HIS NIGHT OFF by Evangelist

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 4, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 43.

HIS NIGHT OFF.

By Evangelist

My father played a queer trick on me the other night. You know I used to feel that I had done myself an injustice if I did not go to the theater about five or six nights a week. It wasn't always the theater, but if it wasn't that, it was a music hall, or a game of cards or billiards with some of the boys. Well, you know how I am situated as to my business. I work for my father, and I have to be at the office early in the morning, just as the rest of the family are sitting down to breakfast. In consequence, I get my breakfast and leave the house before they are up. But I can't complain of that. I'm doing exactly what the man who had my place before me did. But that's neither here nor there. It's the evenings. I used to finish work about six, get dinner in the city, and go somewhere in the evening.

I had been doing it for six months, and when I look back I remember that about the only time that I saw my mother and sister during that period was at Sunday dinner. Nothing unusual in that, of course. The same thing is true of hundreds of young men in town. But they haven't fathers like mine. He came to me one afternoon and asked me if I had an engagement for that night.

"Yes," I said, "I've promised to go to the theater."

"How about to-morrow night?" he asked.

"Nothing on at present," I replied.

"Well, I'd like you to go somewhere with me."

"All right," I said; "where shall I meet you?"

You see he leaves the office about an hour before I can get my work finished. He suggested Lenox Restaurant, at 7:30, and I was there, prepared for a quiet lecture on late hours. But when he appeared, he said he wanted me to call on a lady with him. "One I knew quite well when I was a young man," he explained.

We went out, and started straight for home.

"She is stopping at the house," he said, when I spoke of it. I thought it strange that he should have made the appointment for the Lenox Restaurant under those circumstances, but I said nothing.

Well, we went in, and I was introduced with due formality to my mother and sister. The situation was ludicrous, and I began to laugh, but the laugh died away. None of the three even smiled. My mother and my sister both shook hands with me, and my mother said she remembered me as a boy, but hadn't seen much of me lately. Then she invited me to be seated. It wasn't a bit funny then, though I can laugh over it now. I sat down, and she told me one or two stories of my boyhood, at which we all laughed a little. When I finally retired, I was courteously invited to call again.

I went upstairs, feeling pretty small, and doing a good deal of thinking. Then I made up my mind that my mother was a most entertaining lady, and my sister was a good and brilliant girl. Now I'm going to "call again," as I have been doing quite regularly for the last week. I enjoy their company, and I intend to cultivate their acquaintance.—Evangelist.