Saved by a Caress

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 13, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 11.

Saved by a Caress.

"A kiss saved me!" Immediately every face bent forward. Richly, daintily-clad women and moneyed men filled the spacious room; but the silence that followed that statement could be felt, so eager were they to catch every word.

Some one had spoken lightly of the trifles that so surely make up the sum of human happiness or woe. Trifles count for nothing, they thought; it is the great events that determine the destinies of men for good or ill. It was this that had drawn forth the statement and the explanation that followed.

"I know nothing," he continued, "of my parents or the circumstances of my birth. Nothing in all the bitter past clings so close to memory as the certainty that I belonged to nobody and nobody belonged to me. In one of our large cities, in a locality where there are many little homeless ones, where baseness is the ruling element, I may or may not have had my birth—at least that was the first I knew of myself. Poverty isn't so hard if we've some one to love us; but no one cared for me, and all the days were alike, and the nights seemed an eternity of time. There is a bitterness of sorrow in the lives of the homeless of which God only can know.

"The snow had fallen, and the cold March winds were blowing, leaving us no choice, except the sunny side of the dismal street in which we found shelter. I, with others whose years were few, and whose homes were anywhere, had sought the sunny side, when a lady paused beside us, smoothed back my tangled locks and kissed me. That was the first caress I had known, and it saved me. I slept somewhere that night, and unlike all other nights that had preceded it, I was neither cold nor weary. The hand reached down to lift me up from the depths never unclasped its hold. Angels sang their sweetest songs through the long hours; the rapturous refrain echoes in my soul to-night. It was years before I grew out of that life to a better one; but whether I had where to lay my head, or had not, I knew no weariness. The warm glow of a perfect day lighted all the future, and in every dark hour I felt the presence of a light foot-fall, the soft touch of a hand.

"Out of the pure depths of her pitying womanhood she kissed me. It was a trifling thing indeed, to kiss a homeless, friendless child; but because of that kiss, and with the Father's help, I stand to-day upon the firm basis of an honorable manhood."—Selected.