DEACON GRAY'S CONVALESCENCE.
Deacon Gray was assisted carefully into his chaise, then his wife mounted beside him. Things were reversed since his long illness—she took the driver's seat and the reins. As for the faithful old family horse, he was a slow-going beast at the best, such as old ladies like to drive, and the deacon's wife was verging on to sixty. “Mother's hair was really beginning to turn now,” Jane, the eldest daughter, said, (Jane had gray hairs herself) and so it was; but ‘mother,’ blessed, good woman, didn't care. She had lived a spotless life, and the peace of her soul had given to her face a sweetness of expression that was better than beauty. “Deacon, are you warm enough?” Mrs. Gray always called her husband deacon, but now there was a peculiar intonation of tenderness in her voice, never very musical. “Oh, yes! I'm comfortable. Dear, dear, how sweet the clover smells. I didn't know as the fragrance would ever come up to me again, Marthy, when I lay there in the south chamber choking for breath.” “Never mind, deacon, we won't talk of the past now. See Uncle Blial's medder; don't it look splendid? And the corn over there, why, it's grown a sight since yesterday. Do see Dr. Baird's apple trees; don't they look beautiful?” “Everything looks beautiful, Marthy,” said the deacon, a light breaking over his rugged, somewhat hard face. “So it does,” and the good woman's eyes were lifted to the sky, across which the softest, whitest clouds were floating, with a motion so airy that they seemed like spirits of the upper ether, taking forms of grace and beauty. “Don't care about stopping anywhere do you, father?” asked the wife, as the old horse jogged along. “Well, yes, guess we might as well get out at old Joe's, in the lane.” “Old Joe's!” exclaimed Mrs. Gray, aghast, “aren't you afraid he'll worry you, now you are so weak, deacon?” “Well, no, guess not, Marthy, he's a poor critter, and—and you know I feel different about such things. Forty years of health goes nigh to hardenin' a man's heart, Marthy,” and he sighed as he spoke. So Dobbin was reined up at the head of the lane, and Mrs. Gray, making herself a support for the deacon, went toward the homely little house, over whose door, poor and lonely as it was, the honeysuckle wandered, full of sweets. “If I ever did! Here's Deacon Gray a coming!” cried Joe's maiden sister, smoothing her hair. “I don't want to see him,” cried Joe, moving uneasily on his bed. “Good morning, and how are you all?” It was Martha's cheerful voice, and Joe could not choose but turn, and when once his faded eyes caught sight of the deacon's altered face, they stayed there—fastened by the new expression of pallor, of tenderness that rested on those weather-beaten features. “Joe, I didn't know as we two should ever meet again,” said the deacon, holding out his hand. “I've thought of you every day since I was laid on my sick bed. How hard it must be for you to stay here month after month!” Joe's lips trembled a little. These words coming from a man who had more than once reproached him with shiftlessness and shamming, touched his heart. “Well, yes, it's sort o' hard,” he answered, “but I suppose I'll have to bear it. There's them that's wuss off.” “What can I do for you, Joe?” asked the deacon, his voice still soft with that strange tenderness. “Is there any thing you'd like? Is this bed soft enough? Perhaps you could use my sick-chair. It wheels about, and you might go to the door, or even outside in it. You're welcome to it, Joe, only say the word. And anything in the way of jellies, or delicate things that you'd fancy to eat, and books and papers, if you'd want 'em. Don't make a stranger of me, Joe, send to me as you would send to a brother.” “But you know I ain't a brother, I ain't one of your kind, deacon, I,—” “Never mind,” said Deacon Gray, assiduously avoiding an argument now, as before he had plunged into one, “never mind what your opinions are just now; the Lord sees, and may be He'll bring you round to my way of thinking yet. What I am after now is to make the body comfortable. And I just want to ask your pardon for all my hard ways and ungenerous speeches. I know I've done wrong; the Lord forgive me. I couldn't tell what a difference sickness makes in the body and mind, then, but I can now. Come, Marthy, we'll be going, and Joe, I'll take it hard if you don't tax me for something. God bless you, Joe. Good morning.” The two had vanished, but it seemed some way as if the sunshine streamed more genially over the place they had left. “Well, I never,” cried Joe's sister. Joe himself was silent for a long time. “What ailed the deacon?” he asked, at last, as his sister came back to his bed-side. “Pretty sick, wasn't he?” “Thought he'd die; folks said so.” “Well, it's done him more good than all—no matter,” and Joe ended abruptly. “To think how he used to fret and fume!” muttered Joe's sister. “And what a blessing that chair will be, and how you've wished you could git one, an' he coming and offerin' it himself. Well, I'll never say Deacon Gray ain't a Christian again, never!” Meantime, Deacon's wife was lifting the attenuated frame of her husband into her carriage again, her vigorous