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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Benefits Forgot, by Honoré Willsie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Benefits Forgot
+       A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love
+
+Author: Honoré Willsie
+
+Illustrator: Charles E. Cartwright
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18951]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENEFITS FORGOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "COME HERE AND SIT DOWN AND WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR
+MOTHER!"--Page 74.]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+BENEFITS FORGOT
+
+A Story Of Lincoln And Mother Love
+
+
+BY HONORÉ WILLSIE
+
+Author Of "Still Jim," "Lydia Of The Pines," Etc.
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES E. CARTWRIGHT
+
+
+Publishers
+
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+New York
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright, 1917, by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+All rights reserved, including that of translation
+into foreign languages
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+
+I   THE DONATION PARTY                             1
+
+II  THE CIRCUIT RIDER                             27
+
+III WAR                                           45
+
+IV  MR. LINCOLN                                   63
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE DONATION PARTY
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I
+
+THE DONATION PARTY
+
+
+Brother Meaker rose from his pew and looked at Jason appraisingly.
+
+"I don't know, brethren," he said. "Of course, he's a growing boy. Just
+turned twelve, didn't you say, ma'am?" Jason's mother nodded faintly
+without looking up, and Brother Meaker went on. "As I said, he's a
+growing boy, but he's dark and wiry. And I've always noted, the dark
+wiry kind eat smaller than any other kind. I should take at least
+twelve pounds of sugar off the allowance for the year and four gallon
+less of molasses than you was calculatin' on."
+
+He sat down and Sister Cantwell rose. She was a fat woman, famous in the
+southern Ohio country for the lavish table she set.
+
+"Short sweetening," she said in a thin high voice, "is dreadful high. I
+said to Hiram yesterday that the last sugar loaf I bought was worth its
+weight in silver. I should say, cut down on short sweetening. Long
+sweetening is all right except for holidays."
+
+Jason whispered to his mother, "What's long sweetening, mother?"
+
+"They must mean molasses," she whispered in return, with a glance at
+Jason's father, who sat at the far end of the pew reading his Bible as
+he always did at this annual ordeal.
+
+Jason looked from his mother's quiet, sensitive face, like yet so unlike
+his own, to the bare pulpit of the little country church, then back at
+Brother Ames, who was conducting the meeting. This annual conference and
+the annual donation party were the black spots in Jason's year. His
+mother, he suspected, suffered as he did: her face told him that. Her
+tender lips, usually so wistful and eager, were at these times thin and
+compressed. Her brown eyes, that except at times of death or illness
+always held a remote twinkle, were inscrutable.
+
+Jason's face was so like, yet already so unlike his mother's! The same
+brown eyes, with the same twinkle, but tonight instead of being
+inscrutable, boyishly hard. The same tender mouth, with tonight an
+unboyish sardonic twist. What Jason's father's face might have said one
+could not know, for it was hidden under a close-cropped brown beard. He
+turned the leaves of his Bible composedly, looking up only as the
+meeting reached a final triumphant conclusion with Brother Ames'
+announcement:
+
+"So, Brother Wilkins, there you are, a liberal allowance if I must say
+it. Two hundred and fifty dollars for the year, with the usual donation
+party to take place in the fall of the year."
+
+Brother Wilkins, who was Jason's father, rose, bowed and said: "I thank
+you, brethren. Let us pray!"
+
+The fifty or sixty souls in the church knelt, and Jason's father, his
+eyes closed, lifted his great bass voice in prayer:
+
+"O God, You have led our feeble and trusting steps to this town of High
+Hill, Ohio. You have put into the hearts and minds of these people, O
+God, the purpose of feeding and clothing us. Whether they do it well or
+ill, concerns them and You, O God, and not us. We are but Your humble
+servants, doing Your divine bidding. Yet this is perhaps the proper
+occasion, Our Heavenly Father, to thank You that You have sent us but
+one child and that unlike Solomon, Your servant has but one wife. And
+now, O God, bless these people in their giving. And make me, in my
+solitary circuit riding in the hills and valleys a proper mouthpiece of
+Your will. For Lord Jesus' sake, Amen."
+
+There was a short pause after the rich voice stopped, then a few weak
+"Amens" came from different corners of the church and Brother Ames,
+jumping to his feet, exclaimed:
+
+"Let us close the meeting by singing
+
+    'How tedious and tasteless the hours
+    When Jesus no longer I see--'"
+
+This ended Jason's first day at High Hill. The salary was small, even
+for a Methodist circuit rider, in the decade before the Civil War. It
+was smaller by fifty dollars than what they had been allowed the year
+before. Yet, High Hill, as Mrs. Wilkins pointed out to Jason the next
+day, was much more attractive than any town they had been in for years.
