The Stranger's Mission

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 30, 1883

The Stranger's Mission.

"WHAT! has he gone?" exclaimed Mrs. Tucker, entering the breakfast room, from the kitchen, bringing a small deep pan of hot water, and finding only Aunt Sylvia, where but three minutes before she had left a trio.

"He has just stepped out on the porch with Mr. Tucker," replied Aunt Sylvia, proceeding to wash the soiled silver she had gathered from the dismantled table, in the pan of water her niece had placed on the side-board. "Of course he will not go without at least bidding us good morning."

"He has, however," said Mrs. Tucker. "See what long strides he is taking down hill toward the station. He cut short his adieus to you, also, did he not, Mr. Tucker?" she said, as her husband entered the room with a broad smile overspreading his rugged face.

"Well, I must say he beats all," said Mr. Tucker, speaking slowly, and from the open window watching out of sight the retreating figure of his guest.

"An entire stranger, bearing the same name as my first wife, but no relation to her whatever as I can make out, fastens himself upon us for six meals and two nights' lodgings, breaks up a day and a half for me, drives my horse ten miles or more, routs us up at four o'clock of a summer morning to get him a hot breakfast, that he may take an early train, and goes off without as much as saying, 'Thank you, sir,' or, 'I am obliged to you,' or, 'Give me a call should you ever come my way.'"

"I hope he will enjoy the lunch I put up for him," said Aunt Sylvia, joining in the laugh, and Mrs. Tucker added:—"I wonder how long it will take to get the smell of tobacco smoke out of the sitting-room. The idea of his filling his pipe, lighting it, and puffing away after I had hinted to him that tobacco was offensive to me."

"He was dressed like a gentleman," said Mr. Tucker, "but for all that I should class him as a full-grown pig."

"He seemed to be possessed of average intelligence," said Aunt Sylvia as she began to wash the coffee cups, "and I suppose he has treated us quite as well as he treats his mother. He has lived on this beautiful earth nearly fifty years, been fed, and clothed, and sheltered, and, according to his own story, has never recognized the Lord's kindness in any way. If the Lord does not resent his want of appreciation, I suppose we ought not to do so."

Mr. Tucker said nothing as he went out about his daily work as a farmer.

This Aunt Sylvia of his wife's was a very devout woman, with the right word for the unconverted always at her tongue's end, "but she never meddles with me," the sturdy farmer was wont to say.

The perfect freshness and beauty of the June morning appealed to his heart in an unwonted manner. He was a true lover of nature, and all the rural charms of verdure, and foliage, and witching scenery about this, his ancestral home, were a part of his life, yet it seemed to him that he had never breathed in the marvelous fullness and perfection of the June bounteousness as on this morning, when the ascending sun cast over the dew-laden window its own peculiar rose-tint.

"I am fifty-five," said the farmer to himself, "for a half century I have stood on this hill-top at all seasons, and at all times, and enjoyed my surroundings. I have had good health, an abundance of this world's goods, and but few sorrows. The Lord has been very good to me, but I have never fully appreciated it, and have never expressed myself to the All-Giver as being thankful. Oh! what a wretch I have been!"

For a week Mr. Tucker turned this matter over and over in his mind. One thought made way for another. He no sooner tried to find an excuse for one short-coming than a worse one came to take its place.

"I don't know what ails Mr. Tucker," said his wife, "he neither eats nor sleeps, he takes no interest in anything you or I say or do, he don't even read the daily paper."

"I have noticed it," said Aunt Sylvia. "His work don't seem to be getting on, either, and there is a good reason why; he just wanders around the farm without staying long enough in one place to accomplish anything; and he stands for a half hour at a time looking off into the distance in one direction or another, as if he were taking in all the features of a view quite new to him. It is not like Mr. Tucker at all."

"I can't understand it," said Mrs. Tucker: "He may be bilious. I will go right away and make him a spring syrup."

The next morning a small glass of the decoction was handed him by his anxious wife as he stood in the dining-room doorway, looking pale and worn, gazing far off upon the distant hills.

He shook his head and said with an apparent effort:—

"No wonder you are anxious about me. I am anxious about myself, but the remedy is not thoroughwort nor yellow dock. Aunt Sylvia, how does a person atone for fifty years of willful neglect of God's goodness?"

"So that is it!" exclaimed the good woman. "The Lord be praised. The stranger had a mission here after all. It was to show Abraham Tucker to Abraham Tucker. Let us take your query to the Lord."

The change was not an instantaneous one, but it came at last after real repentance and much prayer, and it brought a marvelous joy and peace.

Mr. Tucker tries to make his present daily life atone for the years of neglect, but he charges all his young friends to start early in the right way, that they may enjoy the fullness of life which only comes to those who love and serve the Lord.

—Mrs. Annie A. Preston, in Christian at Work.