the cold and barren hills of life,” said a voice in my heart. And then I felt a tender compassion for the strange, unlovely child.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Round in Blake’s Court,” he replied.
“Who with?”
“Old Mrs. Flint; but she doesn’t want me.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, because I’m nothing to her, she says, and she doesn’t want the trouble of me.” He tried to say this in a brave, don’t-care sort of way, but his voice faltered and he dropped his eyes to the floor. How pitiful he looked!
“Poor child!” I could not help saying aloud.
Light flashed over his pale face. It was something new to him, this interest and compassion.
“One of God’s little lambs.” I heard the voice in my heart saying this again. Nobody to love him – nobody to care for him. Poor little boy! The hand of my own child, my son who is so very dear to me, had led him in through our door and claimed for him the love and care so long a stranger to his heart. Could I send him out and shut the door upon him, when I knew that he had no mother and no home? If I heeded not the cry of this little one precious in God’s sight, might I not be thought unworthy to be the guardian of another lamb of his fold whom I loved as my own life?
“I’ve got heaps of clothes, mother – a great many more than I want. And my bed is wide. There’s room enough in the house, and we’ve plenty to eat,” said Harvey, pleading for the child. I could not withstand all these appeals. Rising, I told the little stranger to follow me. When we came back to the sitting-room half an hour afterward, Jim Peters would hardly have been known by his old acquaintances, if any of them had been there. A bath and clean clothes had made a wonderful change in him.
I watched the poor little boy, as he and Harvey played during the afternoon, with no little concern of mind. What was I to do with him? Clean and neatly dressed, there was a look of refinement about the child which had nearly all been hidden by rags and dirt. He played gently, and his voice had in it a sweetness of tone, as it fell every now and then upon my ears, that was really winning. Send him back to Mrs. Flint’s in Blake’s Court? The change I had wrought upon him made this impossible. No, he could not be sent back to Mrs. Flint’s, who didn’t want the trouble of him. What then?
Do the kind hearts of my little readers repeat the question, “What then?” Do they want very much to know what has become of little Jim Peters?
It is just a year since my boy led him in from the street, and Jim is still in our house. No one came for him. No one inquired about him. No one cared for him. I must take that last sentence back. God cared for him, and by the hand of my tender-hearted son brought him into my comfortable home and said to me, “Here is one of my lambs, astray, hungry and cold. He was born into the world that he might become an angel in heaven, but is in danger of being lost. I give him into your care. Let me find him when I call my sheep by their names.”
As I finished writing the last sentence a voice close to my ear said “Mother!” I turned and received a loving kiss from the lips of Jim. He often does this. I think, in the midst of his happy plays, memory takes him back to the suffering past, and then his grateful heart runs over and he tries to reward me with a loving kiss. I did not tell him to call me “Mother.” At first he said it in a timid, hesitating way, and with such a pleading, half-scared look that I was touched and softened.
“She isn’t your real mother,” said Harvey, who happened to be near, “but then she’s good and loves you ever so much.”
“And I love her,” answered Jim, with a great throb in his throat, hiding his face in my lap and clasping and kissing my hand. Since then he always calls me “Mother;” and the God and Father of us all has sent into my heart a mother’s love for him, and I pray that he may be mine when I come to make up my jewels in heaven.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD
JESUS says that we must love him.
Helpless as the lambs are we;
But He very kindly tells us
That our Shepherd He will be.
Heavenly Shepherd, please to watch us,
Guard us both by night and day;
Pity show to little children,
Who like lambs too often stray.
We are always prone to wander:
Please to keep us from each snare;
Teach our infant hearts to praise Thee
For Thy kindness and Thy care.
THE ST. BERNARD DOG
BY the pass of the Great St. Bernard travellers cross the Pennine Alps (Penn, a Celtic word, meaning height) along the mountain road which leads from Martigny, in Switzerland, to Aosta, in Piedmont. On the crest of the pass, eight thousand two hundred feet above the sea level, stands the Hospice, tenanted by about a dozen monks.
This is supposed to be the highest spot in Europe inhabited by human beings. The climate is necessarily rigorous, the thermometer in winter being often twenty-nine degrees below zero, whilst sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit is about the highest range ever attained in summer. From the extreme difficulty of respiration, few of the monks ever survive the period of their vow, which is fifteen years, commencing at the age of eighteen.
This hospice is said to have been first founded in the year 962, by Bernard, a Piedmontese nobleman. It will be remembered that it was over this pass Napoleon, in May, 1800, led an army of thirty thousand men into Italy, having with them heavy artillery and cavalry.
For poor travellers and traders the hospice is really a place of refuge. During winter, crossing this pass is a very dangerous affair. The snow falls in small particles, and remains as dry as dust. Whirlwinds, called “tourmentes,” catch up this light snow, and carrying it with blinding violence against the traveller, burying every landmark, at once put an end to knowledge of position. Avalanches, too, are of frequent occurrence.
After violent storms, or the fall of avalanches, or any other unusual severity of winter weather, the monks set out in search of travellers who may have been overwhelmed by the snow in their ascent of the pass. They are generally accompanied in their search by dogs of a peculiar breed, commonly known as the St. Bernard’s Dog, on account of the celebrated monastery where these magnificent animals are taught to exercise their wondrous powers, which have gained for them and their teachers a world-wide fame. On their neck is a bell, to attract the attention of any belated wayfarer; and their deep and powerful bay quickly gives notice to the benevolent monks to hurry to the relief of any unfortunate traveller they may find.
Some of the dogs carry, attached to their collars, a flask of spirits or other restorative. Their wonderfully acute sense of smell enables them to detect the bodies of persons buried deeply beneath the surface of the snow, and thus direct the searchers where to dig for them. The animal’s instinct seems to teach it, too, where hidden chasms or clefts, filled with loose snow, are; for it carefully avoids them, and thus is an all-important guide to the monks themselves.
We have stories without number as to what these dogs accomplish on their own account; how they dig out travellers, and bring them, sometimes unaided by man, to the hospice.
THE ST. BERNARD DOG
A few years ago one of these faithful animals might be seen wearing a medal, and regarded with much affection by all.
