Better Than Alms by T. S. Arthur

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 6, 1863

Better Than Alms.

By T. S. Arthur

BY T. S. ARTHUR.

"I HAVE a poor sick child at home," said the woman, in a weak, plaintive voice, that touched the feelings of Mr. Oldfield, and caused his hand to move involuntarily toward his vest pocket. A glance from his wife asked, as plainly as if words had been spoken, that he would not interfere in the case. So he lifted his book and held the page before his eyes—not to read, however.

"What is the age of your child?" asked Mrs. Oldfield.

"Four years, ma'am."

"Have you a husband?"

"No—ye—yes ma'am; that is, I had a husband, but he went off two years ago and I've never seen him since."

"Why did he leave you?"

The woman put her hand to her face, as if overcome by feeling. In a few moments tears came over her cheeks. Mr. Oldfield was moved to deep pity, and showed his state of mind by crossing and recrossing his legs two or three times in quick succession.

"He wasn't a steady man," sobbed the woman.

"Too bad! Too bad to probe a poor wretch in this way!" said Mr. Oldfield to himself. "Why don't Fanny give her the help she asks for and let her go! It seems to me downright cruel!"

It was all he could do to keep from thrusting a dollar into the woman's hand, under the impulse of blind commiseration. But Mr. Oldfield had passed through some experience in this direction, and the recollection caused him to remain passive.

"And since he went away," said Mrs. Oldfield, "you have had to support yourself and child?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered the woman, in a tone that went to the heart of Mr. Oldfield, but did'nt make any impression on the feelings of his wife.

"How have you done this?" There was nothing unkind or unsympathising in the voice of Mrs. Oldfield. But she was in earnest in her inquiries.

"By sewing ma'am when I could get plain work; and sometimes by washing and ironing."

"You earn enough in this way to support yourself and child, I presume?"

"If my health was good, and I could always get enough to do."

"Then your health is not good?"

"No ma'am." And the woman put on a look of suffering that would have been worth two or three dollars to her if Mrs. Oldfield had not been in the room.

"We all have our trials in this way," replied Mrs. Oldfield. "There are very few days in which I do not suffer from pain, or an oppressive sense of weakness; and yet there are few days in which I am not employed in some way from morning until night. We cannot give up and depend on others merely for lack of health. Indeed, we feel better, in most cases, when usefully employed than when idle. This is my experience, and yours, I doubt not. How is it? Think a moment."

It was not just agreeable to think in this direction, but she had fallen into the hands of a lady whose charity went beyond mere alms-giving, and who felt interest enough in her case to relieve it, if it were possible to do it in the right way. The woman did not present the appearance of an invalid. She had not the look of vigorous health, it is true; but it was plain to the eyes of Mrs. Oldfield that she was fully able, so far as physical strength was concerned, to maintain herself and child without the solicitation of alms.

"Your own experience, I am sure, is in agreement with mine," said Mrs. Oldfield, seeing the woman did not answer her. "And I am also sure that you will agree with me when I say, that the bread earned by independence is as sweet again as that which comes through the humiliation of alms-seeking."

"If we are able to work, ma'am," The woman's voice was faint and pitiful.

"You are able to work." There was a kind encouragement, not cold reproof, in the voice of Mrs. Oldfield. "Not as capable, perhaps, as some, but quite as able as several poor women I know, who have two, three, or four children to support, and who never ask help. You have entered the wrong way, depend upon it, and I beg of you to get out of it with as little delay as possible. Better take the barest necessaries of life, honestly gained in useful work, than a full basket at the price of womanly independence. Set your child a better example, if you desire him to become an honest, industrious, honorable man."

This last remark touched the right chord, and Mrs. Oldfield saw it.

"If," she added, "you do not, in your own actions, illustrate for your child the virtue of industry and independence, he may grow up an idler and vagabond—a curse to you and society. Think of this. As a mother, I appeal to you. Take heart again; and for the sake of your child, let no bread except that procured by honest labor pass his lips, if it be the coarsest bread, and scant at that. Let it never be cast into his teeth by wicked boys to shame him, and it may drive him to vice and crime, that his mother was a beggar."

The woman's face flushed. Mr. Oldfield saw it, and felt more provoked at his wife for what seemed to him little better than taking advantage of a poor wretch to lecture her, instead of extending the aid it was plain enough she needed. How his fingers itched for the privilege of thrusting a coin into her hand!

"I do not say this," continued Mrs. Oldfield, "to hurt you; but to help you see what is best to be done, looking to the future as well as to the present. We gain present ease at too dear a price if it be at the cost of misery in the future. Have I suggested more in regard to your son than is likely to happen? Will it not be known that you lived on alms, instead of procuring your bread by patient toil? and will there not be some to throw this stinging, humbling reproach into the teeth of your boy, causing him to blush in shame for his mother?"

"It shall never be!" exclaimed the woman, rising from the chair in which she had been seated, and showing much disturbance of mind.

