Ester Ried Yet Speaking | Page 2

business.
It was all the answer the clouds vouchsafed him.
With the listener inside it was different. The interested look changed to
an eager one. She left her seat and moved toward the absorbed young
man, breaking in on his reverie with the clearest of voices:--
"I beg your pardon,--but are you thinking of your sister? You are Mr.
Ried, I believe? I have heard of your sister's life, and of her beautiful
death, through a dear friend of my husband, who loved Ester. I have
always wanted to know more about her. I wanted to get acquainted with
you, so I might ask you things about her. I am waiting now for my
husband to come and introduce us. But perhaps it isn't necessary. Do
you know who I am?"
"It is Mrs. Roberts, I believe?" the young man said, struggling with his
astonishment and embarrassment.
"Yes, and you are Mr. Alfred Ried. Well, now we know each other
without any further ceremony. Will you tell me a little about your sister,
Mr. Ried? You were thinking of her just now."
"I was missing her just now," said he, trying to smile, "as I very often
am. I was a little fellow when she died; but the older I grow the more
difficult I find it to see how the world can spare her. She was so full of
plans for work, and there are so few like her."
"It may be that she is working still, in the person of her brother."
He shook his head energetically, though his face flushed.
"No, I can only blunder vaguely over work that I know she, with her
energetic ways and quick wits, could have done, and done well. It
happens that she was especially interested in a class of people of whom
I know something. They need help, and I don't know how to help them.
It seems to me that she could have done it."
"Will you tell me who the people are?"

"It is a set of boys for whom nobody cares," he said, speaking sadly; "it
hardly seems possible that there could ever have been a time when
anybody cared for them, though I suppose their mothers did when they
were little fellows."
Thus spoke the ignorant young man,--ignorant of the depths to which
sin will sink human nature, but rich in the memory of mother-love.
"I think of my sister Ester in connection with them," he said, speaking
apologetically, "because she was peculiarly interested in wild young
fellows like them; she thought they might be reached,--that there might
be ways invented for reaching them, such as had not been yet. She had
plans, and they were good ones. I thought so then, little fellow that I
was, and I think so now, only nobody is at work carrying them out; and
I wonder sometimes if Ester could have been needed in heaven half as
much as she is needed on earth. She used to talk to me a great deal
about what might be done. I think now that she wanted to put me in the
way of taking up some of the work that she would have done; but she
mistook her material. I can't do it."
"Are you sure? You are young yet, and besides, you may be doing
more than you think. Couldn't I help? What is there that needs doing for
these particular young men?"
"Everything!" he said, excitedly. "If you should see them you would
get a faint idea of it. They come occasionally down to the
Sabbath-school at the South End; in fact, they come quite frequently,
though I'm sure I can't see why. It certainly isn't for any good that they
get. Their actions, Mrs. Roberts, surpass anything that I ever
imagined."
"Who is their teacher?"
"That would be a difficult question to answer. They have a different
teacher every Sabbath. No one is willing to undertake the class twice.
They have tried all the teachers who attend regularly, and several who
have volunteered for once, and never would attempt it a second time.
Just now, there is no one who will make a venture."

"Have you tried?"
He shook his head emphatically.
"I know at least so much. Why, Mrs. Roberts, some of them are as old
as I, and, indeed, I think one or two are older. No; we have secured the
best teachers that we could for them, but each one has been a failure. I
suppose they must go."
"Go where?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"What an awful question! Where will they go, Mrs. Roberts, if we let
them slip now?"
He was tremendously in earnest. One could not help feeling that he had
studied the possibilities, and felt the danger.
"Suppose I try to help! Shall