p. 492 | The Miser's Reform by Mary A. Dennison

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 31.

The Miser's Reform.

By Mary A. Dennison

YES; I came pretty near wrecking body and soul both, and I'll tell you how. Losing wife and child while I was still a young man broke me down. For a time I didn't care whether I lived or died; but I still kept on with my business, and presently I found myself beginning to love money. It became the greatest pleasure of my existence to count up my gains, and add dollar to dollar.

The house I had furnished so prettily for Marie, and in which she had taken such pride, left to itself began to show signs of neglect. For a time I retained the old housekeeper to brighten up things and keep them tidy; but that luxury cost too much, and I dismissed her.

Then, not liking to see the pretty things that had been so dear to Marie go to decay through dust and neglect, I had them carried up to the great garret that extended the whole length of the house.

I did feel for a time very unhappy when they were all banished, and I was left with the bare boards and two or three chairs; but I consoled myself by the reflection that some day I would have them all back again.

I turned the once cheerful room in which I had spent so many pleasant hours with my wife and little one into a sort of second office, and there I slept, ate my scanty meals, and did much of my work. It was a sordid, sorry life. I denied myself every comfort, almost, but that of fire in the dead of winter. That I would have, and of the best hickory, no matter what it cost. I could do without meats and delicacies, books and comforts of many sorts; but a fire, that was the one link that bound me to the instincts of my kind.

I grew shabby, seedy, lean, and ugly. To gather gold, to count it, to gloat over its accumulation, and that for its own worshiped sake, became the ruling passion of my life. Not houses and lands, and friends that might have been bought, but gold, gold, gold! For this I slaved, neglected my kind, and denied God.

I shall never forget Tuesday, the 13th day of January, Anno Domini, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven. That is the way I have written it down in my day-book.

Imagine me going to my solitary house, in the lower part of the great city of New York, hemmed in by warehouses. I say, imagine me shivering in my thin coat, buttoned over a pocket-book as plethoric as I was lean, entering the unpainted and cobwebbed front door and walking through the large hall, solacing myself with the thought that I should soon be comfortable in front of a blazing fire, and finding, as I opened the door to my own den, a great red flame upon the hearth, and cowering over it, the thin, almost skeleton form of a child.

Shall I ever forget the look of the great, dark eyes she turned upon me, eyes that seemed to my excited fancy to light up the very corners of the room.

"Oh, the fire is so good," she said.

"What do you mean? Who are you? How did you get here?" I asked sternly.

"I crawled in through the bars down into the cellar. I guess I staid there all night. Oh, it was so dark and cold! But I'm used to that now. Then I found the cellar door, and it was open, and so I came here, and there was coals on the hearth, and I made a fire."

If the child had not been pretty, I am sorry to be compelled to say, pretty in spite of the grime, the rags, and marks of hard living, and perhaps brutal treatment, or if she had come there in any other fashion, at the door as a mendicant, or even been sent there by any friend, I should have expelled her on the instant; but she had thrown herself upon my bounty—the fire lit up the dark eyes that somehow made me think of those of my own little pet,—she had stood her ground without flinching,—she had prepared an agreeable surprise by making the fire, for I was very cold, and she did not seem in the least afraid of me.

"Where do you belong?" I asked.

"I don't belong anywhere."

"Well, who takes care of you? With whom do you live?"

"I don't live with anybody. I haven't any home. Mother died and father died long ago, and I am all alone by myself."

Her words and manner touched me, but avarice was tugging at my heart. I grudged this poor mite the little food she would require.

"Well you've got warm now; I can't keep you any longer; there is the way to the door," I said.

She rose up, holding the rags of her shawl together, and then I saw that her arms and chest were bare; for her dress was a summer one, probably some gossamer thing that had been given her. She looked at me pleadingly, and for the life of me I could think of nothing but the eyes of my dear child.

It rushed over me as I followed her to the door: "Fancy if this were your own little Kitty," and my heart began to beat furiously.

As I opened the door a cold wind blew in that chilled me to the core, and the child looked pitifully up to me again. I couldn't stand it, and led her back to the fire. She staid that night, and was quite ready the next morning to go out and beg; but the good angel who stood at my side the night before prompted me again.

"Do you think you could do anything to pay for your keeping?" I asked her.

"Oh!" and her hands came together, "I'll clean up everything, and do just what you tell me. I'm so tired of being cold and hungry!"

"Then stay," I said. That day I had something to think of besides gain. I shut up my office earlier, pulled my hat over my eyes, and went across the city to the shop of a German Jew, and there I bought what I thought the child needed, ready made. It cost a good many twinges; the soul of the miser was almost rent in twain. By the time I reached my own door, I had called myself a fool at least twenty times, and fully expected to find the child gone off with everything she could lay her hands on. But, no; there was the fire blazing, the hearth swept up, the floor washed, and the room, even with its scant furniture, so homelike and attractive that my heart began to throb with human pulses again. The girl had washed, made herself as tidy as possible with her scant opportunities, and looked really beautiful in the glow of the evening fire. That night she sat beside me, dressed in the warm and comfortable garments, and I quite forgot to look over my accounts. I could do nothing but look at her.

One night I came home, and was surprised at the appearance of my room. A handsome rug lay before the fire, and four faded crimson chairs and a rocker brought back the old-time sense of comfort. A little table decked with a white cloth held the old fashioned chinaware which my wife had prized. At first I looked round, almost expecting to see her. But no, there stood Ally, as she had called herself, smiling and blushing, yet half afraid at my hasty exclamation.

"You won't be angry with me, will you? But all the things were up-stairs; and they looked so sad and lonesome, just as I used to feel, that I thought I'd bring some of them down-stairs. Now don't they make the room look beautiful? And oh, I found this, but I didn't dare to play with it." As she spoke she brought from another part of the room a little broken, faded-faced doll.

That was too much for me; my little child with its brown tresses and blue eyes came to me in the person of the waif who had brought order and symmetry and love into my desolate home, and from that moment I said, "She shall be mine, and I will never part from her, but will be to her a father indeed."

Then I awoke from the lethargy that had bound my soul so long. I became a new man. Together we sang and worked and prattled, like two children. I ceased to think that she had ever been a stranger, and her thoughtful, womanly little ways were a constant delight to me. By degrees my home brightened more and more. The cobwebs disappeared from doors and windows; in their stead came fresh new paint and house plants. All the books were brought down from the garret, with their old racks, and nailed to the wall where my wife herself had planned for them to be placed. Every night after my work I came home to a well-ordered dinner, for the child seemed to take naturally to all the mysteries of cooking, and after that I spent two happy hours in teaching her with books and slate and pencil. I was myself again. I had something to live for, something to look forward to. My old friends recognized me, and the world took on new beauty, for I saw it out of fresh young eyes, and felt it throb in a grateful heart.

Now, in place of the rusty lock, the spent candle, and the greed for counting money in a den thick with dirt, through whose windows the glaring sun itself looks dim—in place of the discomforts of cold and niggard meals, I sit in my pleasant, gas-lighted room, filled with the perfume of flowers. Am I weary? my Alice reads to me. Am I sorrowful? she sits down at the piano and plays the sweet melodies of love, the songs of long ago. The gray hairs are shining on my temples; but, thank God, the rust and the canker have faded out of my heart.—Mary A. Dennison.