was not in favor in Africaner's court, and who soon had to flee, leaving Mr. Moffat alone with a bloodthirsty monarch and a people as treacherous as their chief.

But G.o.d had armed his servant with the spirit, not of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. He was a man of singular grace and tact.

He quietly but firmly planted his foot in Africaner's realms, and began his work. He opened a school, began stated services of wors.h.i.+p, and went about among the people, living simply, self-denyingly, and prayerfully.

Africaner himself was his first convert. The wild Namoqua warrior was turned into a gentle child. The change in this chief was a moral miracle.

Wolfish rapacity, leonine ferocity, leopardish treachery, gave way before the meekness and mildness of the calf or kid. His sole aim and ambition had been to rob and to slay, to lead his people on expeditions for plunder and violence, but he now seemed absorbed by one pa.s.sion, zeal for G.o.d and his missionary. He set his subjects to building a house for Mr. Moffat, made him a present of cows, became a regular and devout wors.h.i.+per, mourned heartily over his past life, and habitually studied the Word of G.o.d. He could not do enough for the man who had led him to Jesus.

When the missionary's life hung in the balance with African fever, he nursed him through the crisis of delirium. When he had to visit Cape Town, Africaner went with him, knowing that a price had been set for years upon his own head as an outlaw and a public enemy. No marvel that when he made his appearance in Cape Colony, the people were astonished at the transformation! It was even more wonderful than when Saul, the arch-persecutor, was suddenly transformed into Paul, the apostle.

Mr. Moffat once said that during his entire residence among this people, he remembered no occasion on which he had been grieved with Africaner or found reason for complaint; and even his very faults leaned to the side of virtue. On his way to Cape Town with Mr. Moffat, a distance of six hundred miles, the whole road lay through a country which had been laid waste by this robber and his retainers. The Dutch farmers could not believe that this converted man was actually Africaner; and one of them, when he saw him, lifted his hands and exclaimed: "This is the eighth wonder of the world! Great G.o.d, what a miracle of thy power and grace!"

He who had long shed blood without cause would now with as little hesitation shed his own for Christ's sake. When he found his own death approaching, he gathered his people around him, and charged them, as Moses and Joshua did Israel: "We are not now what we once were, savages, but men professing to be taught according to the gospel. Let us, then, do accordingly." Then, with unspeakable tenderness and gentleness, he counseled them to live peaceably with all men, to engage in no undertaking without the advice of Christian guides, to remain together as one people, and to receive and welcome all missionaries as sent from G.o.d. Then he gave them his parting blessing.

His dying confession would have graced the lips of the apostle of the Gentiles: "I feel that I love G.o.d, and that he has done much for me, of which I am totally unworthy. My former life is stained with blood: but Jesus Christ has bought my pardon, and I shall live with him through an eternity. Beware of falling back into the same evils into which I have so often led you, but seek G.o.d, and he will be found of you, and direct you."

Having said this, Africaner fell asleep, himself having furnished one of the most unanswerable proofs that the gospel is the power of G.o.d unto salvation.--_Arthur T. Pierson, in "The Miracles of Missions," second series, copyright by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York._

TWO TRIFLES

"Isn't Aunt Sue the dearest person you ever saw!" exclaimed Helen Fairmont as she and her visitor sank into a garden seat in the beautiful grounds surrounding Mrs. Armour's lovely home. "Nothing ever seems to be too much trouble for her, if she can make others happy."

"Yes," answered Mary Sutton, "I just felt like giving her a good hug when she told you her plan. It is really just for me that she is going to let you give the picnic here."

"Just for that very reason. It will be simply fine. O, she is so sweet! You see, two weeks ago, when you wrote that finally you could arrange to visit me for the summer, I was so full of the good news that I couldn't get to Aunt Sue's quickly enough to tell her about it,--somehow one always wants to tell Aunt Sue about things,--and she said she used to go to school with your mother, and was very fond of her, and she was all ready to like you, too, and that just the very minute you reached here, we were both to come over--I mean you and I were."

"O, dear," laughed Mary, "I think you'd better stop and take a good long breath, and get the we's and you's straightened."

"I don't care," Helen went chattering on. "You know what I mean, just what we've done. We, you and I,--is that right?--were to come to her house and choose what kind of entertainment we wanted her to give, so you might meet my friends."

"Who thought of the garden picnic?" inquired Mary, her face all animation.

Then, not waiting for Helen's answer, she said, enthusiastically, "Isn't this a beautiful spot in which to have a picnic?"

The girls stopped talking long enough to look about at the pride of Mrs.

