p. 16 | Not His Business

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 26, 1911

Not His Business

A WEALTHY man was asked to aid a committee in spreading the cause of temperance, but he refused, saying, “Gentlemen, it is not my business.”

A few days later his wife and two daughters were coming home on an express. In his carriage he rode to meet them at the station, thinking of his business and planning for the morrow.

“Accident!” was the cry that greeted him.

There are many lines centering in that city. Yet it troubles him. It is his “business” now. The horses are stopped. He finds the accident has occurred twenty-five miles distant on the road on which his loved ones were returning. He telephones to the superintendent.

“I will give you two hundred dollars for an extra engine.” “Can’t let you have it.” “I will give you four hundred dollars for an engine.” “A train with surgeons and nurses—express has already gone forward, and we have no other.”

With white face the man paces the station to and fro. It is his business now. In half an hour, perhaps, which seems to him half a century, the train arrives. He hurries toward it, and finds the mangled and lifeless remains of his wife and one of his daughters. In another carriage lies his other daughter, with her body crushed and her life ebbing slowly away.

A pint of whisky, drunk by a railway switch-tender twenty-five miles away, was the cause of the catastrophe.

Who dares to say of this tremendous question, “It is not my business?”—Selected.