THEM LITTLE MICE by M. H. W. Jaquith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 29, 1877

“THEM LITTLE MICE.”

By M. H. W. Jaquith

“I was once making a missionary tour through Michigan,” said a preacher, “when I called at a house that I had been told was occupied by a man bed-ridden for several years. I rapped at the door of the log-cabin, introduced myself and my business, ‘hunting up the Lord’s own,’ and was warmly welcomed by the man and his wife.

“After an hour’s patient listening to the old man’s story of his sickness and sufferings, in reply to a remark of mine to the effect that I trusted this experience of the Lord’s chastenings had been blessed to him, and that he had a sure hope that when all was over he would go where they no more say ‘I am sick,’ he brightened up wonderfully, saying, ‘Why, yes, I had a ’sperience nigh onto thirty years ago; ’twas a wonderful ’sperience. I don’t s’pose there ever was such a strange ’sperience happened to a body before or since. I writ it out so as not to forget it; but I haven’t thought a word about it for more’n a year, not since last big meetin’, when Elder Graves called. I read it to him, and he said it was very wonderful. Betsey, hunt up my ’sperience; I want to read it to this preacher.’”

“Then commenced a search through the numerous chinks and boxes in the cabin; old mouse-eaten letters and papers, bundles of herbs, packages of seeds, rolls of all sorts of stuff, were undone and looked over repeatedly, but in vain; and all the time the old man was moaning, ‘Such a wonderful ’sperience, sir. I knew my calling and ’lection was sure and sartin from that time; so I’ve never taken much trouble ’bout it since I’d once writ it out, and now them little mice have eaten up my ’sperience, and it’s the undoin’ of me.’”

“In vain I tried to get him to tell it to me. He could only vary his lamentations by upbraiding his wife, ‘You might have known, Betsey, that them little mice would eat it up if you didn’t take keer of it.’”

“He would have nothing from me at all, and I finally went away leaving the wife still hunting, and he mourning as did Bunyan’s Christian over his lost roll, for he really seemed to think it was his vised passport to Heaven, without which he could not enter the pearly gates.”

This was the preacher’s “little mice” story, and his hearers all had a hearty laugh at the idea of the querulous, sick old man sitting up in bed, peering anxiously in all the cracks and crannies of that weather-beaten cabin, hunting his “’sperience.”

But here comes the sober, practical after-thought, whether I, or you, good friend, like that old man, are not trusting to some long past “’sperience” of good works, prayer, charity, or zeal, that the “little mice” of ambition, love of approbation, good-nature, restlessness, or officiousness have eaten up, as we shall find when we come to seek for it. Would it not be wise for each of us to hunt up his “’sperience” and see?—MRS. M. H. W. JAQUITH, in Christian Weekly.