p. 310 | ESTHER KING'S JEWEL by Louisa Moore

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1880

ESTHER KING'S JEWEL.

By Louisa Moore

ESTHER KING had resolved to lead a new life. She had sought and found a pearl of great price. Her life heretofore had been of the butterfly kind, but a sudden affliction had turned her thoughts in a new channel. Old things had passed away and all things had become new. She took a class in the mission school. It was an unpromising looking class which the superintendent gave her, and she trembled when he told her that every teacher had given it up as hopeless.

“Now, Miss Esther, we will see what you can accomplish with such material,” he added, as he left her surrounded by seven rough-looking youths, ranging in age from fourteen to seventeen.

“Well, young gentlemen, I am happy to make your acquaintance,” said the new teacher with a pleasant smile, as she glanced around the class. “I hope we will do each other good.”

“Trying to soft-soap us,” said a coarse-looking boy, his loud whisper distinctly heard by Miss Esther. Another laughed out loud, attracting the attention of all around.

“We ain’t no gentlemen,” quickly spoke up a thin-faced, eagle-eyed boy. “I’m a rag man. Got any to sell? I’ll call ’round to-morrow. Where do you live?” At which the others all laughed; and the merriment was increased as he took a spit-ball out of his mouth and aimed it at the bird on her hat.

“Try it ag’in, Jack,” exclaimed another boy.

Esther looked Jack straight in the eye, and, in a gentle tone, said, “Jack, it is the conduct, not the calling, which makes the gentleman.”

He showed no signs of being abashed, but he whispered to the boy next to him, “She’s got pluck.”

“The Crucified Saviour” was the lesson for the day, the new teacher telling them the story, which has thrilled so many hearts, of the sacrifice on the cross. She pictured his agony, his patient endurance of his sufferings for our sakes as well as for those who have lived before us.

“We’ve heard that tale before,” interrupted Jack. “Tell us something new.”

“Do you believe all that?” inquired another.

Esther let a silent prayer ascend from her heart as she went on talking, apparently paying no attention to the rude remarks.

After school, the superintendent inquired how she had succeeded. Esther repeated what had occurred.

“Well, try and see what you can do,” said Mr. Miller. “If you can persuade one of those boys to turn from his evil ways, it will certainly be a bright star in your crown up yonder.”

Esther feared that star would never adorn her crown. She had youth and inexperience to fight against; but then she had a warm love for the Master burning in her heart, and an earnest desire to work in his cause and win souls for his kingdom, and the longer and harder she worked, the warmer grew the one, the more earnest the other.

“Do you believe God sees and knows all about and cares for fellows like us?” asked Jack, one Sabbath, as Esther was telling them of God’s attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and his fatherly care of his creatures.

“Certainly, Jack. We are told in the Bible that there is not a hair of our heads unnumbered.”

“Wouldn’t take long to count ’em on that fellow’s head over there,” quickly said Jack, pointing to one of the teachers, an elderly gentleman, who had lost his hair, and was like the prophet of old whom the boys called after—“Thou bald head.”

“And not even a sparrow falls to the ground without his knowledge, and he knoweth all our goings in and goings out, and there is nothing hid from him, not even our most secret thoughts and deeds,” continued the teacher, paying no attention to the suppressed titter caused by Jack’s smart speech.

Sabbath after Sabbath for two years she took her way to the mission school room, trying to sow seeds that would, with His help, fall upon good ground. She prayed constantly, and remembered those precious words, “Whatsoever ye ask in my name, ye shall receive.” And she had asked for souls, just one, if it was his will, while she hoped on, knowing that delayed answers to prayers are not denials.

“R-a-g-s, r-a-g-s, any rags!” shouted Jack, as he picked his way down the long alley in the rear of a handsome row of houses on a fashionable street.

“Mister, come in here,” called a voice from one of the open gates. “What do you give for rags?” asked the girl, as Jack approached, with a huge bag of rags flung over his shoulder.

“Two cents for mixed, four for white,” was the answer:

“Here is a lot of all kinds. The lady cleared out the closet this morning.”

Jack put his hand in the bundle, and drawing out a handful glanced at them, carelessly saying, “Two cents a pound.”

“Take them,” said the girl.

They were duly weighed, and twenty-one pennies handed her. Jack’s eyes had espied a pocketbook among the rags, and he hastily left, quickly got out of the alley, and going to the next street emptied his bag of rags in the wagon which stood there, and put the pocketbook in his pocket, intending to open it when he got far enough away.

