Rest or unrest : a story of the Parisian Sabbath in America

Chapter I

life's outlook.

Remember the Sabbath day , to keep it holy. — Exod. 20. 8 .

I T was the evening before Commencement at

College. The graduating class was exceptionally large, and the exercises gave promise of unusual interest.

The institution was one of long standing, with a broad curriculum, and could count among its alumni some of the foremost men of the State and nation.

Its walls had witnessed the upward stride of the ambition that works only for place and preferment, the flight of the nobler souls that spurn the levels of ignorance in their thirst to breathe the purer upper air of intellectual enjoyment, and the higher, truer aim of those who long to rise that they may work for the best fulfillment of the purposes of their existence, that they may labor for the uplifting of humanity.

These three types were, on this night, well represented by the three young men who were to bear away the highest honors of the class of 18—.

It would not have been difficult for a close ob-

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server to assign each to the particular rank to which he belonged.

Paul Jameson was kneeling beside a trunk, stowing away books with an air that betokened considerable relish for the work in which he was engaged. Having crowded in the last volume he shut down the lid with a sharp click, turned the key, and deposited it in his pocket as he rose with a little grimace, saying,

“ I don’t spend so much time on my knees every day. And now, my worthy colleagues, we are ready for business. We will hear from the Honorable Osmond Young, Valedictorian, First Oar, and so on.”

The young man thus designated, a tall, broadchested young fellow with dark eyes and a firmlooking mouth, smiled half absently, but did not at once respond.

“ Prospecting, eh ? ” spoke Allen Summerville, the other occupant of the room, who seemed as frugal of words as the first speaker had been prodigal.

Osmond roused himself.

“Prospecting? Yes, likewise retrospecting and introspecting,” he said. His manner was half jesting and half serious. Paul Jameson made a little impatient movement.

“ Don’t fly off at a tangent, Jameson,” put in Osmond. “ I am not going to moralize — at least not much. I will come to business presently; but at a time like this a man cannot help glancing backward and inward as well as forward. To-night I can’t keep Edward McLane out of my mind.”

The two listeners exchanged glances and smiled.

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“ Backward with a vengeance ! ” exclaimed Paul; “ but, pray, what has Mac to do with the ‘ true inwardness * of your peregrinations?”

“ Verily you could not have lent him either brains or ears, though nature has dealt bountifully with you in both important particulars,” added Allen.

“We might have been more considerate of his affliction, and helped him in various ways to use the brains he had. He was not lacking in intelligence,” answered Osmond, firmly. “ He might have gone through, with a little more magnanimity on the part of his class-mates. He said there were obstacles against which he was powerless, in a letter which he asked me to write to a friend during his illness just before he left, you remember. There was no excuse for making him the butt of ridicule because of his poverty, his mistakes and his queer ways,” he added warmly.

“ There wasmo excuse for his audacious blunders,” protested Allen. “ Bah ! drop the fellow and proceed to business. Remember, this is an auspicious night. But if you are not ready for the question there is the regatta for a subject.”

“ I have given up the regatta,” said Osmond, quietly.

“ What ? ” ejaculated both of his companions.

“ It will never do in the world. We' depend on you,” said one.

“ I can’t help it ; I told you before the preliminaries were arranged that I wouldn’t row on Sunday, and I will not,” was the cool reply.

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“O do be reasonable, Young,” urged Paul. “If you had any valid excuse the fellows might be willing to let you off ; but — ”

“ My excuse is and must be that the Bible says,

‘ Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,’ ” answered Osmond, steadily.

“ And what saith the Koran of Mohammed to his followers? And what saith the Zend Avesta of Zoroaster to the magician and the Parsu ?” questioned Allen ; lazily, with half-shut eyes, not because ' he was really feeling indifferent, but because he thought that in thus classing these false Scriptures with the Bible he had made a good hit, and wished to appear superior to the weakness of elation.

But Osmond answered very coolly, “ The Alcoran teaches that those who reject the truth will be punished, and the Zend Avesta declares that there is a ceaseless conflict going on between light and darkness — which seems to be true so far as it goes. The struggle is over with me, however, so far as this regatta is concerned. I fought it out with myself, and the question is settled. I claim the privilege of choosing the light and rejecting the darkness as it presents itself to me.”

