Mrs. Archer's Mission

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 27, 1882

Mrs. Archer's Mission.

"OH, dear!" sighed Mrs. Archer dolefully, over her dainty crocheting.

"What now?" asked brother Jack, looking up from his evening paper.

"Why, nothing—only Miss Damon has been here. She is going away out West on a sort of mission, you know, and she is so full of work and plans that it makes me feel so insignificant, so utterly useless; and I don't want to be useless, Jack. I used to think I would like to go as a missionary. It would make life worth living if one could be the means of saving even one poor soul. But there was Philip and the children. And now they're gone, there's you left. I do not see how I can go."

Brother Jack furtively brushed away two big tear-drops that would come in spite of him, muttered something about having caught a sudden cold, and then, a moment or two after, dropped his paper, exclaiming briskly: "Why not kill two birds with one stone—do your missionary work, and take care of me to?"

"But Jack, you would not want to go?"

"Oh, no; bless your heart, no; I'm satisfied where I am. But it's my opinion that if you are in earnest you can find enough genuine missionary work on this side of the globe as well as on the other."

Mrs. Archer dropped her work, and drew her low chair close beside her brother's. "Please tell me what you mean, Jack," she said wistfully. "I am in earnest, I think."

"Well, I was thinking of one thing, at the store yesterday. There's young Graham, one of the under clerks, just in from the country. If I'm not very much mistaken, he's going down hill. Cheap boarding-houses are not very pleasant places to spend long evenings in, and so he is drifting into bad company—and ways, too; he's no friends in the city, you see. Denholm is in the same situation. In fact, there's half a dozen at least, just in our store, Nell, and I presume each one of them knows another half dozen like himself that is drifting down hill because no one stretches out a kind, helpful hand, and lends them a bit of a happy home fireside to keep them pure and true."

"Would they come here, do you suppose? Could I make it pleasant and home-like for them, and so keep them away from those places? O Jack, do you think I could?"

"Well, well, little woman!" laughed Jack, half at the deluge of questions, and more than half in delight at the look of eager interest on his sister's wan, sad face. "Yes; first, I think all they need is an invitation; secondly, I know you would make it pleasant and homelike; and thirdly, I've no doubt it would save them, for they are not bad yet; only drifting that way, because it's the easiest way to drift, and they do not see the danger."