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My Brother's Keeper

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 5, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 22.

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My Brother's Keeper.

THE cars on the 11 A. M. train, from New York, were crowded. Every seat was occupied. As the whistle sounded, a tall, fine-looking gentleman walked with a quick, nervous step and gloomy face through the cars.
There was only one vacant place. He paused before that. The occupant was also a gentleman, short and stout, sitting close by the window, his head bowed upon his clasped hands, that rested on the top of a gold-headed cane. He did not look up as the new-comer dropped into his seat, and he, in turn, soon became oblivious of his companion.
They both were absorbed in great sorrow, and the burden pressed so heavily on their hearts that they could not speak, as hour after hour slipped away, as mile after mile was passed over, and took no note of anything out of the car or in.
It was dark before they reached their destination, but neither seemed to heed the fact that they both alighted at the same small station. One carriage was in waiting, and when both found themselves in that, rapidly wheeling along over a hard road in the cloudy, moonless evening, each shrunk back into his own corner without a word.
After an hour's drive they both alighted at the door of a large educational institution. Two servants met them. They presented their cards, and both received the greeting:—
“You were expected.”
After following the servants up a long flight of marble stairs, they separated, one being taken into a reception room at the right of the main corridor, the other into a parlor at the left. Here each was met by a teacher who had been praying for strength and wisdom to guide her through the interview.
The tall gentleman's grief was beyond expression. His only child, as beautiful as a work of art, as good as she was beautiful, had been suddenly stricken down while engaged in her studies, and death took her before it was possible to summon her friends. Her shrouded form now lay in its casket, in her room, awaiting her father's coming to bear her to Greenwood.
The short man's grief was no less bitter, but it had more of resentment and less of pathos. His beautiful, only child was in her room, under lock and key, protestingly awaiting her father's coming to bear her away forever from the institution that she had disgraced, back to the world that would not receive her, to the home whose happiness she had blasted, to the mother whose heart she had broken.
Each father was inconsolable, and at last each was told of the sorrow of the other.
Their meeting now, after the long, silent, absorbed day that they had passed side by side, was pathetic in the extreme. Their grief had now found vent in words, as they paced up and down the long corridor, arm in arm.
“Oh, that my daughter had died!” cried the short gentleman in agony of spirit. “Then I could take her home to her mother and lay her away in the family cemetery, under the pines, in all her maidenly purity. Could I do that, I would consider myself the happiest of men, even though all a father's love, and pride, and hope, and joy were buried in her grave. I could then have mourned for her openly; I could have received the sympathy of my friends. Now, there is no place for her in the world. She will be dead and not buried. I must tear her image from my heart. I must ignore her name. I cannot bear it.”
They walked the whole length of the long corridor, before the tall man said:—
“There is weight in your words. I find a sort of comfort in them. I would rather have my daughter taken to her lonely grave in her purity, with only the memory of her sweet Christian graces to carry with me through life, than your burden of sorrow. I can see that the Lord has been good to me, inasmuch as he has made my grief less hopeless than yours. My daughter was fit to die. She was almost an angel here on earth. The Lord might have taken your daughter also, but he has mercifully spared her that she may find the way to better life and walk in it to the end.”
“It is possible!” groaned the disconsolate father, “there are no home influences to guide her in that way, and she has profited nothing here. I cannot bring myself to speak to her. I would not see her, were it possible for me to evade it. Her life is blasted; I know not what to do with her.”
There was another long silence, broken at length by the tall gentleman, who paused in his walk and spoke with great earnestness.
“Wife and I are going to Europe,” he said. “We shall sail in less than a week. We have lived for our daughter ever since she was given to us, trying to fit her to be useful in the world. The Lord has taken her. Will you not let us have your daughter to cross the ocean with? My wife is a judicious, motherly, Christian woman. You need not fear to trust her with us.”
“I cannot afford it,” was the reply. “I was straining the last nerve to keep her here, hoping to fit her to help herself. Now she will be an increased expense to me.”
“I will assume everything of that kind, the same as if she were my own daughter,” said the kind-hearted gentleman, “and consider that I am paid if I may be permitted to save your daughter, with her reputation unsullied before the cruel world, that yet knows nothing of her indiscretion. Let us talk it over with the preceptress.”
An hour later, when that excellent woman went to the unhappy young girl's room, and told her the plan that had been fixed upon that she should go away with her father, and her father's friend, to accompany the body of her classmate to its burial, and within the week should sail for Europe, she threw herself at the preceptress' feet, completely broken-hearted, and cried:—
“Why is this gentleman so good to me, to poor, obstinate, willful, rebellious me?”
“Because he is a Christian,” said the lady, “and because his wife is a Christian, and he knows that she will be glad to guide your wayward steps, and try to lead you to the Saviour.”
“I will try to do right!” cried the girl, who before had been so hard and rebellious, only speaking when she had something to say to grieve her friends. “The dear girl who lies dead in No 40 was a Christian, and that helped her to die as peacefully as if she were but going to sleep. You are a Christian, and it has helped you to bear with me and to keep my many indiscretions from publicity. Now this gentleman and his wife are Christians and they are determined to try to save me from myself. O madam, will you pray with me and for me, that they may succeed?”
As the preceptress agonized in prayer with the young, high-spirited, reckless girl, the two stricken fathers were on their knees in the parlor, seeking for strength and wisdom, and the comfort in sorrow that cometh only from God.
When the father who had declared that he could not see his daughter, and the daughter who had maintained that she would not see her father, met, it was with pity on one hand, and with contrition on the other, softened by the new-found hope both had that night expressed.
The going back was less bitter than the coming. The two men sat side by side like brothers now. The young girl in the seat in front of them felt that she had a heart in her bosom in the place of the cold stone she had carried so long.
To-day that young woman is a cultivated, useful, Christian woman, as beautiful in spirit as in person. The sad episode in her girl-life was saved from publicity by her going abroad. As she cheers, comforts, and brightens the declining footsteps of her parents and her foster-parents, she blesses the kind Father who, in the time of her sore need, sent, to care for her, children of the Heavenly King, and not children of the world.—Advance.