A Boy's Victory by I. H.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 12, 1883

A Boy's Victory.

By I. H.

I DON'T think Harry ever realized that he had any very serious faults. He was a good boy, as boys go; that is he was honest and truthful, obedient to his parents, a diligent pupil at school, and at home obliging and reliable. What more could be expected of any boy? I can tell you in two little words—good temper. Often when others praised him his mother would sigh. "Yes," she would say, or think if she did not say it; "yes, he is a good boy, if only he would learn to control his temper."

All the household knew that this was a lesson he had never learned. Not a day passed without painful proof of the fact. If he and Jack were set to any task together, and Jack failed to do his part just as Harry thought he should, you could hear him shouting in passionate tones, scolding, and threatening, and sometimes, I am sorry to say, using words he had much better not have used. Father and mother had talked to him many and many a time. They had punished him, too, more than once, but all in vain. Now they were almost ready to despair, for he was fourteen years of age—old enough to see the folly and the sin of giving way to such fits of passion, and yet there was no improvement. I don't know what Harry thought about it himself. I am very sure he would have been horrified if he had seen his father or his mother act in the same manner; and if his teacher had flown into a rage at every slight provocation, no boy in school would have lost respect for him sooner than Harry. Perhaps he imagined that some morning he would wake up and find himself a man, with his childish faults outgrown, like his last year's suit.

Ah, boys, no such thing as that will ever happen to any of you. Faults of character are not outgrown; they must be conquered. Whatever a boy is and chooses to be to-day, he will most probably be ten or twenty years hence; and it was because they realized this, and knew how much unhappiness may be caused in any household by an ungoverned temper, that his parents were by no means so well satisfied with Harry, as Harry was with himself.

One day it happened that he had a good deal of trouble with a long sum he had to do in school. He went over it again and again, but the answer would not come right.

"Come and let me see if I can help you to find the error," said his teacher kindly, seeing the boy's face begin to flush and his manner grow nervous and irritable.

He went over his work again aloud.

"One from one leaves one—"

"What?" said the teacher.

"One from one leaves one," he said, positively.

"Hardly, I think, Harry. You know better than that. Come, come, my boy, that was a mere accident, such as has happened to many a good accountant." And to relieve the boy from his angry confusion the teacher passed on to the next example.

But, unfortunately, Jack had heard, and Jack was a tease.

The next day, in the afternoon, the boys were alone at home. Harry was working at his carpenter's bench, where he was very expert, when Jack came idling along and accidentally pushed the board he was planing.

"I wish you'd look where you're going!" shouted Harry, angrily.

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere, I only came to ask you how much one from one leaves," and Jack seated himself on the end of the bench as if he meant to stay.

Harry scowled, but gave no answer. Jack began to whistle. Presently he stopped. "Well, Harry, have you found out yet? One from one leaves?—I'm waiting."

"Get out of that!" roared Harry, and seizing something which he thought a piece of smooth wood he threw it at his brother.

It was the hatchet, and barely missing Jack's head it stuck firmly in the trunk of a tree beyond. Jack shuddered as he tried in vain to pull it out.

"You might have killed me, Harry," he said very quietly.

"Served you right if I had," said Harry, "what did you come here tormenting me for? You'd better go away or I'll hurt you."

Jack went away; and Harry tried very hard to convince himself that he had been quite excusable, but try as he would he could not get rid of a sickening sensation when he looked at the hatchet sticking in the tree and thought where it might have been.

It required all his strength to pull it out, and after that his carpenter's tools ceased to interest him.

Jack was no tell-tale, and he said nothing to any one of what had occurred; but that night Harry lay awake a long time. Once or twice he raised himself up and looked at his brother lying quietly asleep beside him. At length he fell into an uneasy slumber. His mother was just going to bed when she heard a cry from the boys' room and went quickly to see what was the matter. It was Harry who was struggling and calling for aid.

"Oh! help me! help me, somebody! I can't get it out."

"Harry!" His mother's touch on his arm aroused him, and he opened his eyes. "You are dreaming, my boy," she said.

"Yes," he answered with a gasp, "it was a dream, but it was possibly real—wait a little, mother."

She sat down beside him and softly stroked his hair. But in a moment he sat up and said excitedly, "Let me tell you all about it. I dreamed that I had thrown the ax at Jack and killed him. It was sticking in his head and I was trying to pull it out."

"My dear boy, don't allow yourself to get so wrought up by a dream," said his mother a little frightened by his manner.

"But it was not only a dream, mother, I did throw the hatchet at him to-day, and I don't believe I am any better than Cain. It was not my fault that it missed him."

Mother leaned over and pressed her lips softly on Jack's brown hair. "Thank God;" she said fervently, "Thank God, for saving both my boys." Then she made Harry lie down, and talked to him soothingly for a few moments. It seemed to her that the boy's own conscience was speaking to him so plainly that there was less need than ever before for any words from her. She left him at last with a good-night kiss. As soon as she was gone, Harry got out of bed, knelt down, and for the first time in his life he really prayed. I do not mean to say that he had never said his prayers before; every night since he could remember he had said them, sometimes thinking of what he was saying, and at other times not thinking at all. But now from the depths of the boy's heart there arose a cry for help; for he had begun to feel that there was something within him that he must confess; something he could not conquer by his own strength.