shoulder his main support. There were tears in her eyes, but she bustled about, looking this way and that, tucking the big shawl over the deacon's knees, and pressing him snugly back, as if she feared a gust of the strong spring wind might blow him away. Oh! but in her heart it seemed as if she had never felt such a wealth of tenderness. The one thing this good but severe man had lacked was now, almost by a miracle, it seemed, wrought into being, and had taken its lodgment in his heart. In his face a new and holier benignity shone, even on the strongly seamed forehead, in the deep lines that toil, and thought, and care had worn in his cheeks. The eyes, the gray eyes, that only on extra occasions had lighted up with a human beauty, seemed now to have gained an almost unearthly softness. “Marthy, Christ knew, didn't he?” he asked, in a quiet, tender voice. “Knew what, dear?” the good woman started at her own gentleness—at the unusual term of affection. “Through suffering,” and he turned to his wife. “How to pity us; oh, yes! and he took it all on himself.” “It was put on us, thank God! I wouldn't have taken it, no, no. Humanity shrinks—shrinks from the suffering, from the cross. Forty years of health, Marthy, is a fearful test. I don't know, looking at the past as I do now, feeling what I have lost and what I have gained, I don't know as I had grace enough to save me, Marthy. It didn't seem to me once as if anybody need to be sick. Many a time I thought folks give up because they were weak and lazy. I don't know but it seemed a sort of sin to me to be sickly and ailing. But you see, God knew what I needed. Stop Dobbin, Marthy; there's poor Stephen's little lame boy; I wonder if something can't be done for him?” So Dobbin was stopped, and the child gladdened with a kind word and a handful of coppers that set his face to shining, with delight and surprise, bringing tears again to the good wife's eyes, for children had rather avoided the deacon, sterling man though he was. “I'll see if that boy can't be helped,” the deacon went on. “I've heard that if his father could only afford it, there is a place where he might be cured. He's a fine little fellow, and it's a shame to see him go stumping through life.” “Shan't we turn round again, deacon?” asked his wife. “I think I'd like to go to Tom Blake's; he's another cripple, and more likely to be worse than better.” “But, deacon, you hadn't heard, I suppose. The truth is Tom has been taken to the poor-house.” “Marthy, is that so?” cried the deacon, the old sternness coming back to his face. “It is so. He grew so bad that they couldn't find any one willing to be burthened with him, so they just put him there.” “I've heard him say, many's the time, he'd rather die than go there, poor Tom!” “Well, drive there, Marthy.” There was another refolding of the shawl, after the good woman had turned Dobbin's dull head in the direction of the poor-house. The deacon went in, leaning on the arm of his wife, and was led directly to the room of the old man, Tom Blake. Tom looked askance at the deacon, from whom he had taken many a long sermon—for Tom was as near an infidel as that other godless man, poor Joe—then, at the sight of his pale, mild countenance, the old man faltered, he put up his thin hand, turned aside his face, and burst into tears. “Tom, I'm sorry to see you here,” said the deacon, placing his own withered hand on the old man's shoulder. “I'd rather you'd seen me in my grave, Deacon Gray,” sobbed the old man, “but I won't die here”—a look of defiance crossed his features,—“It shan't be said that Tom Blake died a pauper. No, sir, I'll crawl on my hands and knees at the last gasp, and I'll find strength to do it, too, out of this pauper place.” “Tom, you shan't stay here,” said the deacon, resolutely. The old man looked up, his face was pitiful to see, all dabbled with tears. “No, Tom, I know how you feel. When I was choking, with that awful sickness, I thought I'd give worlds, if I had them, for one easy breath.” “Yes, and I am choking in here, every mouthful I eat chokes me.” “You shall come out, Tom; be patient and bear it as well as you can, you shall come out. If nobody else will take you, I'll take you myself.” “Oh, bless you, Deacon Gray! God bless you for a true Christian,” cried the grateful old man, tears of joy falling from his dim eyes. “I used to say hard things about you, Deacon Gray, because you tried to make me a better man, but the seed you sowed is there, deacon, and if it takes root and ripens, it will be because I see your faith and your works go together. You've made a new man of me, God bless you, Deacon Gray!” Old Dobbin took a quicker step on his way home, oats in prospect. As for mother Gray, the way she kept patting and tucking that old shawl, looking up every now and then into the deacon's gray eyes, with a love that made her old face quite angelic, was a treat to see. And as for the deacon, he thought to himself that he had always held religion as one would an ear of corn, ignorant of its uses; but now, Christ had taught him to strip off the husks and taste of the sweetness within, and any one looking at him might know he had a feast.—Watchman and Reflector.