p. 382 | MRS. PALLISER'S DREAM

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1881

MRS. PALLISER'S DREAM

I PROPOSE to relate Mrs. Palliser's dream because it brought about a marked change in her life.

Great as is the liberty generally allowed to a dream, nevertheless, I apologize beforehand for Mrs. Palliser's dream. It is not a conventional good-society dream. I admit it. I protest against any damaging inferences about Mrs. Palliser. She is a dear, good, pious little woman; but I leave the dream to its own merits. I will not even attempt to tell it in a roundabout style, but just say plumply Mrs. Palliser dreamed that, sitting in church she saw Satan sitting near her, quite at his ease, listening with an air of artistic enjoyment to the singing, and with an expression of proprietorship and interest in what was about him that made Mrs. Palliser so horridly uncomfortable that she could not follow the services.

When a dream begins like that, of course you may expect almost anything to come next.

Mrs. Palliser in her dream was more curious to know why he came there, and how he could sit there, than ever was Eve about the apple; and her curiosity grew so intolerable that, the service being over, she touched him on the arm and asked him.

"My dear madam," he answered, blandly, "I often come here. I view this and one or two similar establishments something as a man does his pet country seat, and when I get a fit of the blues I come here to refresh my faith—in myself. And for the question in your thoughts, madam, that you are too polite to frame in words, your Christ, to whom you have erected this temple, is not here."

"You are a liar and the father of lies!" retorted Mrs. Palliser, with more zeal than politeness.

"Granted; but the devil can quote Scripture. What did He tell you himself of some who begin to say, 'We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets; but he shall say, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.' I wonder, Mrs. Palliser, if the prophecy was confined entirely to those wicked Jews, or if among them will be found anybody who sits here, for example."

Now coupled with his words, there was something so unspeakably awful in the smile with which he looked down into Mrs. Palliser's wondering face that the little woman's heart stood still. She struggled and woke.

This absurd and irreverent dream made a terrible impression on Mrs. Palliser. She was unable to forget it. She told her husband, and he pooh-poohed at it as nonsense. That was conclusive, but not satisfactory. She consulted her pastor. He smiled, and told her that "a dream cometh through the multitude of business." "But not such dreams," murmured Mrs. Palliser. She grew thin and worn, and her husband called in the doctor. The doctor demanded her symptoms, and Mrs. Palliser told her dream. The doctor said something about nerves, gave her a prescription, and privately advised Mr. Palliser to take his wife into society, and try to distract her thoughts; this persistent dwelling on one thing looked a little like mania.

Winter came—two-faced, as usual. To the rich and the well-to-do it brought the "season" and all splendors and pleasures: lectures, operas, sleigh-rides, rinks, red cheeks, quick leaping blood, long, bracing walks in the clear air; spring, sparkle, elasticity; cozy, curtained rooms, twilights with soft, warm air, red fire-light, and just a glimpse through the panes of dying winter's light for contrast; long evenings close around the hearth, all the cozier for the raving wind and driving sleet without. Christmas-trees, New-Year's boxes, wine, velvet, gold, furs—all these for the rich; but for the poor—lower your voice and change your note. Winter is a mighty hunter; the poor are his game, and he hunts them hard, and to the death. This winter was no exception. It was a bitter one. The charitable were busy; busiest of all, Mrs. Palliser; but she still asked herself why Christ should not be in his church.

In an alley lived Madge Allen, on the third floor of a rear tenement building. She was by no means a model poor woman. Her temper was bad. She was sometimes drunk. Mrs. Palliser's cook vowed that she stuffed her pockets with tea and sugar. But, however that may be, she fell sick. Mrs. Palliser found her looking not only ill, but gaunt and starving. So did her children. There was no quilt on her bed; no fire; no bread; no tea-kettle; not even a whole dish. One by one, everything had gone to the pawnbrokers. Winter had hunted them down, and was worrying them now in their miserable attic till the landlord should turn them out, as he intended to do the day after to-morrow, when he would finish them.

Madge told these things in a dry, hard voice, and with no sign of emotion, although the soft-hearted Mrs. Palliser was in tears. You see, Madge lived only a block and a half away, and that aggravated the case, to Mrs. Palliser's thinking. She could hardly await the end of the story to run into the street, order coal, wood, groceries, confiscate the whole Palliser dinner, and send around a load of blankets, quilts, flannel, dishes, etc. She paid the landlord; she brought the doctor; she nursed Madge herself—the best and tenderest of nurses. In all this glow of kind feeling Madge thawed a little, and one day she said,

"I thank you, I do thank you, Mrs. Palliser. I don't see why you ever took so much trouble for one like me."

