The Fifty Dollar Bill

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 9, 1882

The Fifty Dollar Bill.

MRS. DEAN sat alone in her little kitchen. She never used her parlor. There was the extravagance of an extra fire, the fact that the best rag carpet, woven by her own hands, must not be worn out recklessly, and the dread possibility of the sunshine fading one of those chair covers. Mrs. Dean was an economist. She believed in making everything last as long as it possibly would. And so she made the kitchen her headquarters, and sat there knitting, with her feet comfortably balanced on the stone hearth, the saucepan of apples bubbling softly away at the back, and the sound of her husband's axe ringing from the back shed as he cut and split the kindling wood piled up there in well-seasoned logs.

She was a little wrinkled-faced woman of fifty, with stiff ribbon bows to her cap, hair that seemed dried up instead of silvered, and keen blue eyes that twinkled as if they had discovered the secret of perpetual motion. To save money was her chief end and aim in life. The very mittens she was knitting were to be sold at the village store in exchange for sugar, tea or spices, and all such necessary groceries. "A penny saved is as good as a penny made," was the golden rule by which she shaped her life.

"I am glad I took that money out of the savings bank yesterday," said Mrs. Dean to herself, as the bright needles clicked merrily away. "People say it isn't quite safe, and one can't be too careful. But then, again, there's the danger of burglars—though to be sure no burglar," she added, with a complacent, inward chuckle, "would ever think of looking in the folds of that old newspaper in the wall-pocket. It's the bureau-drawers and the trunks and the lock-up chests that they aim for. A fifty dollar bill! A clean, crisp, new fifty dollar bill! And all savings, too, out of the house money."

Just then there sounded a knock at the door, and in came old Dr. Bridgman, rubicund with the touch of the March winds, and muffled up in the skins of the animals which from time to time he had shot.

"Good-day, Mrs. Dean, good-day!" said he. "No, thank you, I can't sit down. I'm a deal too busy for that. But I heard yesterday that you took fifty dollars out of the bank."

"Yes, I did."

"We are taking up a subscription to get little lame Dick Bodley a cart and donkey, so that he can go around peddling tinware," said the doctor. "It's pretty hard for one afflicted like he is to get along, and if you can help us a little—"

"But I can't," interposed Mrs. Dean, "the money was an investment. I don't propose to cut it up into little bits."

"It's a deed of charity," said the good old man, "to help lame Dick."

"I dare say," said Mrs. Dean, irritably, "but I never pretended to be a charitable character."

The old doctor went away, and the next visitor was Helen Hurst, a rosy girl of eighteen.

"Please excuse me for interrupting you Mrs. Dean," she said "but Larry Johnson was at the bank yesterday, and he tells me that you drew out your money."

Mrs. Dean wondered if all creation was there, but she said nothing, only knit away until her needles seemed to glance and glitter like points of fire.

"I am trying to get a boarding place at Mrs. Swipes," added Helen coloring, "so as to be near the district school, where I am to teach this spring. But Mrs. Swipes requires payment in advance, by the month, and unfortunately we have used up all our slender means in providing my outfit. A teacher, you know, must be dressed decently to command the respect of her pupils. Could you kindly lend me ten dollars?"

"I never lend," said Mrs. Dean, curtly.

"I will be sure to pay it up when I receive my first quarter's salary," pleaded Helen, "and I don't know any one else to go to."

"It's altogether against my principles," said Mrs. Dean, with her face as hard as if it had been carved out of hickory.

Helen went home feeling humiliated and disappointed beyond expression.

Mrs. Dean chuckled at her own shrewdness, but she hardly had time to stir up the apples in the saucepan before Mrs. Graham entered with a little memorandum book and pencil in her hand.

"I am looking for the charitable people, Mrs. Dean," said the squire's wife with a laugh.

"Then you have come to the wrong place," said Mrs. Dean, frigidly.

"Poor Patrick O'Harra was killed to-day in the machinery of the rolling-mill," said Mrs. Graham, ignoring her neighbor's response. "He has left a wife and eight children destitute."