The next day mother had a little talk with Jack, who was very much surprised when she asked him about the throwing of the hatchet.

"Why how do you know anything about it?" he asked. "I didn't tell."

"No, but Harry did. He only told me of his own share, however; now I want to hear of yours."

"Oh, I was teasing him, that was all; he made a mistake in his examples on Friday at school, and I thought I'd get some fun out of him; but Harry's such an old pepper-box, he just flies in your face if you touch him."

"Jack," said his mother very gravely, "if Harry had killed you in the fit of passion you aroused, do you think all the sin would have been his?"

"Why, mother, I don't see that it would have been my fault."

"Well, I do, and that is just what I want to make you see. You know Harry's weak point is his temper, and when you try to stir him up and put him in a rage you are just as bad as he is. I am not sure that you are not the worst of the two. It is Satan's work to lead others into sin. Think of that, my boy, and try to find your fun in some other way hereafter."

Jack was a heedless little soul, but he was not heartless, and he proved that he understood his mother's words by saying nothing more to Harry about "one from one."

Not very long after this a wonderful thing happened in the town where these boys lived, which was nothing less than a visit from General Grant. Now, if there were any living man whom Harry would have liked to see in preference to all others, that man was General Grant, for whom he had a most enthusiastic admiration. For a week before the great event he could think of nothing else but the preparations which were being made to give his hero a fitting reception. Part of the programme for the day included a procession in which the school children were to join, and on his arrival the General was to pass between the lines of boys and girls drawn up upon the platform of the station. All were to carry bouquets or baskets of flowers, and great was the rivalry to see whose selection of flowers would be the most beautiful and appropriate.

In his secret heart Harry was sure he would win the palm, for had he not in his own garden an "American Banner Rose"? The red and white buds were almost ready to unfold; they would be in all their beauty by the eventful day, and when massed together, and surrounded by a deep border of blue forget-me-nots, could anything equal such a combination?

How he watched his precious rose-bush day by day, anticipating the envious glances that would be cast upon him at the station. What if by some happy chance, the great General himself should pause and see the bouquet with its patriotic meaning, and perhaps accept it from his hand!

Alas! alas! three days before the time so eagerly anticipated, the whole family were sitting on the front porch about sunset. Father was reading the paper, mother and Sister Susan were sewing, the boys busily engaged over a kite they were making, and no one particularly attentive to the baby—the little toddler who was trotting up and down the gravel path. She went round the corner of the house in the direction of Harry's garden, and no one noticed her. But presently she came back with something clutched tight in her chubby little hands. "Pitty fowers, pitty fowers," she said, dropping her treasures into mother's lap.

"Oh, baby, baby, what have you done!" There was real distress in mother's voice, and no wonder; there were Harry's rosebuds, every one snapped off close to the head, without an inch of stem.

"The little wretch!" said Jack. "I do believe she's been at Harry's rose."

Harry sprang to his feet, the hot blood rushing to his face. He made one bound down the steps and around the house, while the others gathered about the broken buds, and poor baby looked on bewildered not knowing what mischief she had done.

It was Harry who picked her up in his arms, just as the little mouth began to quiver and the tears to gather in the pretty blue eyes.

"Never mind baby," he said bravely. "Don't you cry; you shall have all the flowers you like. Don't scold her mother, she did not know—" and then Harry almost broke down. He set baby on mother's knee and went back to his kite, from which he did not once raise his head till tea-time.

Mother was the only one who ventured to speak to him on the subject again. "Dear," she said as she bade him good-night, "I am very, very sorry for your disappointment."

"So I am," he said, putting his arms round her and hiding his face from view, he felt the tears so near his eyes. "But after all, perhaps Gen. Grant does not know an American Banner rose from any other, and I will just take some red ones and some white ones instead."

"That was a pretty hard trial for him," said his father, when Harry had left the room. "The boy is surely learning to control himself."

Susan, the kind elder sister, who was almost a second mother to the boys, looked up with her eyes sparkling. "Indeed he is father, and after what we saw to-day I don't care whether I see Gen. Grant or not."

"Why?" asked her father, slightly puzzled; but Susan only smiled, and said she would not tell him yet.

And so the great day came and passed, and Harry was so happy as to stand close to his hero five minutes, and in his enjoyment he was able to overcome his last regret for his broken rose.

Sister Susan was mysteriously busy just about that time, and when Harry's birthday came, soon after, the result of her private occupation was discovered. By the early light, when Harry awoke, he could see a picture hanging on what had been a blank wall at the foot of his bed last night. He sprang up and examined it. It was a verse from the Bible, beautifully illuminated in red, blue, and gold letters; around it was a wreath of forget-me-nots and fern-leaves; at the top a medallion with the head of Gen. Grant, and below a lovely spray of rose-buds, the "American Banner," in all their glory of red and white. More than once Harry read over the words his sister had so beautifully traced. They were these—

"He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."—I. H., in Pacific States Watchman.