The Children's Portion Part 16

Thanks to his good courser, Baron Durer, the Minister, got home in safety to his chateau. The first person that he met was the baroness. He turned abruptly away from her.

"Whither are you hurrying so fast, my dear baron?" said she, seeing her husband running away from her, which was not his custom, for he was fond of his wife.

"Baron!" was his reply; "to what baron were you calling? I am no baron, madame--though one day, perhaps, I may be. Let us hope I may."

The tone in which he spoke these words terrified the baroness. Her husband immediately afterward left the chateau, and began running as fast as his legs could carry him, neither stopping nor slackening his pace.

His head was bent down, like the head of a miser who is seeking about everywhere for the treasure which some one has stolen from him. From that day forward his face a.s.sumed a gloomy expression, his color became sallow, his eye haggard; and he began bitterly to complain that heaven had thought fit to send him on earth in a shepherd's form and a shepherd's dress.

Some days later, a messenger from the Emperor's court arrived at the chateau: "May it please my lord Minister," he began--

"I am no Minister," replied Durer, impatiently; "but have patience, sir, have patience; I may be Minister one day." Then he began to walk up and down hastily in the gallery of the chateau, perpetually saying, "I might have been a Minister by this time, sir, if your great ones did not leave men of strong intellect, and ability, and purpose, in the jaws of a misery which eats away the very brain as rust eats away the steel.

Why--why, I ask, debar these men from high offices--these men who have nothing--merely out of a prejudice, which is as fatal to the individual as it is deadly to the state?" Then turning sharply on the Emperor's emissary, "Go, and tell your master, sir," said he, "that yesterday I was--I was--I was"--pressing his hand, as he spoke, above his forehead, as though he was trying to find a coronet which had belonged to it. Then rus.h.i.+ng away distractedly--"Minister!" cried he, "I am--I was--No, no--I was not--but I soon will be!--Leave me, sir! leave me! leave me!"

Another day, his wretched family, who watched him with terror, overheard him talking to his gardener: "What a magnificent piece of work you are laying out, my good boy," said Durer; "a garden admirably designed, if there ever was such a thing." Then casting a disturbed glance toward the chateau, "'Tis a grand place, this," said he; "rich and elegant, and capitally situated--to whom does it belong, Joseph?"

"My lord baron knows right well that park, gardens, and chateau, belong to his n.o.ble self," said the gardener, leaning on his spade, and raising his cap.

Durer began to laugh to himself--but it was a piteous laugh--"Belong to me, my good boy!" said he; "not yet--not yet--and yet it seems to me as if I had owned--as if I had owned"--and he pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead, as if he could call back some recollection which had drifted away out of his reach--murmuring, after a pause, "Is it to be this shepherd's hovel--for ever?--for ever?--for ever?" He fell on a turf seat, sobbing bitterly; then raising his head, he saw his two fair little children, who were at play in one of the alleys of the park.

"What lovely children!" sighed he; "ah!--he must, at least, be happy, whoever he be, that is father to such a pair of angels!"

The children came and flung themselves, laughing, into the Minister's arms, and hung about him with all manner of tender caresses. In return, he could but press their tiny hands in his, or let his lean, feverish fingers play with their golden curls. They kept calling him "Father."

"What are they saying!" murmured the Baron; "the blessing of being called father I shall never know! What is life--without a home, without a family round me! But these gifts only belong to fortune, and come with it." Then looking from one lovely little creature to another, with his dim and bloodshot eyes, he said, "And yet these children--these children--" He could not finish his sentence, but again pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead; and the children became silent and awe-stricken, for they saw that he was weeping to himself.

Not long after this, he ceased to know his wife, whom he called for without ceasing; then he would bury himself deep in reading, without recollecting a word of what he had read when he had ended. All that was left to him was the memory of his young desires; the power of retaining anything had pa.s.sed away utterly. His ardor began to change into frenzy; he was devoured with fever, and haunted with dream after dream that tempted him to pursue them, and mocked him at the very moment when he thought that he had reached them. The struggle wore him out, life and limb. He was seen day by day to wither, and grow weaker. The end was not far. On the last day of his illness, a strange fancy seized him: he would get up--rushed out of the chateau, and began to run wildly across the country, as if he were chasing something before him that no one, save himself could see. "Sire!" cried he, hoa.r.s.ely, "deliver me from the obscurity of this shepherd's life! Sire! do listen to me! I am John Durer! I have studied everything! I have learned everything! I have fathomed everything! Raise me from my lowly condition, sire! Who knows?

one day you may have no one among your servants more devoted, more enlightened, than your poor John Durer!"

