Spending an Evening by Rusticus

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 18, 1883

Spending an Evening.

By Rusticus

I HAD just stirred the fire, put on my spectacles, and taken up my paper, when there was a rap at the door. One of the children ran to open it, and in came neighbor Slocum, as smiling as a basket of chips. "Good evening," I said; "glad to see you." (That was a fib, but it came out before I thought, from the force of habit. Yet having said it I did not want to take it back.)

"Good ev'nin' to you," he replied. "All putty middlin' well, I hope."

"Yes, thank you. How are your folks?"

"About as common. All able to take their allowance."

Neighbor Slocum took a chair, spread his hands before the fire, and after a minute of profound meditation, continued: "It's mighty lonesome these long evenin's, and I thought I'd come over and help you to spend one."

I was just going to say, "We never have any lonesome evenings. We have books and papers that help us not only to spend them, but to improve them." But before I could muster courage enough, my wife said,

"Why didn't you bring Mrs. Slocum along? If the evenings are lonesome when you are both at home, they must be particularly lonesome for her when you are away."

My neighbor squirmed a little. Dull as he was, he saw the point. But he drawled out,

"Well, she did want to come, but you see, she hadn't got her dishes done up, and she had to set bread for to-morrow's bakin'. The fact is, she don't get any time to visit."

I saw by the flush on my wife's cheek and the flash in her eye, that she wanted to say something that would make him squirm again. But she restrained herself with an effort, and she said:—

"Nice rain we have had. I suppose you are all busy plowing."

"Well, no, we hain't plowed any yet, and I reckon we won't; we are going to let most of the place volunteer. You see, it saves a heap of work, and sometimes it does 'most as well."

"I don't know about that. You'll be likely to get at best about a ton of foul hay to the acre, when, if you plowed and sowed the land, turning the volunteer under as manure, you might get three tons of first-rate hay to the acre."

"Maybe we might," said Mr. Slocum, after a long pause, speaking with great deliberation. And then he looked at the fire for five minutes, as if in deep thought. I waited to see if he would start a topic of conversation, as the one I started had run out so soon. At length he looked up as if an idea had struck him, and said, "Rusticus, what kind of a winter do you think we are going to have?"

I replied that I really did not know. California winters were very uncertain. I had quit prophesying long ago, and made up my mind to be satisfied with just such weather as the Lord chose to send.

Mr. Slocum took a long time to reflect upon that statement. I waited respectfully for him. In about ten minutes he turned slowly to me, and said,

"Do you think the Lord has anything to do with the weather, anyhow?"

"Certainly I do. Don't the Bible say so? In the sermon on the mount our Saviour said: 'Your Father which is in Heaven maketh his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sendeth his rain on the just and the unjust.'"

"Is that in the Bible, do you say? Well, I never noticed it; and I always kind of thought that the rain just came when it happened to. It never seemed to me as if anybody sent it."

The older children were biting their lips, and the younger ones were listening with mouths and eyes wide open. They had never heard any such talking before. They believed that God made everything. That things just happened so was a new idea to them. For their sakes I went on to argue the matter with my visitor, but there was no chance for any discussion with him. He only replied in a languid sort of way:—

"I reckon you're right, but I never thought much about it. Maybe God does send rain. If he does, it would be nice for us if he would be more regular about it."

And so he sat, helping me to spend the evening, for two mortal hours. I couldn't read to him, for the children were studying their lessons. I couldn't talk to him, for he had no ideas. When he went away it was bedtime. The evening was spent, but it was not improved.

Now, farmers and other folks ought to be sociable. But a man should never go to visit his neighbors unless he has something to talk about. He might as well go to market with an empty wagon. When I want to get something in town, I take something from the farm to trade for it. I exchange my farm products for goods.

And it is just so in society. We cannot be sociable unless we have something to say. And we cannot have anything worth saying unless we study and think. What makes Slocum such a bore is that he reads nothing--his mind is not stimulated. He has no ideas. I hope that there are not many readers of this paper who have such neighbors to help them spend their evenings.—Rusticus, in the Occident.