SILENT INFLUENCES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 11, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 44.

SILENT INFLUENCES.

THE following story is from a recent English work entitled "Blessed Be Drudgery," by Wm. C. Gannett:—

"In a pottery factory here there is a workman who had one small invalid child at home. He wrought at his trade with exemplary fidelity, being always in the shop with the opening of the day. He managed, however, to bear each evening to the bedside of his 'wee lad,' as he called him, a flower, a bit of ribbon, or a fragment of crimson glass—indeed, anything that would lie out on the white counterpane and give color to the room. He was a quiet, unsentimental man, but never went home a night without something that would make the wan face light up with joy at his return. He never said to a living soul that he loved that boy so much. Still he went on patiently loving him, and by and by he moved that whole shop into positively real but unconscious fellowship with him. The workmen made curious little jars and cups and painted diminutive pictures down their sides before they stuck them in the corners of the kiln at burning time. One brought some fruit in the bulge of his apron, and another engravings in a rude scrapbook. Not one of them whispered a word, but they put them in the old man's hat, where he found them; he understood all about it.

"And, believe it or not, cynics, as you will, but it is a fact that the entire pottery full of men, of rather coarse fiber by nature, grew quiet as the months drifted, becoming gentle and kind; and some dropped swearing as the weary look on the patient fellow-worker's face told them beyond mistake that the inevitable shadow was drawing nearer. Every day someone did a piece of work for him and put it on a sanded band to dry, so that he could come later and go earlier. So when the bell tolled, and the little coffin came out of the lonely door, right around the corner, out of sight, there stood a hundred stalwart workingmen from the pottery, with their clean clothes on, most of whom had given half a day's time for the privilege of taking part in the simple procession and following to the grave that small burden of a child which probably not one had ever seen."