A Story in Real Life

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 26, 1910

A Story in Real Life

THE story is of a girl, a sweet Christian girl, who lived in an Eastern village. Her father was a plain, upright, honest citizen, a deacon in the church and owner of a grocery store. In this store, like many other grocery stores, was kept a stock of tobacco.

One day the daughter was helping her father in a general rearrangement of the store, and she suggested that along with the general cleaning up it would be a good time to dispose of the tobacco stock. Her father listened kindly to the suggestion, but was afraid he would lose so much trade that he could hardly afford to make the change.

That night, in the quiet of the evening hour, he chanced to overhear Elizabeth, in her evening devotions, praying that her father might come to see more clearly the wrong he was in.

What chance step may have led him by her door at that hour, I do not know, but the answer to the prayer came swift and sure, for the first thing the next morning the whole stock of tobacco was buried in a deep pit at the back of the lot.

To-day this same man is the most prosperous business man in the town. His business has branched out into several departments, and many of his customers who “use the weed” go elsewhere to buy it, but return to his store for the remainder of their purchases, and assure him that they admire the stand that he has taken.—The Advance.