+There was a good school, and the Ohio river-packet stopped twice a week,
+and a Mr. Inchpin in the town was reported to be the owner of a number
+of books. Jason's mother was an Eastern woman and sometimes the
+loneliness and hardship of her life made her find solace in what seemed
+to Jason inconsequential things. Still, he was glad of the school, for
+he was a first-class student and already had decided to take his
+father's and mother's advice that he study medicine. And the packet,
+warping in twice a week, was, after all, something to which one might
+look forward and Mr. Inchpin's books would be wonderful.
+
+Jason was sure that the Ohio valley in which he had spent the whole of
+his short life was the most beautiful spot in the world. The lovely
+green heights rolling back into the Kentucky sky line, were, he thought,
+great enough for David, whose cattle fed upon a thousand hills. The fine
+headlands on the Ohio side, wooded, mysterious, were, he was sure, clad
+in verdure like the utmost bound of the everlasting hills of Jacob. And
+High Hill with its fifteen hundred souls was "a city, builded on a hill
+that could not be laid."
+
+For Jason was brought up on the Bible. His father believed that it ought
+to be, outside of his school text books, his only literature. His
+mother, with her Eastern traditions, thought otherwise. A Methodist
+circuit rider before the Civil War moved every year, and every year Mrs.
+Wilkins combed each new community for books. It was wonderful how she
+and Jason scented them out.
+
+They had been in High Hill about a week when Jason came panting into the
+house late one afternoon. His father was writing a sermon in the sitting
+room. Jason tip-toed into the kitchen, where his mother was preparing
+supper.
+
+"The packet's in, mother, and I carried a man's carpet bag up to the
+hotel and look--what he gave me!"
+
+His slender boyish brown hands fairly trembled as he held a torn and
+soiled magazine toward his mother. She dropped the biscuit she was
+molding and seized it.
+
+"_Harper's Monthly!_ O Jason dear, how wonderful! You shall read it
+aloud to me after supper."
+
+"It's prayer meeting night," said Jason in a sick voice.
+
+His mother flushed a little. "So it is! My goodness, Jason! Print makes
+a heathen of me and you're most as bad. You haven't fed the horse or
+milked."
+
+"So I won't get a look at it till tomorrow," cried Jason, bitterly.
+
+Mrs. Wilkins glanced toward the closed door that led into the sitting
+room. Then she looked at Jason's wide brown eyes, at the round-about she
+had cut over from his father's old sermon coat, at the darned stockings
+and the trousers that had belonged to the rich boy of the town they had
+lived in the year before.
+
+"Jason," she said, "you ought to get plenty of sleep because you're a
+growing boy. But a thing like this won't happen for years
+again--and--well, I've saved up several candle ends, hoping to get some
+sewing done nights when your father was using the lamp. When you go up
+to bed tonight, take those and read your magazine."
+
+"But you ought to keep them," protested Jason.
+
+"Not at all," exclaimed his mother, vigorously, "it's all for your
+education. Run along now and milk."
+
+So Jason reveled in his _Harper's Monthly_, and the next day as he wiped
+the dishes for his mother, he produced his great idea.
+
+"If I can earn the money, this summer, mother, can I subscribe to
+_Harper's Monthly_ for a year?"
+
+"My goodness, Jason, it's five dollars and this is the first of August!
+School begins in a month."
+
+"I know all that," replied Jason impatiently, "but if I earn the money
+can I have it for _Harpers Monthly_?"
+
+"Of course you can. It's all for your education, my dear. I never forget
+that."
+
+A money paying job for a boy of twelve was a hard thing to find in High
+Hill and Jason was late for supper that night. But his brown eyes were
+shining with triumph when he slid into his seat and held out his bowl
+for his evening meal of mush and milk.
+
+"I've got a job," he said.
+
+"A job?" queried his father. He smiled a little at Jason's mother.
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Inchpin is having a new barn built on the hill back of
+his house. The brook runs at the foot of it and I'm going to haul gravel
+and sand and water up to the building site. It'll take about a month. He
+provides the horse and wagon."
+
+"And how much will he pay you?" asked Mrs. Wilkins.
+
+"He says he can't tell till he's through. But I'm going to ask him for
+five dollars."
+
+Jason's father looked amused and a little troubled. "Jason, I hope
+you're not too interested in Mammon. But I must say I'm glad to see you
+have your mother's energy."
+
+"Or your father's," said Mrs. Wilkins, smiling into the blue eyes
+opposite hers. "Nobody can say that a circuit rider lacks energy."
