WHEN THE DAY IS GONE by Robert Jones Burdette

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 6, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 39.

WHEN THE DAY IS GONE.

By Robert Jones Burdette

How quiet the house is at midnight. The people who talk and laugh and sing in it every day are asleep, and the people who fell asleep in it long ago come back into it. Every house has these two classes of tenants. Do we love best those with whom we can talk and laugh and sing, or the dear silent ones who come so noiselessly to our side and whisper to us in faint, sweet, far-away whispers that have no sound, so that we only hear their very stillness.

I am not tired, but my pen is weary. It falls from my fingers and I raise my head. I start to leave the table and my eyes fall upon a little book lying on the floor. It is a little First Reader. He left it there this afternoon. I remember just how I was impatient because he could not read the simple little lesson, such an easy lesson, and I told him it was a waste of my time to teach him, and pushed him away from me. I remember now. I see the flush come into the little tired face, the brave, cheerful look in his eyes, his mother's brave, patient cheeriness, struggling with his disappointment and pain. I see him lie down on the floor and the little face bend over the troublesome lesson, such a simple, easy lesson, any baby might read it. Then, after a little struggle alone, it has to be given up, and the baffled little soldier, with one more appealing look toward me for re-enforcement, sighs and goes away from the lesson he cannot read to the play that comforts him. And there lies the little book just as he left it. Ah me! I could kneel down and kiss it now, as though it were alive and loving.

Why, what was my time worth to me today? What was there in the book I wanted to read one-half so precious to me as one cooing word from the prattling lips that quivered when I turned away. I hate the book I read. I will never look at it again. Were it the last book in the world, I think I would burn it. All its gracious words are lies. I say to you, though all men praise the book, and, though an hour ago I thought it excellent, I say to you there is poison in its hateful pages. Why, what can I learn from books that baby lips cannot teach me? Do you know I want to go to the door of his room and listen; the house is so still; maybe he is not breathing. Why, if between my book and my boy I choose my book, why should not God leave me with my books? My hateful books!

But I was not harsh. I was only a little impatient. Because, you see, his lesson was so easy, so simple. Ah me! there were two of us trying to read this afternoon. There were two easy, simple lessons. Mine was such a very simple, easy, pleasant, loving one to learn. Just a line, just a little throb of patience, of gentleness, of love, that would have

made my own heart glow and laugh and sing. The letters were so large and plain, the words so easy, and the sentences so short! And I? Oh, pity me, I missed every word! I did not read one line aright. See, here is my copy now—all blurred and blistered with tears and heartache, all marred and misspelled and blotted. I am ashamed to show it to the Master. And yet I know he will be patient with me; I know how loving and gentle he will be. Why, how patiently and loving all these years he has been teaching me this simple lesson I failed upon to-day. But when my little pupil stumbled on a single word—is my time, then, so much more precious than the Master's that I cannot teach the little lesson more than once?

Ah, friend, we do waste time when we plait scourges for ourselves! These hurrying days, these busy, anxious, shrewd, ambitious times of ours are wasted when they take our hearts away from patient gentleness, and give us fame for love and gold for kisses. Some day, then, when our hungry souls will seek for bread, our selfish god will give us a stone. Life is not a deep, profound, perplexing problem. It is a simple, easy lesson, such as any child may read. You cannot find its solution in the ponderous tomes of the old fathers, the philosophers, the investigators, the theorists. It is not on your book-shelves. But in the warmest corner of the most unlettered heart it glows in letters that the blindest may read,—a sweet, plain, simple, easy, loving lesson. And when you have learned it, brother of mine, the world will be better and happier.—R. J. Burdette.