The Seeker. Harry Leon Wilson
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in a buggy at street-corners, jauntily urging a crowd to buy the magic grease-eradicator, toothache remedy, meretricious jewelry, what not! first playing a fiddle and rollicking out some ribald song to fetch them. Business indeed! A pretty business!
"The boys are delighted with the Bibles you sent and learn a verse each day. I have told them they may some day preach as you did if they will be as good men as you are and study the Bible. They try to preach like our preacher in the cunningest way. I wish you could see them. You would love them in spite of your feeling against their father. I did what you suggested to stimulate their minds about the Scriptures, but perhaps the lesson they chose to write about was not very edifying. It does not seem a pretty lesson to me, and I did not pick it out. They heard about it at Sabbath-school and had their papers all written as a surprise for me. Of course, Bernal's is very childish, but I think Allan's paper, for a child of his age, shows a grasp of religious matters that is truly remarkable. I shall keep them studying the Bible daily. I should tell you that I am now looking forward with great joy to——"
With a long sigh he laid down the finely written sheet and took from the sheaf the two papers she had spoken of. Then while the gale roared without and shook his window, and while the bust of John Calvin looked down at him from the book-case at his back, he followed his two grandsons on their first incursion into the domain of speculative theology.
He took first the paper of the older boy, painfully elaborated with heavy, intricate capitals and headed "Elisha and the Wicked Children—by Mr. Allan Delcher Linford, Esquire, aged nine years and six months."
"This lesson," it began, "is to teach us to love God and the prophets or else we will likely get into trouble. It says Elisha went up from Bethel and some children came out of the city and said go up thou Baldhead. They said it Twice one after the other and so Elisha got mad right away and turned around and cursed them good in the name of the Lord and so 2 She Bears come along and et up 42 of them for Elisha was a holy prophet of God and had not ought to of been yelled at. So of course the mothers would Take on very much When they found their 42 Children et up but I think that we had ought to learn from this that these 42 Little ones was not the Elected. It says in our catchism God having out of his mere good pleasure elected some to everlasting life. Now God being a Presbiterian would know these 42 little ones had not been elected so they might as well be et up by bears as anything else to show forth his honour and glory Forever Amen. It should teach a Boy to be mighty carful about kidding old men unless he is a Presbiterian. I spelled every word in this right.
Mr. Allan Delcher Linford."
The second paper, which the old man now held long before him, was partly printed and partly written with a lead-pencil, whose mark was now faint and now heavy, as having gone at intervals to the writer's lips. As the old man read, his face lost not a little of its grimness.
"Bears
"It teaches the lord thy God is baldheaded. I ask my deer father what it teeches he said it teeches who ever wrot that storry was baldheaded. He says a man with thik long hair like my deer father would of said o let the kids have their fun with old Elisha so I ask my deer mother who wrot this lesson she said God wrot the holy word so that is how we know God is baldheaded. It was a lot of children for only two 2 bears. I liked to of ben there if the bears wold of known that I was a good child. mabe I cold of ben on a high fense or up a tree. I climd the sor aple tree in our back yard esy.
By Bernal Linford, aged neerly 8 yrs."
Carefully he put back both papers with the mother's letter, his dark face showing all its intricate net-work of lines in a tension that was both pained and humorous.
Two fresh souls were given to his care to be made, please God, the means of grace by which thousands of other souls might be washed clean of the stain of original sin. Yet, if revolt was there—revolt like his daughter's and like his own? Would he forgive as his own father had forgiven, who had called him back after many years to live out a tranquil old age on the fortune that father's father had founded? He mused long on this. The age was lax—true, but God's law was never lax. If one would revolt from the right, one must suffer. For the old man was one of the few last of a race of giants who were to believe always in the Printed Word.
CHAPTER III
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The Cult of the Candy Cane
When the littler boy looked fairly into the frosty gray of that Christmas morning, the trailed banner of his faith was snatched once more aloft; and in the breast of his complacent brother there swelled the conviction that one does ill to flaunt one's skepticism, when the rewards of belief are substantial and imminent. For before them was an array of gifts such as neither had ever looked upon before, save as forbidden treasure of the few persons whose immense wealth enables them to keep toy-shops.
The tale of the princely Saint was now authenticated delightfully. That which had made him seem unreal in moments of spiritual laxity—the impenetrable secrecy of his private life—was now seen to enhance manyfold his wondrous givings. Here was a charm which could never have sat the display before them had it been dryly bought in their presence from one of the millionaire toy-shop keepers. For a wondering moment they looked from their beds, sputtering, gibbering, gasping, with cautious calls one to the other. Then having proved speech to be no disenchantment they shouted and laughed crazily. There followed a scramble from the beds and a swift return from the cold, each bearing such of the priceless bits as had lain nearest. And while these were fondled or shot or blown upon or tasted or wound up, each according to its wonderful nature, they looked farther afield seeing other and ever new packages bulk mysteriously into the growing light; bundles quickening before their eyes with every delight to be imagined of a Saint with epicurean tastes and prodigal habits—bundles that looked as if a mere twitch at the cord would expose their hidden charms.
The littler boy now wore a unique fur cap that let down to cover the neck and face, with openings wonderfully contrived for the eyes, nose and mouth—an easy triumph, surely, over the deadliest cold known to man. In one hand he flourished a brass-handled knife with both of its blades open; with the other he clasped a striped trumpet, into the china mouthpiece of which he had blown the shreds of a caramel, not meaning to; and here he was made to forget these trifles by discovering at the farther side of the room a veritable rocking-horse, a creature that looked not only magnificently willing, but superbly untamable, with a white mane and tail of celestial flow, with alert, pointed ears of maroon leather nailed nicely to the right spot. At this marvel he stared in that silence which is the highest power of joy: a presentiment had been his that such a horse, curveting on blue rockers, would be found on this very morning. Two days before had he in an absent moment beheld a vision of this horse poised near the door of the attic; but when he ran to make report of it below, thinking to astound people by his power of insight, Clytemnestra, bidding him wait in the kitchen where she was baking, had hurried to the spot and found only some rolls of blue cambric. She had rather shamed him for giving her such a start. A few rolls of shiny blue cambric against a white wall did not, she assured him, make a rocking-horse; and, what was more, they never would. Now the vision came back with a significance that set him all a-thrill. Next time Clytie would pay attention to him. He laughed to think of her confusion now.
But here again, at the very zenith of a shout, was he frozen to silence by a vision—this time one too obviously of no ponderable fabric. There in the corner, almost at his hand, seemed to be a thing that he had dreamed of possessing only after he entered Heaven—a candy cane: one of fearful length, thick of girth, vast of crook, and wide in the spiral stripe that seemed to run a living flame before his ravished eyes, beginning at the bottom and winding around and around the whole dizzy height. Fearfully