The speaker’s manner and tone were full of decision. A more fluctuating spirit would have been assailed from all sides and might in the end have yielded its convictions to the pressure brought to bear upon them. But Allen Summerville and Paul Jameson knew that this was no vacillating nature with which they had to deal, and gave up the effort,

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though not with very good grace, while each, unacknowledged to himself, respected Osmond more for his unswerving fidelity to his principles.

“ Well, then, our crew is fated to a failure,” was muttered, and that was all.

A little silence fell upon the trio, which was presently broken by Osmond himself in a manner bearing with it the assumption that he had given no cause for personal offense, nor yet had reason for any on his own part.

“ Well,” he said, “ if we are to plan our future lives to-night we would better begin. We shall get no time for sleep — unless we all expect to die young, and the tale is soon told.”

“ Whom the gods love,” drawled Allen.

“ I have no reason to believe myself a special favorite,” continued Osmond, “and if I die young it is more likely to be as a victim at the shrine of Plutus. But, heathen divinities aside, I must say honestly that I hardly know how to meet our compact squarely. It seemed not to have been left for me to plan my ifuture. It appears to have been already laid out, so far as human wisdom can do such a thing, though of course this fact does not relieve me of responsibility in the matter.

“ To be brief, I am to inherit my uncle’s property on condition that on leaving college I enter heartily with him into the interest to which he has given most of his life — railroads and iron manufacture.

“ I can say honestly that I do not like the pros-

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pect. It is not the line of life that my tastes would suggest, but my obligations to my uncle — ”

“ Present and prospective,” interpolated Allen.

Osmond acquiesced good-naturedly with a bow — “ indicate that I ought to consult his wishes in the matter.”

“ Humph ! I should not stop long to consult any body’s wishes or tastes in the presence of furnace and railroad stock,” exclaimed Paul Jameson, enthusiastically. “You are in luck, man, up to those liberal ears of yours. I congratulate you heartily, with the mental reservation that I wish it was myself instead of you.”

“ Mine too, O Midas ! ” put in Allen.

“ Thank you, boys,” responded Osmond, “ but allow me to say that when you two look down from the heights of your chosen greatness you will see things differently. I congratulate you on your freedom to carve for yourselves such places as you may desire and are fitted, or can be fitted, to fill. Paul Jameson next ! ” he concluded with a little effort at lightness.

Paul began :

“Chapter First. Beggarly chap just turned out into the pitiless world, by his merciless alma mater, with only his brains and a little education. No rich relatives, no railroad stock, no any thing but pluck and the determination to succeed.”

“ By fair means or foul,” suggested Allen.

“Be quiet till your turn, comes,” replied Paul, resuming :

“ He sees a long, strong ladder called Politics — ”

“Just as I told you,” interrupted Allen —

“ And he enters on the study of the law with a view to scaling this ladder to some good place at the top, perhaps the highest to be found.”

“ ‘ I came, I saw,’ and so forth,” concluded Allen. “ I speak in time for a fat office as near the throne as possible. Meanwhile I have the floor, I believe, but I have not much to say. I want to be a man of letters and of leisure, and of course, to this end, a man of means. If the divine afflatus should move me to the inditing of a volume, whether of prose or poetry, I hope you will buy it, read it, and appreciate it. But if I never mount any higher than the editorial chair of a village patent-outsidesheet I shall continue to investigate, and give the world — -my world — the benefit of my researches. Not so much,” he added with a lazy laugh, “ for the purpose of benefiting the world as for the sake of following the bent of my mind. “ I shall advocate progress. I shall fight ignorance. I shall make war on narrow ideas and antiquated, exploded and worn-out theories, whether scientific, political, social or religious. I shall regard neither the high nor the low. I shall attack churches, railroad magnates, governors, presidents, and such, indiscriminately, if the course pursued by any or all of them should clash with my views of the fitness of things. I shall speak the truth fearlessly.”

“ Being yourself a consolidated edition of all the

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wisdom of all the wise, of course you will always know the truth,” retaliated Paul.

The talk ran on in this light vein for some time, but gradually all relapsed into silence. There was more of serious feeling in the little company than their words betokened. When they finally separated, and Osmond Young with Allen Summerville started to their rooms, Osmond said, laying his hand on the arm of the latter,

“ Old fellow, I wish you good-speed in battling down the strongholds of ignorance and superstition. I hope you will fight error wherever you find it ; but be sure, in your attacks upon what you deem antiquated and exploded theories, that you do not assail the bulwarks of eternal truth. Good-night.”

They had reached the door of the speaker’s room and he entered without waiting for reply. But Allen halted at the door.