He whistled merrily as he drove down the street to his next point of business, which was some distance off, and on a smaller street, where he usually collected more rags, among the humbler class of people; his well known cry of “R-a-g-s r-a-g-s,” in the peculiar tone of his profession, ringing out and bringing several boys and girls out with their hoarded stores of rags, eager to get the pennies Jack gave in exchange. His thoughts were all of the pocketbook, but he waited until he finished up his regular morning’s round.

Jack lived in a little, narrow street, near the mission school room. His mother was now an old woman, who thought she had done her duty by her son, since she had provided scanty clothes and food for him until he was twelve years old, and then got him a place with a dealer in rags. He had no childish recollections of a mother’s tender voice, or of gentle caresses. No shadowy visions of infantile prayers, or folding of little hands, and reverential closing of eyes, and bowing of head as the blessing was asked at the homely meals he partook of. No, no; his had been the rough-and-tumble life of the wretchedly poor, unblessed by the sunshine which the Lord gives to all who serve him, however poor and humble. Education by gaslight on the corners of the streets of a great city was all the education he could boast of, and who can wonder that he opened the pocketbook and appropriated the three crisp one-dollar notes which it contained, without a thought of its being wrong? There was a card in the pocketbook, with “Mrs. S. A. Cole, 63 Hamilton Terrace,” engraved on it, and he knew that it was the street where he bought the rags among which he found the pocketbook, but he did not mean to restore it to the owner.

“Thou shalt not steal,” said Miss Esther, as he entered and took his accustomed seat the next Sabbath. He rolled his eyes around the room, made a comical face at a girl in the next class, and paid no attention until he heard his teacher say, “If you find anything, and know to whom it belongs, and keep it, that is wrong; it is the same as stealing.”

“Whew!” said Jack to himself; “is that so? No, of course not. They ought to have been more careful, and not put pocketbooks in rags. ‘Findings is keepings,’” quoted Jack to himself.

But those words of Miss Esther’s haunted him the rest of the day, and when he got home he went to his little, untidy room and turned the crisp notes over and over, while he reasoned with himself that he had a right to keep them. But somehow every time he took them out to buy anything he always put them back, for a small, still voice was awakened in Jack’s heart, growing louder and louder, until he lay awake a whole night on account of that pocketbook and those three one-dollar bills. What should he do? He never made a confidant of his mother, he was too wary to tell his chosen companions, and he felt sure if his employer knew it he would claim it.

“Suppose I ask teacher?” thought he. “Wonder what she would say? But then I can’t ask her in school before the boys. “I’ll write her a note,” was his next idea—a brilliant one, he thought. But to write it was the great trouble, it being an unheard-of thing for him to write—indeed he hardly knew how to make some of the letters. He sat up nearly a whole night, and with difficulty penned the following:—

Mis’ ’ester, is it rong to kepe enything if yu jus’ think yu no it is sumbodys yu don’t no. JACK GIVEN.

Miss Esther took the paper from him as he handed it to her in a mysterious way, and in obedience to his signs put it in her pocket. Jack lingered after school was dismissed, and his teacher read the, to her, inexplicable scrawl. She turned to ask an explanation, but her scholar was gone.

“Please, miss, there’s a rag-man at the gate wants to see you; he wont come in,” said a servant, one morning, the following week, and Esther went down.

“Good morning, Jack; come in.”

“Did you read that letter I wrote you?” questioned Jack, plunging headlong into the object of his call, without even a salutation to Miss Esther.

“Why yes,” was the reply, “but I don’t understand it. You tell me just what has happened, and what you mean. You know one can understand better when you tell it than when it is written,” continued Miss Esther, in a winning tone, not wishing to wound his feelings by saying his manner of expressing himself, as well as the writing, was a mystery.

He finally divulged enough for her to understand the drift of the story, and she advised him to go straight to Mrs. Cole’s house and tell her how he had found the pocketbook in the rags; but Jack thought he never could do that. “Then,” suggested Miss Esther, “let me write a note explaining the matter, and you take it with the pocketbook and contents just as you found it, and leave it at the door to be delivered to Mrs. Cole.”

Jack was very quiet and attentive the next Sabbath, as he sat in his old place in the mission school. The seed had been sown in good ground. It was springing up, and needed tender care to keep the blade from wilting. Miss Esther watched and prayed earnestly it might yet bear fruit. A refreshing shower of grace in the form of a revival fell upon that mission school for the first time, and Jack Given, the rag-gatherer, was one of the first who felt its influence.

Several years have passed. Jack is now a promising young man. By attending night-school he acquired a common education, has a situation in a good business house, and bids fair to rise higher than even his devoted teacher dared hope. His aged mother attends church now with her son. The superintendent calls him “Miss Esther’s jewel,” and says he will shine brightly in the crown which she will receive when He makes up his jewels.—Louisa Moore, in Christian at Work.