The thing that he pursued, fled--fled. Durer ran after it more wildly as he grew weaker, trying to raise his voice higher and higher, and stretching out his arms more and more eagerly. They were now at the Valley of Bushes. "Sire!" cried he once again.

"John Durer, scholar, of the village near Haerlem," replied a voice from the shadows of the wood, "his Majesty the Emperor does not love people who have lost their memory."

The whole past--the long, long, years of his ambitious and glorious and ungrateful life--seemed in one instant to come back, as in a flash of lightning, before the weary, distracted man; and with this, too, the consciousness of his present state. He uttered one terrible cry, and fell down dead.

VII.

Three months later, when his orphans were led by their mother a second time to visit the humble cemetery of the village near Haerlem, they found a little old man writing rapidly, with a piece of charcoal, a few strange words on the stone under which the body of their father, the Minister, had been laid. When they came close to the spot, the old man ceased, and pointed out to them, with an awful look, that which he had written.

After the inscription, "John Durer, formerly Minister to his Majesty the Emperor of Germany," the old man had written--

"Heaven requites ingrat.i.tude."

THE STORY OF A WEDGE.

BY REV. C. H. MEAD.

For more than a hundred miles, I had traveled, having the entire seat to myself.

Aside from the selfishness of the average traveler, who, while unwilling to pay for more sitting, is more than willing to monopolize the whole seat, I was glad of plenty of elbow room to enable me to answer some pressing letters.

But as the car began to fill up, I knew the bag at my side must soon give way to another kind of neighbor, and presently down the aisle he came.

From a perpendicular standpoint he was small, but horizontally, he was immense, and I viewed his approach with some alarm.

There was a merry twinkle in his eye, and his face beamed with good nature as he said, "Ah, I see you have room for a wedge at your side; allow me to put it in place." With considerable effort and a good deal of tight squeezing, he at last settled down in the seat, remarking, with a merry laugh, "Here I am at last;" and there I was too, and there I was likely to remain, if that wedge did not fly out, or the side of the car give way.

"Have you room enough?" I slyly inquired.

"Plenty of room, thank you," he replied; "I trust you are nice and snug."

"Never more snug in my life."

"That's right; the loose way in which most people travel is a continual menace to life and limb. I believe in keeping things snug, spiritually, physically, socially, financially and politically snug. And if things are spiritually snug, all the others must be so, as a matter of course.

I learned that fact years ago in England."

"Are you an Englishman," I inquired.

"No, sir; I'm a Presbyterian" he laughingly replied; "my father was born in England, my mother was born in Ohio, and I was born the first time in New Jersey. Then on a visit to England I was 'born again.' My father was a Methodist; my mother was a Quaker, so of course I had to be a Presbyterian."

His unctuous laughter made the seat tremble. "Not a blue one, mind you.

Blue? Not a bit of it. Why, bless you, when I became a Christian, all the blue went out of my heart and went into my sky.

"My father was physically large--I take after him. My mother--" he stopped abruptly and lifted his hat reverently; the tears filled his eyes and coursed down his cheeks, and presently, with choking voice he continued:

"My mother, G.o.d bless her memory, was the best woman and the grandest Christian I ever knew. She lives in heaven, and she lives in my heart.

I would that I were as much like mother spiritually as I resemble father physically."

The tender pathos of his voice, as he said this, made me feel that his sainted mother, were she present, would have no reason to feel ashamed of her son.

As he was about to replace his hat on his head, I noticed in large letters pasted on the lining, these words, "Hinder n.o.body--help everybody."

"Excuse me, sir;" I said, as I pointed to the words, "what is the meaning of that?"

Quickly the tears on his cheeks, were illuminated by a smile as he said--"That's my watchword; I carry it in my hat, have it hung up on my wall at home, and since I went into my present business, I've tried to make it the daily practice of my life."

"May I inquire what your business is?"

"Certainly, sir, my business is serving the Lord, and there is no business like it in the universe. It pays good dividends, brings me no worry, insures me a good standing in the best society; feeds me on the fat of the land, fills my heart with peace and makes me an heir to a kingdom, a robe and a crown. Bankruptcy and bad debts never stare me in the face, and every draft I draw is honored at the bank. Thus, I 'hinder n.o.body,' and am able to 'help every body.'"

"Where do you reside?" I asked.

"On Pisgah's top"--and his face fairly shone as he repeated it--"on Pisgah's top. At first I lived down in the valley among Ezekiel's dry bones, and used to help the mult.i.tudes sing--

"'Could we but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er: Not Jordan's stream nor death's cold flood, Should fright us from the sh.o.r.e.'

"But I moved on and up to my present residence, and now I sing--