“Thanks for your warning,” he said. “I say, Young, that uncle of yours ought to have been a parson, and bound you to follow that calling.”

Osmond flushed a little at the sneer that was barely perceptible in his companion’s tone ; but he answered firmly :

“ No, I do not think I have received the high honor of a call in that direction, and as for — but come in, a few minutes, Summerville. I want to tell you a story. I have never told it before. It is not •generally known, and I want you to promise not to repeat it, although I shall feel myself bound in honor not to divulge the names of the persons referred to.

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I shall not sermonize on the affair, but simply give you the facts, the truth of which I can vouch for.”

Summerville gave the desired promise and sat down.

“ I feel impelled to tell you the story,” continued Osmond ; “ but I shall make it as brief as possible. There live in one of our large cities a man and wife who some twenty-five years ago, during a Sabbath excursion, lost a little son by drowning. The child fell from the bow of the boat and was passed quite over by the steamer. Its body was afterward recovered, and a dark bruise on the forehead showed that on rising it had met the cruel timbers that sent it back to its death.

“The mother’s sorrow was deep, but chastened and submissive. The father’s grief took the form of fierce rebellion. He denied the justice of the Almighty, and talked blasphemously of cruelty and outrage. He kept the little body in its casket for weeks before he would permit its burial. Finally he consented that his dead should be buried out of his sight, but his heart still retained its bitterness.

“Years passed and there came another son to take the place so long vacant. When it was two years old, about the same age at which the other had been removed, the father astounded his wife by saying to her one day: ‘ Lizzie, there is an excursion advertised for next Sunday on the Mermaid . We have never accompanied one since that wretched day when the baby was drowned. I am going with this one and shall take you and Julian; and I defy heaven and earth to take that child away from me.’

“ In vain his wife begged him to cease such language and to desist from his purpose. Her pleadings and tears were of no avail. He declared that nothing could move his will, and in the end the mother tremblingly consented to go, that she might watch over her child.

“ You will, perhaps, not think it strange that a storm should have arisen when the yacht was some distance off from shore — such things are not of uncommon occurrence — nor that she should have been driven upon rocks and wrecked, nor that in the haste and terror of the time the child should have passed into other hands for a moment in transmitting the passengers from the vessel to the boats; but those wretched parents never looked on the face of their child again, although they had no reason to believe that it was drowned, but quite the contrary.

“ The mother’s life and reason were both despaired of for awhile, though in time she in a measure rallied from the blow. The father’s state of mind became more lamentable than before.

“ Every effort was made to find some trace of the lost one, but all in vain. It has never been heard from to this day. I do not expect that you will be impressed with the circumstances as I have been. The story has been wrought into my very nature by its familiarity. I have known of the parents all my life. The child, if still alive, is now some two

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years older than myself, but the mother still speaks of him as ‘ her baby.’ She scans the face of every little one she sees, apparently still engaged in the long, long, unavailing search, though her mind is perfectly clear upon every other subject. The father never refers to the loss, but it is easy to see that his mind is often busy with the problem of sorrow. He is to-day, not a careless violator, but a violent opposer of the Sabbath, and seems to study to devise methods for its desecration. I have heard that he called the missing child Julian, for Julian the apostate, and it may be well that he did not have the opportunity of training it to emulate the example of its namesake.

“ That is all. I hardly know why I have told you the story, unless it was your question classing the Bible with the Koran and the Zend Avesta, reminding me of some of the remarks which I have heard from — the gentleman of whom I have told you.”

“Well, but, Young, I see the drift of your thoughts. You think the mysterious removal of the child a direct retribution for Sabbath-breaking and presumption. I should call it simply a coincidence,” said Allen, as he rose to leave the room.

“ Does not history furnish a good many coincidences of the same kind?” asked Osmond, quietly.

“ Possibly,” replied his companion. “ History is said to repeat itself, you know. Well, Young, I have no wish to change your views on the subject.”

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“ I should like to change yours,” responded his friend. Summerville laughed and said good-night, but presently turned back to add banteringlv:

“We three chaps will have an opportunity to test one another’s theories if we all settle down at home and give our native city the privilege of witnessing our exploits.”

“ I think that was to be a part of the agreement, all things being favorable,” replied Osmond.

“Well,” said Summerville, confidently, using his favorite word for introducing a remark, “ we shall see what we shall see.”