Armour's heart, the lovely grounds round her home. They surrounded a fine old house of colonial type, for which they made a pretty setting. A double row of dignified and ancient elms flanked a pathway leading from the gate.

The lawn on each side of the walk made one think of the answer the English gardener gave to the inquiry as to the cause of the velvety beauty of England's lawns. "Why, sir," said he, "we sows 'em, and we mows 'em, and we mows 'em, and we sows 'em." Mrs. Armour's lawn had the appearance of having undergone a like experience. At the back and sides of the house was a variety of shrubs and bushes whose blossoms in the spring made the place indescribably sweet. Mrs. Armour boasted that there were forty kinds of bushes, but her husband laughingly said that he had never been able to count more than thirty-nine and a half; "for you certainly couldn't call that j.a.panese dwarf a whole one!"

June roses ran riot in season. Later, more cultivated varieties, blooming regularly through the summer, took their part in providing fragrance.

Sweet, old-fas.h.i.+oned garden plants and more valuable products, procured at much trouble and expense, helped to make a bower that might have satisfied even more fastidious eyes than those which reveled in them now.

Mrs. Armour's great delight was in using her garden, and she had given Helen the privilege of inviting all her young friends to picnic there the following Thursday evening.

"And, O Mary, you just can't imagine how pretty it is here with the Chinese lanterns swung from tree to tree, and the dainty tables scattered round!"

Helen scarcely contain herself.

Mary laughed merrily. She was equally delighted but naturally she took everything in a more quiet manner. Smiling at Helen's exuberance of spirit, she asked, "What was it your aunt said about the sandwiches?"

"She wants to help us make them, and she was telling me she'd like me to cut them a little more carefully than I did the last time I helped her.

You'd never think Aunt Sue has a hobby, would you?"

"No, I don't think I should."

"Well, she has. She's the most particular old darling about little things that you ever saw. Now those sandwiches I made I will admit were not cut very evenly, but, dear me! they tasted good enough. Tom Canton ate six. I told her so, but she said they should have looked good, too."

"Well, what's her hobby?"

"I just told you. It's trifles. She says life is made of them, and trifles with the rough edges polished off make beautiful lives. And she loves to quote such things as, 'Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.' She says trifles decide almost everything for us, and shape our characters. She says it is interesting to study how most big things grow from little ones.

"Helen, I think she's right." Mary's dark, thoughtful eyes looked into her friend's.

"O, I don't! It isn't trifles, trifles, that decide things and make the real difference. It is the big things. For instance, it is brother Tom's education in the school of technology that placed him in the responsible position we are all so proud of him for obtaining."

"Yes, but I heard him say himself that he just happened, by mistake, to leave one of his scribbled figures on your uncle's desk, and your uncle, picking it up by mistake, too, said that a boy who could do that should have a chance at the right training."

"Why, that's a fact, Mary mine," said Helen, in surprise. "I never thought of it in that way. Well, I won't agree that it happens so often. For example,"--glancing about for an idea, she caught sight of a young man, a former schoolmate, pa.s.sing just in front of the Armour home,--"for example, I don't suppose it was a trifle that made Alson Jarvis turn out the kind of individual he has become lately. He used to be a fine boy, but I am afraid he is getting dissipated. He doesn't go with our crowd much now. I guess he is not invited the way he used to be before he began going with those South Town boys."

"I wish I could prove to you my side of the argument. Let's try your Aunt Sue's idea of studying how the big things come from little ones. Wouldn't it be interesting to find the cause of this one case? I would not be one bit surprised if it were just some little thing which was the pivot that turned him."

"All right," agreed Helen. "I don't believe your theory, but it would be fun, as you say, to try it. Will"--Will was her brother--"insists Al's not so black as he has been painted lately. We will get Will to find out for us if he can."

Then the talk drifted to the more absorbing subject of sandwiches and cakes.

At dinner-time the two girls confided to the accommodating Will their desire to find what had changed Al.

"Trying to pry into private closets, regardless of the kind of welcome their enclosed skeletons may accord you, are you?" said Will, banteringly.

Mary, not accustomed to his teasing, blushed, wondering if she had really been guilty of an indelicate presumption, but Helen spoke up quickly in their defense:--

"Now, Will you know perfectly well it is not any such thing. As a pledge of our good faith--does that sound nice and lawyer-like?" Will was studying law, and Helen, too, liked to tease occasionally--"I do affirm that if you will do that for us, I will do something nice for him, on your account."

"Then I certainly will. It is what I have been trying to convince you for a month that you ought to do."