THE BAKER'S SERMON by Sally Campbell

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 12, 1892

THE BAKER'S SERMON.

By Sally Campbell

BY SALLY CAMPBELL.

"It is all very well to talk; but he doesn't know anything about it!"

And Mary Brette gave an extra hard wring to the dishcloth, to lend emphasis to her words.

"What's the use," she went on, "of telling me to convert the neighborhood, when it takes every bit of time and strength I have to keep things going right here at home? They are dreadfully material things, I know, that perish with the using; they don't save anybody's soul; but they have to be attended to just the same, and there's only so much of any one girl, I suppose. You can't do general housework, and go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, at the same time. I must get mother's lunch next. It seems to me it's been about half a minute since she had her breakfast. The whole morning is gone and not half the work done."

In spite of her hurry and impatience, the thin slices of toast were very carefully browned, the egg cooked to a turn, and the tea just of that clear amber which Mrs. Brette liked. It was a very dainty meal which she carried up to the sick room, and silently arranged on the little table by her mother's bed. This done, she crossed over to the window and stood looking moodily out. Mrs. Brette's appetite was not very great, and the sight of Mary's clouded face did not increase it.

"I am sorry that my little girl has to work so hard," she said, with a sigh, when she had finished.

"Oh, some people are meant to be drudges!" was the not very gracious answer.

She smoothed the invalid's rumpled pillows and sheets, drew the blinds together where the afternoon sun was beginning to shine in, and opened the other window, brought her a fan and a book, asked whether she wanted anything more, and then went back to her work. Presently Ben came in with a rip in his baseball.

"Say, sis, couldn't you take a wink of time and sew this rip up for me? If I leave it, it will spread like the measles."

"As if I didn't have enough to do already!" said Mary fretfully, taking it from his hand with a jerk. "If I just could get through one day without anything extra turning up!" However, she mended the ball for him very long. Daisy was her next visitor.

"Willis has invited me to her house in St. Maris, and I tried to fix myself and disturbing you. But I guess I made a mistake, didn't I?"

"I should say so," said Mary, looking at the zigzag row of buttons down her small sister's back and at the almost equally zigzag plait of hair. "Of course you can't go that way."

Daisy had brought the brush and comb with her as a precautionary measure, and Mary proceeded to remedy her toilet with no gentle hand.

"How on earth did you get so many tangles? Please, next time, don't try experiments. It gives twice as much trouble in the end."

"I don't care. You needn't be so cross, and you needn't pull my head off. I was just trying to help you."

So the day went on. In the afternoon Mr. Thomas, the baker, who had been bringing bread to the house on week days and sitting in front of her in church on Sundays ever since Mary could remember, came with his usual quota of loaves.

"Well, Miss Mary," he said, "how are things moving up this way to-day?"

"Just as usual."

"You don't say! Why, now, I kind of thought they'd be different."

"Why?" asked Mary, surprised.

"On account of the sermon we had yesterday. That was an elegant sermon, wasn't it?"

"I suppose so."

"Preaching like that ought to awaken us every one up to do our duty better, seems to me."

Mary's only answer was a sigh. Mr. Thomas looked at her for a moment, with shrewd, kind eyes.

"After I got home from hearing that sermon yesterday morning, I says to myself: 'You're only a plain working man. Your business is to bake bread, and to take it around to your customers, and when that's over with, you don't get many hours off in the week. But never mind about that; don't you be so foolish as to let it worry you a mite. All you've got to do is to do your duty. No person can do that but what he helps along somehow. Maybe you don't just see how, but God does, and that's enough. He wants missionaries to China and India very bad, but he don't want you for one; he wants you for a baker. So, now, don't you go to spoiling your vocation by any kind of discontent or crankiness. Live right up to it. Do your duty, my man; that's the idea every time, and it's a good one to come back to over and over. But look out that you do it from a spirit of love and not from a spirit of bondage. It's awful wicked to take the beauty out of goodness so. It's like passing round an ugly picture of a handsome lady. The folks that see that aren't going to believe much in her looks. And you don't want anyone believing less in the loveliness of the Almighty from the likeness you're giving them of him.' That was what I said to myself, and I guess I was right, wasn't I, Miss Mary?"

"Why, Mr. Thomas," said Mary, with almost the first smile that had visited her face that day, "I like your sermon better than I did the minister's."

"Now you're laughing at me," said Mr. Thomas, picking up his big basket. "Now I'm going."

After this the days went on as before, with a difference.

"Mamie," said Ben, sitting on the edge of the kitchen table one Saturday morning, and watching Mary mix a cake at the other end, "it strikes me that the train that's taking you to the kingdom runs lots smoother than it used to. It takes an up grade or slips round a curve now any time as if it liked it. You must have been greasing the machinery with something, haven't you?"

"I've tried," said Mary meekly. "It needed it;" and then, getting flushed and excited, "Do you really mean it, Ben?"

"Fact," said Ben, with an energetic nod which nearly toppled him off the table. "There are so many flowery beds of ease round this place nowadays that, if a fellow isn't careful, he'll be carried to the skies on one of them sometime, in spite of himself."

There was a little silence, and then Mary said softly:—

"Ben, why don't you start?"

Ben whistled, looked all around the room and out into the shed, plunged his hand into his pocket, drew up a varied assortment of objects, which he scrutinized closely, cleared his throat, and answered:—

"I guess I will."—The Advance.