+
+And so during the hot August days, Jason toiled on Mr. Inchpin's new
+barn, never once visiting the swimming hole in the brook, never once
+heeding the long-drawn invitation of the cicada to loll under the trees
+with one of Mr. Inchpin's books, never once breaking away when the toot
+of the packet reverberated among the hills.
+
+"He's a fine lad," Mr. Inchpin told Jason's father. "I never have seen
+such determination in a little fellow."
+
+Brother Wilkins looked gratified, but when he repeated the little
+compliment to Jason's mother he added, "I don't believe I understand
+Jason altogether."
+
+"I do," said Mrs. Wilkins, stoutly.
+
+August came to an end with cool nights and shorter days and Mr.
+Inchpin's barn was finished of a Saturday evening. He called Jason into
+the house, into the library where there were bound volumes of _Godey's
+Lady's Book_ and Blackwood, and handed him three paper dollars.
+
+"There you are, my man. I'd intended to give you only two. But you've
+done well, by ginger, so here's three dollars."
+
+Jason looked up at him dumbly, mumbled something, stuffed the bills into
+his trousers pocket and bolted for home. He burst in on his mother in
+the kitchen, buried his face against her bosom and sobbed.
+
+"I can't have it after all! He only gave me three dollars! I can't have
+it! And now I'll never know how that story 'Bleak House' ended."
+
+Jason's father came into the kitchen, hastily: "What in the world--"
+
+"Jason! Jason! don't sob so!" cried Mrs. Wilkins. "We'll raise the rest
+of the money some way. I'll find it. Hush, dear, hush! Mercy, the mush
+is burning!"
+
+Jason's father took the boy's grimy blistered hand, such a strong
+slender hand and so like his mother's, and sitting down in the kitchen
+chair, he pulled Jason to him.
+
+"Tell me, Jason," he urged gently, "what money?"
+
+Jason still torn with occasional sobs, managed to tell the story.
+
+"_Harper's Monthly_," exclaimed Brother Wilkins. "Dear! Dear! I had
+hoped you'd give the money to a foreign mission, Jason."
+
+"Foreign mission!" cried Jason's mother. "Well, I guess not! Jason's
+education is going to be taken care of before the heathen."
+
+"But how'll we get the extra dollars?" asked Brother Wilkins,
+helplessly.
+
+"I'll manage," replied Jason's mother, her gentle voice a little louder
+than usual.
+
+"Then let us eat supper," said Jason's father, clearing his throat for
+grace.
+
+Jason's mother sold a girlhood treasure, a little silver-tipped
+hair-pin, to the storekeeper's wife, the following Monday, for two
+dollars, and the jubilant Jason exchanged the single bills for a single
+note. The note was cut in two and sent in separate letters to New York,
+this being the before the war method of safeguarding loss of money in
+the mail. There was a period of several weeks of waiting during which
+Jason met every mail. Then a third letter was sent by Jason's mother,
+asking why the delay, and telling Jason's little story.
+
+Jason met the return packet, his heart now high, now low. He had met so
+many futile packets since the first of September. But this time there
+was a letter explaining that but one-half of the note had arrived in New
+York, but that on faith, the editors were sending the back numbers of
+the magazine requested and that the rest of the year's subscription
+would follow. And Jason never did know whether or not the second half of
+the note arrived.
+
+And there they were, a fat pile of magazines! Jason clasped them in his
+arms and rushed home with them. A tag tail of boys followed him and by
+nightfall most of the town knew that Jason Wilkins had four numbers of
+_Harper's Monthly_ on hand.
+
+Jason was out milking the cow when Mr. Inchpin arrived.
+
+"Heard Jason had some new magazines in hand. Don't s'pose you could lend
+me a few, over night?"
+
+Jason's mother was in the kitchen. It was donation party night and she
+had been cooking all day in preparation.
+
+"Surely, surely," said Jason's father, picking up the pile of magazines.
+"Jason can't get at them before the end of the week. Take them and
+welcome."
+
+Mr. Inchpin rode away. Jason came in with the milk pail and the family
+sat down to a hasty supper.
+
+"Won't I have a minute of time to look at my magazines, mother?" asked
+Jason. "O, I hate donation parties!"
+
+"Jason!" thundered his father. "Would you show ingratitude to God? And
+the books are not here anyway. I loaned them to Mr. Inchpin."
+
+"Father!"
+
+"O Ethan!"
+
+Brother Wilkins' eyes were steel gray, instead of blue. "Jason can read
+his Bible until the end of the week. His ingratitude deserves
+punishment."
+
+Jason rushed from the table and flung himself sobbing into the hay loft.
