Observations of a Retired Veteran | Page 4

evidently with great pain on crutches. The town bell striking the hour was not more punctual than the sound of his crutches. His hands were distorted by rheumatism, his limbs twisted, and his face had a patient look as of one who had suffered for a hundred years. His face was rough, but somewhere about its expression there was a graciousness that attracted my attention. One other expression in it struck me; it was the air of a man who had finished his work. Not that he hadn't frequent consultations with the ministers who approached him, or showed any lack of interest in what was going on, but just a look as if he was doing anything for the last time. Once he got up and made an official report of some kind to the Bishop. As he closed it, his eyes burned with an intense anxiety and he opened his lips as if to say something. But it was left unsaid, and as he painfully resumed his seat the old look returned. As the close of the Conference approached, I saw him several times with his head bent over the back of the pew. It was on an evening very near the close. The rays of the westering March sun shone through the windows with a cold, cheerless light. His name was called. He raised his head. His face was flushed. He struggled to his feet and with his crutches hobbled around the aisle to the front of the pulpit, where he stood, balancing himself on his crutches. And then the story came out. It was told to those in the seats rather than to the Bishop. He had entered the ministry young and had hoped to give his whole life to God. But of late years disease had overtaken him. He had struggled against it and tried to do his duty through great suffering, but lately he had found that he could be of no further use and he asked--here he paused and turned from the pews to the Bishop. It seemed that he was about to say something that he had striven for years not to say. His eyes filled and in a thick voice he said: "I ask to be put on the superannuated list." And then he sat down on the nearest seat and wept like a child. What it would have broken the heart of other men to have staid in, it broke his heart to leave. I viewed him with intense curiosity. Five or six of his brother ministers came up one by one, and silently took hold of his twisted hands. I don't think they said a word; I am sure he did not. He did not look at them, for his head was buried on one of his cheap, home-made crutches, and from his pocket he had taken a worn and faded handkerchief, with which he was checking his tears. After he had gotten back to his pew, some ministers here and there over the audience got up and testified to what the man had been and what work he had done. Some of them had seen him, crippled as he was and suffering the agony of rheumatism, driving miles through the falling snow to fill an appointment to preach. Somehow it seemed to me a eulogy of the dead--and it was. When I saw him the next morning he had the air of a man who had met a great loss, instead of a man who had just parted with a life of labor and physical anguish, but there was still the last time look about him. And it was the last time. In six months from that time he was dead. What shall we say when such a life of self-sacrifice passes on to the stars? What can we say, except to speculate on the boundless possibilities that eternity must contain for such a life. What must such a little minute-hand life as sixty years, develop into on the dial plate of eternity, when it is begun as this man's was. Such a man as this, it seems to me, must at some time or other have touched the very hem of the Master's garment.
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I saw in your paper this week an expression which continues to run through my head. It is an advertisement of a poultryman for poultry, in which he says with rough frankness, "Old roosters not wanted." Whether it is good policy in him, while attempting to secure tender and succulent birds for the clerical stomach, to affront that venerable class of fowls upon which we sinners are to live long after the clergy have left, I will not say. I do not believe, however, that it will go unresented or unpunished.