"I never thought of that. Throw into the teeth of my boy that his mother was a beggar? No—not while I have strength enough to lift a foot or move a finger."

"Spoken like a true mother," said Mrs. Oldfield encouragingly. "I was certain that you had not looked at this question on all sides—and now, if you are really in earnest, consider me your friend. Let me know your name and residence, and what kind of work you can do. I can and will aid you."

The woman looked grateful at these kind, assuring words, and gave her name as Clark. She lived not far from the neighborhood of Mrs. Oldfield.

"I have some plain sewing that I wish to put out," said Mrs. Oldfield. When you are ready for it, I would like to see you again."

"I will call, madam, in a day or two. I've got some work that's not quite finished."

"So you have work? Ah, my good woman! your feet have stepped from the right way. Get back again as quickly as possible. Think of your boy, and let the thought keep moving you onward in the path of industry and independence."

"When I feel weak and sick, as I do sometimes," said the woman in a half apologetic way, "I grow discouraged. It seems as if I had no strength in me."

"In those seasons of weakness, if they return to you again," answered Mrs. Oldfield kindly, "come and see me. I think, may be, I can always say something to help you. I will try, at least. Only be resolute to do, while, as you said just now, you have power to lift a foot or move a finger, and my word for it, all will come out right."

"Why did'nt you give her something to start on?" said Mr. Oldfield, in an earnest way, as the woman left the room. His portmonnaie was already in his hand. "Here's a dollar. Call her back, Fanny. Don't let her, after all this lecture, go without a farthing to help herself with."

Mrs. Oldfield smiled at her husband's kind-hearted, impulsive enthusiasm, and said:—

"Put up your money. It would do her more harm than good just now. That dollar coming in so easy a way, might suggest at the wrong moment, too strong a contrast between the slow, wearying achievements of honest toil, and the quicker returns of beggary, and depress the good purposes that now rule in her mind. Don't you see how much is at stake? It is the question of destroying a human soul. I choose to look at it so, for it may involve all this. We can have but little hopes of a boy whose mother supports him by idle beggary, it may be worse—for idleness and beggary lead almost surely to crime."

"Well, well," answered Mr. Oldfield, returning his portmonnaie to his pocket. "Perhaps you are right. But I can't do things after this cool-blooded fashion, as I call it. It isn't in me."

"It should be in us always," replied his wife, to do as sound reason teaches. Unless we are thus guided, our good acts will, in most cases, be turned to evil consequences, so far as the subjects are concerned."

"But you do talk so to these people, Fanny. You don't seem to have any regard for their feelings. You probe every spot you think diseased as sharply as if you were a surgeon, with the life or death of a patient on your conscience."

"True words are in most cases better than alms," said Mrs. Oldfield, in no way disturbed by her husband's remarks. "And, moreover, a human soul on the conscience weighs heavier than a human body in peril."

When the woman who had come to Mrs. Oldfield for aid in her poverty, and had received only words instead of alms, left the house, she went with hurrying steps, homeward—new thoughts and purposes in her mind. The rooms she lived in were in the second story of a house in a narrow street occupied by a poor class of people, whose neglected children dwelt for the most part out of doors engaged in the bad work of corrupting one another. As Mrs. Clark entered this street, she heard an outcry among a crowd of children close by her house, and, on drawing nearer, saw two little things fighting, while other boys and girls were standing around and encouraging them to beat and tear each other. Such scenes were common in that neighborhood, but none the less disagreeable to Mrs. Clark, who was always disturbed by anything like quarreling or fighting, whether among grown-up people or children. So she hurried forward to stop the cruel contest. What was her pain to hear, on approaching, one of the older boys, who had been encouraging the fight, cry out:

"Run, Jack; here comes your mother!"

"No, he shan't run!" cried back another. "He struck Tom first, and he's got to fight it out."

By this time Mrs. Clark had pushed through the little crowd of children that surrounded the combatants. There was her child, a mere babe, with a passionate, fiery face, engaged in a fierce struggle with another child, about a year older. They were striking, biting and tearing at each other in a blind way, eager as wild beasts to do harm.

"John!" cried Mrs. Clark, as she laid hands on her boy, and tore the little furies apart; "how dare you do so?"

"I'll kill him," said John as he struggled to get away from his mother.

Mrs. Clark, shuddering at this dreadful exhibition of evil passion, caught him up in her arms and ran into the house. She did not stop to speak until she had gained her rooms, up stairs, when she put the boy down on the floor, and holding him from her, she said sternly:

"What is the meaning of this? How dare you fight that little boy?"

The child did not look shame-faced, or frightened. Young as he was, a fierce indignation gleamed out from every feature.

"Tom Sykes said you was a beggar! And I hit him. You ain't a beggar; and I'll hit any boy that says so. Are you a beggar mamma?"

