Harry's Motto by Lillian Payson

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 1, 1883

Harry's Motto.

By Lillian Payson

"HURRAH, boys! we're former graduates now, and I can't say I'm sorry, for one, to be free from the hateful old books. I never did like to go to school anyhow."

"I'll shake hands with you on that, Sam," said Ned Lee. "My father wants me to go to college, but I'd about as soon go to jail and be done with it. I go in for a good long vacation now, to begin with."

"You're welcome to your vacation, Ned. As for me, the world owes me a living, and I'm bound to get it. Uncle Sam has sent for me to go out to California with him, and if I don't get my living there, and a little bit over, then my name isn't Sam Jackson. How would it sound,—'The Hon. Samuel Jackson, millionaire'?"

"So that's what you're going to do with your surplus energy,—is it, Sam?" asked Harry Hanson; while Ned shouted, "Three cheers for the Honorable Sam, boys! Now,—give it to him! hip! hip! hip!"

"I wish you joy of all your digging and delving, Sam," continued Ned; "but I say the world owes me a living, and I mean to have it without working for it, too."

"You think the world is a pretty sure paymaster, my boy," said a pleasant voice behind them, which the boys at once recognized as their teacher's. "I'm afraid you haven't chosen a very good principle to begin life with. Think it over, Lee, and choose a better now at the outset, if you would not run the risk of making a failure of your life." And Mr. Bartlett passed on down the street.

"May I have a word with you, sir?" asked Harry, respectfully, as he ran to overtake his teacher. "Father wished me to ask whether you can spare time this summer to prepare me to enter college in the fall."

"With pleasure, certainly," was the reply; "and the more so because I feel sure that you will choose a far different motto from those which Lee and Jackson seem to have adopted. I accidentally overheard the whole conversation, and I involuntarily thought of St. Paul's words, 'I am debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.'"

"Have you any special motto to recommend, Mr. Bartlett?" asked Harry.

"I know of nothing better, my boy, than this very text which I have quoted. You will find it in the fourteenth verse of the first chapter of Romans, and perhaps the following verses will speak to you also, if you have any thought of entering the ministry, as I hope you have."

"Thank you, sir. I will study them carefully," and he touched his hat respectfully, and ran on, as Mr. Bartlett entered his own gate, which they had now reached.

"Paul's idea is a trifle different from Sam's and Ned's, that's a fact," thought Harry, as he read over the passage in his own room that night; and, kneeling there alone, he renewed the vows he had so recently taken upon himself in the presence of the congregation in the village church. He asked the Holy Spirit, also, to keep him always in mind of the fact that he was debtor to the world to do all the good that he could for Jesus' sake.

Many years had passed since that afternoon, and the Rev. Henry Hanson, one of the most useful of our missionaries in foreign lands, was making a visit to his native village. "By the way, Helen," he said to his sister, as they were recalling their school-days, "do you know anything of Sam Jackson? I haven't heard from him since we graduated, and he went to San Francisco."

"Oh! I hear of him frequently through his sister," was the reply. "He has no time to write himself, but his wife writes, and last spring he was here for a flying visit, while making a business tour through the Eastern cities. I saw him for a few minutes at that time, but found that he could converse upon one topic only—business. The firm with which he is connected have a monopoly of manufacture in their line, for the whole country. He told me he spends sixteen hours a day at his factory, and as he has a country-seat a little distance out of town, it takes some time to go and come, so that he literally has time for nothing but eating, sleeping, and business, year in and year out. He seemed to know absolutely nothing about the churches or any institutions of the city,—attends the play once in a great while,—gives his wife and daughter all the money they wish for dress and amusement, but is himself almost a stranger to their society; so engrossed is he in money-making. The last words he said to me were, 'So, you see, the world owes me a living,—and I'm getting it, too.'"

Just then the mail arrived, and when the evening paper was opened, the brother and sister were pained to read the announcement among the deaths,—"In San Francisco, suddenly, of apoplexy, Samuel Jackson, one of the most active and enterprising business men in our community." This was all; and what more could have been added? "The world owes me a living," was his motto, and he had got it, and now the end had come.

"And what of Ned Lee, Helen?" asked the missionary, as he roused from his sad reverie, a few minutes later.

"Poor Ned! O Harry! do you not know that he is in prison now? Having succeeded in squandering all the property his father left him, he seemed to owe the world a grudge because he had no more to spend. He was like the steward in the Bible; he could not dig, to beg he was ashamed,—and so he was tempted. It was so easy to forge a name, but he did not count the cost."

The missionary's pillow was wet with tears that night,—tears of sadness as he thought of the wasted lives of his two school-mates, yet he asked the dear Saviour to reach out a helping hand, even now, to him who was shut up in prison for so dark a crime. But when he thought of that other soul ushered instantly into eternity from the hurry and bustle of a hot pursuit after Mammon, the god of this world, his cry was, "Lord, who maketh me to differ?" And his whole heart went out in gratitude and thankfulness to Him whose grace alone had led him to choose and to follow that precious motto from his word,—"As much as in me lies, I am ready to preach the gospel," for "I am debtor."—Lillian Payson.