"For Jesus' sake," answered Mrs. Palliser, softly and quickly, glad of the opportunity to say so.

An ill-omened light sparkled in Madge's eyes.

"Whose sake did you say?" affecting sudden deafness.

"Our Lord and Saviour's," replied Mrs. Palliser again, trembling a little.

"And why on his account?" asked Madge, dryly.

"Because he—Why, surely you know, Madge. He told us to do so. He was poorer once than you; he had not a place even to lay his head."

Madge threw up her head scornfully. "Now I wonder, Mrs. Palliser, to hear you talk like that. I have heard that story a dozen times from them as likes to set themselves up and preach; but you are another sort. You are a good woman, you are; and why do you want to stuff me with a story like that?"

Mrs. Palliser was still with surprise.

"Now, see here," continued Madge rapidly. "I don't want to say nothing saucy to one that's been good to me and mine. But poor folks ain't fools. When we see ice it's no use telling us it's dog days because we know better. Now you say our Lord was so poor hisself, and so he had a feeling for the poor folks, and wants Christians to have it too, and he counts us all his brothers and sisters.

"Oh, I know the rigmarole; I've heard it often enough. Now let me tell you how a few of these brothers and sisters are getting on. The woman overhead has two little children. She is honest and works her fingers to the bone to keep them, and in five days they have had three loaves of bread. The decent man below is a carpenter. He was too poor to buy stuff to make things for hisself. He has a wife and three children—babies you may say, all of them. They have pawned all they have. He is so poor-looking now that I don't suppose they'd trust him with work if they had it. She is down with rheumatiz; no flannel, no fire, no food, is too much for her. They are clean beat out, and last week they would have starved to death but for what we poor folks brought them. In yonder the children is crying with cold and chilblains, and never a shoe to their feet. Their mother goes around with a basket and sells what she can, but you know how it is ma'am—where one will buy, twenty will pass on and never look at her. Oh"—and the woman's black eyes kindled—"I wish I could make you, and every one that is warm and full, feel what it is to be starved all over, dizzy and faint, and the wind searching through every bone, and no hope of anything better, and folks going by you as if they were angels and you was vermin, for the way they look at you, and plenty to eat and drink, and warm rooms everywhere in the houses that would no more open to you than the kingdom of Heaven, if there was one.

"Keep this in your mind, ma'am, as I have done when I watched you fine folks come out of your church. The price of the lace on your cloak would take that carpenter's clothes and tools out of pawn, and start him again. Them ladies behind you cost more than would make us all happy here. While your Lord's brothers and sisters are starving, you brush by us with the price of what would save us to go and pray to him, and then you go home, easy and careless and happy, and think well of yourselves if you send us out twenty-five cents by the servant. Mind, I think folks is right to use their own, and it's natural to want to look fine and handsome; but there's enough piled on just for show, and that does no good to nobody, to make us all easy. Give us a chance anyhow. And then you say he is there listening to you. Why, if he was, and he is what you make him out—I can read, and I read once how he drove the peddlers out of the temple for buying and selling, and what is that to leaving his own to perish, and never thinking or caring? Don't tell me. He isn't there, Mrs. Palliser, and what is more, you don't none of you believe it, really, or expect him, as you say you do. For what did he tell you? Oh, I have not been to Sunday-school for nothing. I can answer folks back when they come preaching at me;" and with an air of triumph she repeated, "'When thou makest a dinner or supper, call not thy friends, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.' Now there's a lot of Christians living in our neighborhood—the regular A No. 1 sort. But I don't see any invitations coming down our alley. They was a different sort as drove up to your house t'other night, Mrs. Palliser, and that will come scraping in New Year's Day to drink your wine and wish you merry; suppose on that day he came too, and when he'd looked around, and see none of the poor and sick, he said to you as it says in your book, 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me!' And that is what he would say, according to your own story, and if you believed it, wouldn't you all be sick for fear, and tryin' to do different? That you would. You are a kind woman, Mrs. Palliser, but drop that church talk with me. It's no good. He isn't there," pointing toward her window, from which one could see the church spire.

"Oh! Madge, he is," cried Mrs. Palliser. "Don't think it. It is true what you say, but the human heart is so hard that so long as we were warm and fed we would never care at all, and we wouldn't do even this little, only for Jesus' sake. It is he who sends us, and it is we who, like thoughtless, unwilling children, do as little as we can, then run off to our sport. The blame is ours, mine, Madge. But, please God," she continued rather to herself than to Madge, "I at least, know now where to look for my Lord."

That evening Mrs. Palliser informed her husband that she had found out the meaning of her dream. Madge Allen had told her.