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Chapter II

And they laid it up till the morning. . . . And Moses said , Eat that to-day ; for to-day is a Sabbath unto the Lord: to-day ye shall not find it in the field. — Exod. 16 ; 24-25.

HE winter was past. It was that delightful

X season when the earliest flowers lift up their delicate heads ; when the cherry and peach blossoms are in all the beauty of their creamy white and glowing pink; when the birds have come home to us and their songs seem the echo of the gladness of our own hearts.

My reader has doubtless experienced the thrill of strong confidence, that seed-time and harvest, summer and winter shall not cease, that fills us anew in the glow and brightness which in spring come to all things that have seemed forsaken and forgotten through the long night of winter.

A thought akin to this, yet scarcely defined, was in the mind of a girl who stood by the river-side looking across the muddy water to a solitary willow that was donning its brightest green, as if, notwithstanding its isolation and unimportance, it too was remembered in the new awakening.

The sight of the poor little tree bravely lifting its green boughs toward heaven awoke a thrill in the heart that beat under the patched calico dress,

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and she vaguely wondered if a spring-tide might not some time come to her poor life.

She had slowly made her way half-way down the path with the dirty wooden pail in her hand, and now stood swinging it lightly to and fro as she wove her little dream.

“ Edna, are you waiting for the river to come to you ? ” called out a harsh voice from the top of the bank.

The girl started, and the peaceful expression on her face gave place to a sullen, gloomy look, as without turning round she went down to the water, and at the imminent risk of falling in dipped the bucket into the murky stream and returned slowly and painfully to the top of the bank, while the man who had hastened her errand stood with his hands in his pockets and looked on.

Edna did not look at him ; she kept her face a little averted and there was a hard look in her eyes that is painful to see in the faces of the young. She knew the seedy figure with its shabby Sunday “ gentility,” its unkempt beard, watery eyes and unsteady mouth. She knew it all by heart. It was part of the hard, separated lot in life that made her feel akin to the lonely, scraggy tree by the river-side, which she had watched swaying in naked helplessness through all the winter gales.

“ How often have I told you not to loiter,? You will never get through the world at such a rate,” the man said prosingly as he turned and followed her toward the place which they called home.

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“ ‘ Prompt and steady at it’ is the only way, and ‘well begun is half done,’ ” he went on.

The girl paid no attention whatever to his platitudes. She did not even quicken her slow steps in answer to their wise suggestions. Perhaps she did not hear them. She had heard them so often, and sounds that have become monotonous often fall on the ear unnoticed.

“ I want my dinner at twelve sharp,” he added presently. The girl spoke for the first time.

“What will you have, father ? ” she asked, suddenly turning about, and spilling the water over her feet and ankles as she did so.

“ Ham and eggs, a pot of coffee, and a big loaf of baker’s bread ? ” she continued.

“ O any thing that you have in the house will do, I guess. What have you ? ”

“ Nothing,” she replied in that same tone of bitter flippancy.

“ Well,” he answered, putting his hand in his pocket and producing a coin, “ take this ; they who work must eat. I gave you half a dollar just last week,” he added, with an attempt at dignified reproof. “You must try to learn frugality, my girl ; ‘ A penny saved is worth two earned.’ ”

Edna did not take the pains to answer. She did not seem in the least troubled at the implied charge of having wasted a part of the pittance which had furnished a week’s supplies while several times the amount had gone into the saloon-keeper’s cashdrawers. The only feeling which she displayed for

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the man whom she called father was one of ill-concealed disgust.

She went into the house and deposited her burden on a rickety bench that tottered under its weight, brightened up the fire, and then set out to buy provisions.

As she walked along she looked at the bit of silver and wondered if it would be possible to save a cent from the amount after purchasing the bacon, eggs and bread. She turned the problem over and over in her mind as she turned the coin in her little brown fingers.

The wise old saws with which her father was constantlyregaling her ears had usually little meaning for her. She had long since indignantly rejected in advance all the precepts which he poured forth with trying profusion when not in his worst moods; but his quotation in regard to the pennies, though its utter absurdity struck her at the time, came back to her now as she looked at the money and wished that she could save even a cent toward buying the book upon which she had set her heart. It was a story-book, soiled, dog-eared and having the covers off, but which seemed a treasure to her and which a neighbor newsboy had offered for a trifle.

“ If I go without my supper I can save enough to pay for it,” she said to herself, pausing a moment to think the matter over, when suddenly there was a rush along the sidewalk, somebody jostled her elbow, the money on which so much depended flew out of her hand, and she was hurried along with the crowd for some distance before she was able to turn back.

