Only Looked On | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 4, 1883

Only Looked On.

THE music and the patriotic speeches were over with the day; but the boys gathered at evening around a bright bonfire in the street, laughing and chattering, adding fresh fuel and stirring it to a brighter blaze. The cheerful light—and perhaps the warmth also, for it was a cool night—attracted one unlike the others of the group. A barefooted, ragged boy drew near and hovered on the outer edge of the company for a few minutes, but presently made his way nearer to the fire and stood beside it in evident enjoyment.

Then the largest, roughest boy in the crowd suddenly discovered him.

"Hello, Tatters! where did you come from?"

The boy tried to draw back, but he was too late.

"Bare feet and such a cap as that! Well, you're too fine entirely. Don't you know that kind of a cap is better roasted?" and a quick blow sent the faded head-covering into the fire.

Its owner made a vain effort to recover it.

"That was mean, Jim," said one of the boys, faintly. The others said nothing, and one or two laughed.

The forlorn stranger drew back, escaped from the group and sat down on a door-step at a little distance, drawing his ragged sleeves across his eyes to wipe away the tears of anger and grief.

A pitying, indignant little face looked down upon him from an upper window, and a pair of childish eyes that had watched the scene grew tearful in sympathy, and then brightened with the hope of comforting. Lily hurried away and was back in a few minutes with an outgrown cap of her brother's, a package of sandwiches and cookies that she had coaxed in the kitchen, and a bright silver dollar of her own. She put the other articles into the cap, fastened a string to it, and lowered it softly toward the boy on the steps, dropping the end of the string as it reached him.

"Why, Lily, what are you doing?" asked a voice as she drew back.

Lily shook her bright hair and looked up at her brother.

"Doing what that speaker man said this morning. He said, 'Let some of your blessings fall into the lap of those who haven't so much;' and I did. It fell right straight into his lap, and I guess he didn't know whether it came from a window or from heaven, for he looked up real quick and queer and said, 'Thank you. Amen!' and then ran away."

Guy laughed, and Lily's face was reproachful.

"You were there by the bonfire all the time. O, Guy, I don't see how you could do it."

"Why, I didn't knock his cap off," said Guy. "It was Jim Gregg; he's a rough fellow always. I didn't do anything or say anything; and the other fellows didn't either."

"That was just the trouble," said his aunt, gravely. "I, too, watched the whole thing from the window, Guy; and if I were going to talk to American boys on a day like this, I should care far less about urging them to join this or that political party than about warning them against belonging to the great party in this world—those who only stand and look on. I believe they are responsible for the larger share of its evils. They do not help any good cause; they only look on and do nothing. They never hinder a wrong cause; they only watch it and say nothing. O, Guy, did you ever think how our Lord's parable makes the final condemnation rest, not upon actual transgression but upon omission? 'I was a stranger, sick and in prison, and ye did it not to me.' They only looked on and did nothing."—Morning Star.