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Jim's Secret

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 20, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 19.

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Jim's Secret.

“MAMMA, I can never bear it, never.”
The words were spoken with a sob, and the boy who uttered them sat in an easy chair by the window and watched his playmates at their sports.
Beside him lay a crutch; on a table near him a guitar, upon which he had grown tired of playing. Near by stood a rack of books, which had lost their interest. His box of paints he had not touched for days. The wealth, luxury, and comfort which ought to have made his life happy were as naught to him, because he could not run and leap and play like the boys he looked upon from the window.
His mother rose and stood by him, and smoothed his hair pityingly. She did not answer him a word. So often she had tried to show him how much there was left in life for him, but without avail. Presently she touched the silver bell, and when the servant appeared, ordered the carriage.
“I am going to make a call, and I want you to go with me, Willie,” she said to the boy.
In less than an hour they were in the suburbs of the city, and halted before a low-roofed, dilapidated cottage. A feeble “Come in” was the answer to their rap.
The room they entered was bare, comfortless, and cold. The fire on the hearth had gone out. The only occupant of the untidy room, a boy about Willie’s age, sat wrapped in an old faded bed quilt. Beside him stood a pair of crutches.
“How are you to-day, Jim?” Mrs. Lyman asked.
“Pretty well, thank you. Mother has got a half a day’s work, and we’re going to have some dinner and some fire by and by, when she comes.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not very. The woman up-stairs gave me three soda crackers yesterday, and we had them for breakfast.”
“What about your father?”
The bright look on the boy’s face faded.
“The judge sentenced him. If it had only been his first offense they might have got him off. He has gone to Sing Sing.”
“What do you do all day while your mother is away? Don’t you miss her much?”
“Yes; but I look out of the window and watch the people going by. I am so glad we have a front room! Then I read in the Testament Pastor Kendricks gave me, and shut my eyes and pray the Lord not to let the time seem very long, and it isn’t. Then I’m always so glad when she comes, and—”
“Mamma,” Willie interrupted, almost jumping from his seat, “why can’t we take Jim home with us in the carriage, and give him some of my clothes and let him have some dinner with us?”
“But what would his mother say if she came home and found her boy gone?”
“Let’s write a note and leave it on the chair, and tell her that the woman up-stairs will bring him back before dark. Say, mother, will you?”
And so it happened that half an hour later two little crippled boys, one well attired and the other protected by an old bed quilt, went up the stairs of the Lyman mansion and into the room where one discontented boy had sat murmuring that morning.
A nice warm bath and some of Willie’s clothing changed Jim so that his new friends laughed outright as he thought how even his own mother wouldn’t know him.
And what a pleasure it was to Willie, at the dinner table, to watch Jim’s evident enjoyment of the roast veal, sweet potatoes, apple sauce, and pumpkin pie.
The meal ended, the two boys spent the afternoon in the play-room. Willie’s tool-chest was a source of wonder to Jim, who was a natural mechanic.
And when it grew dark, and was time for Jim to be taken home, Willie could hardly believe it; and after he had gone, such plans as he and his mother made.
It all ended in Jim’s mother having plenty of work, and hiring a neat room just around the corner, and in the two boys playing and studying together nearly all the time.
And Willie has learned Jim’s secret of contentment. I wonder if you could guess what it is?
“Straight is the line of duty, Curved is the line of beauty; Follow the first and thou wilt see The second ever follow thee.”
“He is greatest who chooses to do right at all times.”
No man ever achieved anything for Christ who did not, when necessary, trample both self and selfish enjoyment under foot.—H. Clay Trumbull.