TOM'S TEMPTATION | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 17.

TOM'S TEMPTATION.

"MOTHER, mother darling, there are tears in your eyes; you can't hide them from me by working over that stove."

Tom pushed aside his cup of milk, and the tin plate whereon lay a slice of bread, and looked sorrowfully at the same scanty fare which was placed before his mother's chair. Arising from his seat, he approached the delicate little woman whose back at that moment was turned upon him. She wiped her eyes, and laid her cheek upon her tall boy's shoulder, as he placed an arm lovingly about her waist.

"No use trying to hide anything from those blue eyes of yours, Tom dear," she said, with a smile that made the worn face very sweet to the son who loved her so. "There is nothing you don't discover, and nothing that can make you thoughtless of my feelings."

"I rather guess not, little mother!" was Tom's reply, as he swallowed down a large lump in his throat. "I am very sure not. Why, what kind of a fellow would I be if I didn't care for you, the dearest and best of women in the world! Come, let the old fire go; those few little sticks won't do any good, and you must have your breakfast, you know, or I can't eat mine."

He cast a rather sarcastic glance toward the small, round, and rickety table which contained their morning repast, and continued with a half laugh, "'Breakfast' indeed! I wonder what those rich folk who really have a breakfast every morning would call a cup of blue milk and a slice of stale bread with no butter on it?"

His mother turned a surprised glance at his flushed young face.

"Why, Tom, dear, what a tone of voice!"

"Oh, I don't complain for myself," replied Tom, "but I can't bear to have you go hungry, and be as uncomfortable as you are day after day in this hole of a cellar, only half dressed, and growing so thin and so white, and—and I, a great fellow fourteen years old, just loafing about the streets and not helping you in the least! O mother, I can't bear it; I won't bear it!"

The boy's blue eyes filled with tears, and it was now the mother's turn to kiss them from his cheek, as he had kissed away her own.

"Tom, Tom, how can you be so unjust to my dear, good son?" she cried with an attempt at playfulness. "Who roams the street days, so patiently searching for odd jobs?"

"Your buttonhole business does more for us, mother, than all that," answered Tom. "Oh, dear! I wish a regular old-time fairy would come along some day and give a fellow a lift for his mother's sake."

"Dear boy, not the fairies indeed, but the 'Everlasting Arms' will give us the lift we desire, if we can only keep up our faith and trust, and be content to wait. Come, now, dearie, your milk was warm and nice, but now it is cold, and—"

"And so is yours, mother," Tom interrupted. "We'll heat it over again, and be thankful that at least a beggar may own a tin saucepan, shan't we?"

The scanty meal was finished at last, and after Tom had seen his mother seated at her daily and monotonous task of buttonholing flannel shirts, he gave his suspenders an extra hitch, pulled his cap over his curls of sunny hair, rolled up the rather frayed edges of his trousers, and started off to look for something to do that would put a few pennies in his pockets.

He had a new idea in his head this morning as he trudged along, with his mother's good-by kiss still warm on his lips, and the sweet tones of her voice still making music in his ears. He would beg, borrow, or buy on trust some sort of a broom and sweep street crossings, as some other fellows had done. Maybe he could do better in that way than by going into stores and asking for a job.

Fortune (which, after all, is Providence) favored Tom before very long, and he became possessed of the coveted broom, because just as he passed a house (where the spirit of house cleaning had seized the inmates), a rather shabby-looking affair which had once deserved the name of broom was flung out into the street by an energetic woman who seemed glad to get rid of the thing. Tom sprang for it, you may be sure.

"May I have this, ma'am, if you don't wan't it?" he asked.

"What's to hinder, if you like it?" was the question for answer, and the boy went on, whistling for the joy which the unexpected "find" brought him.

However, the finding of his broom did not bring him immediate good luck, as he had anticipated. He couldn't sweep this crossing, because, "You git! this ere's my place!" screamed a full-fledged street sweeper at him. He couldn't sweep that corner, because, "No ye don't! this ere's engaged! an' I'll give the feller wot meddles wid Mike O'Flatharty tall times, so I will!"

And so poor Tom was beginning to feel discouraged and almost tempted to fling his broom away. But he did at last succeed in obtaining a stand at a crossing in a quieter neighborhood, where perhaps he would be more apt to attract attention than in the busy crowd.

For a long time he waited without any greater reward than a penny or two, and once a nickle.

"Sweeping crossings is nothing, after all," thought he ruefully, "and there isn't another speck of dirt to sweep off this one, anyway."

There had been several rainy days, and, truth to tell, the little crowd of sweepers ought to have reaped a harvest, had pedestrians been grateful enough for the comfort of the cleanly-swept crossings. But, alas! not so; and to Tom came even less of success than to his rivals.