And the child looked confidently into his mother's face. He did not know why she became so pale, nor why she turned her face away, so that the earnest eyes that were fixed upon it could not see all the sudden tumult of feeling that was revealed therein.

"You ain't a beggar, mamma!" persisted the child. "You work don't you?"

"Yes, Johnny, I work and will work for you as long as I can move a hand." And Mrs. Clark drew her boy close to her, and held his head against her bosom. "It was naughty in Tom Sykes to say that. But you muss't fight. That is wicked. His saying so don't make it so."

"You're as good as his mother, and a great deal better. She gets drunk!" said the child whose indignation still boiled over.

"Hush Johnny—hush! Don't say that again about the poor boy's mother. It's too dreadful to think about!" replied Mrs. Clark, who remembered too sadly, the drunken father whose misdoings would sooner or later be cast into the face of her child.

It took some time for the disturbed feelings of both mother and child to get back again into calmness. Then Mrs. Clark took from a closet the half-finished work she had laid aside in a fit of weary despondency, and went to her honest task again, when Johnny sat down to amuse himself as best he could. Already he had tasted the pleasure of the street and its rough, free companionship, during his mother's frequent periods of absence from home—and they had grown longer and oftener repeated of late—John had lived out of doors, and was beginning to harden in the active, rough-and-tumble life that was peculiar to the neighborhood, harden in mind as well as body.

"Can't I go down stairs, mamma?" he asked, soon growing weary of the still room and its few sources of enjoyment.

Now the timely spoken words of Mrs. Oldfield had not died in the memory of Mrs. Clark. They had quickened thought in a new direction, and awaked a host of anxious fears in regard to her child. But for this she would not have felt so keenly the reproach which Johnny had been called to bear on her account, nor so firmly resolved that it should never again be with a shadow of truth to give it venom.

"You can go down in the yard, Johnny, but not into the street," she replied.

"I want to go into the street, mamma. Can't I go?" urged the child.

"Wouldn't you rather help mamma?" asked Mrs. Clark, forcing herself to speak in a pleasant way, though she felt anxious and disturbed.

"Yes," answered the boy, quickly.

"Then, as I have work, you know," said the mother, "I want you to help me by holding the end of this pillowcase as I sew the seam. Take hold just there and keep it out even."

Pleased at the thought of helping his mother, Johnny took hold of the piece of muslin, and stood by her side for nearly half an hour, patiently doing as she directed, while she, to keep him interested, talked to him cheerfully, and even told him little stories. Surprised at the ease with which she had thus far been able to hold the attention of her child, Mrs. Clark's thoughts began to reach out in the same direction, and she saw many ways by which he might be kept from the street. After the pillowcase was made, she had a skein of thread to wind off, and Johnny was well pleased to aid his mother by holding the skein for her. Then it came into her mind that it would be a very easy thing to teach him his letters, and then to spell and read, while she sat sewing. So, to begin at once, she took from a shelf a card on which an alphabet was printed in large letters, and proposed to give Johnny a lesson.

Nothing could have pleased him better; and, for nearly an hour he went over and over the sounds, repeating them after his mother, until he knew many of the letters at sight. Pleased at his earnestness and attention, Mrs. Clark praised Johnny at every step of his progress, and suggested so many great achievements of learning in the future, that he was actually fired with a child's ambition to be a scholar. He did not ask to go into the street again that day.

When Mrs. Clark laid down that night, her boy asleep beside her, it was with a clearer, calmer mind than she had possessed for a long while. She saw as a mother, only one right way for her—the way of honest industry, hard as the way might be—and she was resolved to walk therein, patiently, hopefully, though faint and weary at times, right to the end.

A few days after the little scene at Mrs. Oldfield's Mrs. Clark called again upon the lady who had given her kindly spoken admonition instead of alms. This time she had her little boy with her, for she had resolved never again to leave him exposed to the evil influences that surrounded them. Mr. Oldfield was present as before.

"I will take that work now, if you please, ma'am," said the poor woman.

"So you have thought well of our suggestions," remarked Mrs. Oldfield.

"Oh, yes, indeed, ma'am," replied Mrs. Clark, with an earnestness that was not to be mistaken. "This is my little boy; and I thank you in his name."

Johnny was a handsome, bright-eyed little fellow. Mr. Oldfield held out his hand to him, and the boy came forward, in a manly way, giving his hand and answering without bashfulness, any questions that were asked.

A few minutes' talk with Mrs. Clark brought out the whole story of what had occurred on the day previous to her visit.

"Was I right or wrong?" asked Mrs. Oldfield, after the woman had departed, with work enough to keep her employed for a week.

"Right, of course," replied her husband. "You're always right in these matters. But I can't be so cool and calculating. It isn't in me."

"And so, oftener do more harm than good in your benevolent acts, I am sorry to say," replied Mrs. Oldfield. "It isn't money help, you may depend upon it, that poor people want, half so much as to be shown how to help themselves."