The excitement of a street-fight had caused the tumult which had resulted in the loss, trifling in itself, but meaning severe blame, if not blows, to the shabby girl, who turned back with a startled face and hurried along the pavement, looking on every side for the lost money. Griffith Varney’s prosy proverbs might be harmless enough and give his daughter no second thought, but the result of a loss was a serious thing, as the girl had learned more than once.

She looked in vain for the half dollar. It must have rolled far away, or else some one had picked it up. She went on and on, with her head bent and eyes fixed on the ground.

What is that? Ah, somebody else has been a loser also. There, just before her, lay a leather pocket-book well strapped and apparently well filled. It was the work of a moment to snatch it up and spring into an alley, where she could examine it without fear of the owner coming back and surprising her. Had this child of poverty, who could but dimly remember better days, fallen heir to a large fortune she would not have been more elated than she was over the crisp bank-notes that met her eyes. The thought of trying to return the money never entered her mind. Her only feeling was exultation over her good luck, as she mentally styled it, and the determination to share her secret and her wealth with no one.

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The sight of so much money had caused her to lose sight of her late dilemma in regard to the dinner which she had been sent to buy. She smiled a ’ little scornful smile as she remembered it, and, taking out one of the smaller bills and thrusting the pocket-book out of sight, she crossed over to the other side of the street and resumed her way to the grocery.

There would be no need to go without her supper, but instead she could buy as many good things as was consistent with prudence. And now her ambition soared above the dirty, dog-eared volume which she had lately longed to possess. There were scores of books in beautiful bindings of scarlet, crimson, violet and green, with gilt titles, and she could have her choice by sacrificing a part of her fortune. Which should she choose? Her wealth was already becoming slightly burdensome.

Edna Varney had always, shrunk from the Sunday purchases which she was often compelled to make. Her father was often at work on the Sabbath, but when he was off duty on that day he made it a season of drinking and carousal, and usually spent in his reveling the earnings of the other six. His daughter was often sent to the saloon round the corner, with a broken-nosed pitcher, for the liquor which made him less and less worthy of the name of man.

The Sabbath texts which her mother had taught her would come back to her on these occasions, and, despite her evil surroundings and limited knowledge

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of all things good and pure, she inwardly protested against the drunkenness and Sabbath desecration.

But to-day she had not time for rnany thoughts of this kind. There was the wealth that had come to her unsought to occupy her mind. She felt as if the story of her acquisition was written in large legible characters on her countenance, as she entered the grocery where she usually made her purchases.

When the articles were placed before her she handed the grocer the bright, fresh note, looking meanwhile attentively at the rows of pickle bottles on the shelf. To her intense satisfaction and relief the man asked her no questions. The sight of a clean bank-note was not so unusual to the well-to-do grocer as to the shabbily-dressed drunkard’s child. She felt so much relieved and in such haste to be gone that she gathered up her purchases and hurried out without waiting for her balance, and the grocer, who was just in the act of taking it from the cashdrawer, put it back again and resumed his morning paper.

When Edna reached home, fearing the blame which she had learned to expect and which might prove troublesome in this instance, she hastened her preparations for dinner. She fried the bacon, made the coffee, and sliced the white bread which the grocer had pronounced fresh, the truth of which statement its dryness contradicted. Then she spread the table with more care than usual. She felt a newly-awakened interest in life and its duties

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because of the money, not her own, which had so suddenly come into her hands.

It occurred to her that she must find some safe place in which to conceal her treasure. Her first thought was to hide it in her straw bed, but the recollection of a fire of which she had heard, in which money was lost, decided her to find a better place for depositing her fortune. Then she thought of sewing it up in her dress ; but she might be arrested and her person searched for the money. That would not do. She fell back upon the old oft-practiced trick of taking out a loose brick and secreting her wealth behind it. Taking the precaution of looking up and down the street to see that her father was not near, she mounted on a chair and began her search for a loose brick in the wall from which the plastering had fallen in many places. For a long time she tried in vain. She had heard of bags of gold being found in such receptacles, and she had received the impression that loose bricks were common enough in old tenement-houses like the one in which she had lived, in the suburbs of tjie city, almost ever since she could recollect. She got a case knife and tried to pry one and then another that did not seem very secure in their places ; but, although the mortar appeared to have fallen from around them, something held them fast.