"Please, sir, a penny," said he to one pompous old gentleman at last, feeling that silence was not always golden, as the adage has it, and seeing how often his mere outstretched palm had been ignored.

The old gentleman frowned, and replied:—

"I did not tell you to sweep the crossing, did I, you scamp? Move out of my way." And that was all poor Tom got for his pains there.

"Please, ma'am, I've made the crossing so clean," he ventured to say to the next passer, an honest-looking market woman, who carried a fat purse in her hand.

"Bless me, so you have," she replied beamingly, "much obleeged, much obleeged, sonny, I'm sure." And so she went with no thought of Tom's waiting hand.

"Well, there, I'll just give the whole thing up," he exclaimed, "and try the stores again. I'll—there, what's that I wonder!" His roving eyes had caught a glimpse of a shining substance half concealed in the dark corner of a stone coping near by. Going closer to it, he picked up an old-fashioned heavy gold seal, which had no doubt been cherished as an heirloom, and was valuable also for its unique style and solid worth.

"Like as not it fell off that cross old fellow's chain," thought Tom, as his face broadened with a grin. "He'll never guess where he lost it, and a find's a find. I know where the fellows carry things they steal and find, too, and get cash for 'em, and the things are melted and fixed so the owners never would know them again. I can get a big pile for this, I'm sure."

All these thoughts were passing through Tom's brain as he looked at the seal and admired its beauty.

"I'll get a warm shawl for mother, I suppose; at any rate it'll buy her something nice to eat, and more than that beside, it'll get some coal for the stove, and that'll be better than those pieces of wood she tries to warm up with."

He slipped the seal in his pocket, leaned on his broom, and gave the matter serious thought.

"Of course it isn't mine to sell, but I don't know for sure that it was that old fellow's, either. It might have been lying there for days. My mother is poor and sick, and what I could get for this would buy things to make her glad. But—" here Tom's thoughts took a different turn—"I wouldn't like mother to know how I got the money to buy extras for her," 'cause that would sort of spoil her pleasure, I suppose, and so I'll have to sell it on the sly. It doesn't seem, though, as if the 'lift' would be a fair and square one." He took out the seal and looked at it again, his heart full of "mother" all the while, and the temptation to do wrong for her sake almost irresistible.

"Maybe the reason would make the wrong right," he thought again, having a private little argument with conscience, as everyone, even grown-up people, likes to occasionally.

Tom leaned harder on his broom, and held the seal in his palm inside the dark pocket that could tell no tales, but which had always held pennies and coin fairly earned, shabby though it might be. Meanwhile people passed by, and wondered why the sweeper stood so silent and absorbed in thought, without the least effort to get money from them. And so it was that at last a kind-faced man came along, who looked at Tom, saw his hand in his pocket, and drew conclusions therefrom.

"Here, my boy," he said, "you've an empty pocket, no doubt; take this nickel and drop it in."

Tom flushed hotly. "An empty pocket!" Ah, no; it was too full indeed, too full of a temptation which he was finding it very hard to carry there, because it was also weighing on his heart. The man turned into the office of a daily paper, and Tom, catching him by the coat, asked permission to speak a moment with him privately. And so he told the story of his strong temptation, showing the seal, and finally asking that it might be advertised.

Well, the seal was advertised, and Tom was set to work in the cellar of the building sorting and tying old papers, which "job" was to pay for the business of the seal. The lifting of the temptation had so lightened his heart that he was almost happy; he was glad that he had made a right resolve, and intended when

he went home to tell mother all about the matter, and that would be the end of it. But that was not the end of it at all.

Two days later Tom, who had given his humble address to the gentleman who advertised the seal, received a message from the office, and presented himself and his mother there as soon as possible after. There they met the grouty old gentleman who had repulsed Tom so unkindly, and also the kind-hearted donor of the nickel.

"I was rude to you, my boy," said the former gentleman, "because I had lost my seal, and was then returning from a store where I had believed it to have fallen from my chain. It must have dropped off, however, as I crossed the street on my way first to the store. I valued it highly, and grew irritable over its loss. This friend of mine has told me your story, temptation and all. I'm a cross old fellow at my best, but I do like a manly, honest boy, and appreciate a mother who knows how to train a son in such a way. So now, with no desire for better reference than your own two faces," turning from Tom to his mother, "I ask you, madam, to come and be housekeeper to me and my old-maid sister, and you, my boy, to help me in my office as general office boy, or what you will, and I shall place a fair salary at the disposal of each of you. What do you say?"

And now is there any need for me to continue this story just to repeat the answer to the old gentleman's question?—Certainly not. You will all feel the joy which filled the full hearts of both the widow and her son, and rejoice with Tom that conscience conquered his temptation at last.