"And whose fault is that?" said Mrs. Dean.

"Will you not contribute something toward relieving their condition?" urged Mrs. Graham holding her pencil for use.

"Certainly not! I have no money to spare."

"But I was told—"

"Oh, yes; about that money I drawed out of the savings bank," said Mrs. Dean. "But I intend to keep that money for myself."

"He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord," softly whispered Mrs. Graham.

"Yes, yes; I know," said Mrs. Dean, "but no one interprets the Bible literally nowadays."

Mrs. Graham took her departure, acknowledging within herself that her errand had been a failure, and Mrs. Dean, left to herself at last, indulged in a nap, with her knitting work in her lap—a nap wherein she dreamed that the fifty dollars had taken to itself legs and was running away from a crowd of pursuers, herself among the number.

When she woke up, roused by the noise of coal being poured into the stove, a candle was burning and Mr. Dean was laughing at her.

"Why, Betsy," said he, "I thought you were never going to wake again! Here you sat, with the fire dead out, and I've had to kindle it up again."

"Bless me!" said Mrs. Dean. "I must have been asleep quite a while. But—as she started up she saw that the old wall pocket opposite was empty—where is that old number of the Clinkerville Clarion?"

"It was last week's paper," said Mr. Dean, calmly. "We had both read it, so I just took it to kindle the fire."

"You burned it up?"

"Yes," said Mr. Dean, "I burned it up. Why shouldn't I?"

For half an hour Mrs. Dean sat silent and never spoke a word; and her first utterance was:—

"It's the Lord's judgment upon me!"

Mrs. Dean was a resolute woman, full of character. She went to her table drawer, took out a sheet of writing paper, and wrote to Dr. Bridgman, inclosing a dollar toward lame Dick Bodley's cart and horse; she sent another dollar to Mrs. Graham for the poor little O'Harras, and promised to donate a barrel of russets, a bushel of potatoes, and some of her husband's cast-off clothes to cut over for the children. And she sent for Helen Hurst to come and see her.

"I can't lend you ten dollars, my dear," said she, "because I haven't got it. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll let you make your home here as long as you please. We've a nice spare room, and it's an eighth of a mile nearer than Mrs. Swipes' to the district school."

"Oh, how very good you are!" said Helen, her eyes swimming with grateful tears.

"Good!" cried Mrs. Dean. "I'm just beginning to see what a selfish, greedy creature I have been all my life. But you are welcome, my dear, and your board and lodging shan't cost you a cent."

She opened her parlor, shook out her curtains, and built a fire in the air-tight wood stove.

"Dean likes the parlor," said she, "because it has such nice south windows, and I don't see why we shouldn't enjoy it."

She baked a fresh batch of gingerbread, and sent a loaf to old Mrs. Mudge; she took out a basket of hickory nuts to poor little Harry Jones, who was trying to crack dried-up pignuts on the stone by the roadside; she renewed her subscription to the church charities.

"I can't be very liberal, but I am determined to do what I can."

"That's right my dear—that's right," said her husband. "We shall be prosperous, never fear. I'm awfully sorry about burning up your fifty dollar bill, but if its going to open your heart like this, it's the best thing that could have happened to us."

Mrs. Dean was sweeping out the kitchen. She looked around with a smile as she moved the wide-leaved table which always stood under the wall pocket, and took down the pocket itself, a rude structure of splints, lined with red cambric and tied with cord and tassels of red worsted, to dust it out.

"Yes," she said, "I am afraid I was getting to be a little miserly, and—why, what's this?"

Mr. Dean stooped and picked up a slip of dark green paper, which had fallen out from the wall pocket as his wife turned it upside down and tapped her finger against it to remove all possible dust.

"It's the fifty dollar bill!" said he, with mouth and eyes open in unison. "It must have slipped down from the folds of the newspaper and lodged here."

"The Lord has sent it back to us," said Mr. Dean, after a moment or two of silence. "There's a lesson in almost everything he does, if we did but know it."

And all the theologians in the world could not have improved upon the faith of this simple, unlettered old farmer.