+His mother found him there a few moments later.
+
+"I know, dear! I know! It's hard. But father doesn't love books as you
+and I do, so he doesn't understand. And you must hurry and get ready for
+the party."
+
+"I don't want the donation party, I want my magazines," sobbed Jason.
+
+"I know. But life seldom, so very seldom, gives us what we want, dear
+heart. Just be thankful that you will be happy at the end of the week
+and come and help mother with the party."
+
+As donation parties go, this one was a huge success. Fully a hundred
+people attended it. They played games, they sang hymns, they ate a
+month's provisions and Mrs. Wilkins' chance of a new dress in the cake
+and coffee she provided. They left behind them a pile of potatoes and
+apples that filled two barrels and a heap of old clothing that Jason,
+candle in hand, turned over with his foot.
+
+"There's Billy Ames' striped pants," he grumbled. "Every time his mother
+licked him into wearing 'em, I know he prayed I'd get 'em, the ugly
+beasts, and I have. And there's seven old patched shirts. I suppose I'll
+get the tails sewed together into school shirts for me and there's Old
+Mrs. Arley's plush dress--I suppose poor mother'll have to fix that up
+and wear it to church. Why don't they give stuff father'll have to wear,
+too? I wonder why a minister's supposed to be so much better than his
+wife or son."
+
+"What's that you're saying, Jason?" asked his father sharply as he
+brought the little oil lamp from the sitting room into the kitchen. Mrs.
+Wilkins followed. This was a detestable job, the sorting of the donation
+debris, and was best gotten through with, at once. Jason, shading the
+candle light from his eyes, with one slender hand, looked at his father
+belligerently.
+
+"I was saying," he said, "that it was too bad you don't have to wear
+some of the old rags sometimes, then you'd know how mother and I feel
+about donation parties."
+
+There was absolute silence for a moment in the little kitchen. A late
+October cricket chirped somewhere.
+
+Then, "O Jason!" gasped his mother.
+
+The boy was only twelve, but he had been bred in a difficult school and
+was old for his years. He looked again at the heaps of cast-off clothing
+on the floor and his gorge rose within him.
+
+"I tell you," he cried, before his father could speak, "that I'll never
+wear another donation party pair of pants. No, nor a shirt-tail shirt,
+either. I'm through with having the boys make fun of me. I'll earn my
+own clothes every summer and I'll earn mother's too."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort, sir," thundered Jason's father, his
+great bass voice rising as it did in revival meetings. "You'll do
+nothing but wear donation clothes as long as you're under my roof. I've
+long noted your tendency to vanity and mammon. To my prayers, I shall
+begin to add stout measures."
+
+Jason threw back his head, a finely shaped head it was with good breadth
+between the eyes.
+
+"I tell you, sir, I'm through with donation pants. If folks don't think
+enough of the religion you preach to pay you for it I'd--I'd advise you
+to get another religion."
+
+Under his beard, Ethan Wilkins went white, but not so white as Jason's
+mother. But she spoke quietly.
+
+"Jason, apologize to your father at once."
+
+"I couldn't accept an apology now," said the minister. "I shall have to
+pray to get my mind into shape. In the meantime Jason shall be punished
+for this. Not until everyone in the town who desires to read his
+_Harper's Monthlies_ has done so, can Jason touch them."
+
+"O father, not that," cried Jason. "I'll apologize! I'll wear the pants!
+Why, it would be Christmas before I'd see them again!"
+
+"I can't accept your apology now. Neither your spirit nor mine is right.
+And I cannot retract. Your punishment must stand."
+
+Jason was all child now. "Mother," he cried, "don't let him! Don't let
+him!"
+
+Mrs. Wilkins' lips quivered. For a moment she could not speak. Then with
+an inscrutable look into her husband's eyes she said:
+
+"You must obey your father, Jason. You have been very wicked."
+
+Jason put down his candle and sobbed. "I know it. But I'll be good. Let
+me have my magazines. They're mine. I paid for them."
+
+"No!" roared the minister. "Go to bed, sir, and see to it that you pray
+for a better heart."
+
+Jason's sobs sounded through the little house long after his father and
+mother had gone to bed. The minister sighed and turned restlessly.
+
+"Why was I given such a rebellious son, do you suppose?" he asked
+finally.
+
+"Perhaps God hopes it'll make you have a better understanding of
+children," replied Mrs. Wilkins. "Christ said that unless you became
+like one of them you could not enter the kingdom."
+
+There was another silence with Jason's sobs growing fainter, then, "But
+he was wicked, Mary, and he deserved punishment."
+
+"But not such a punishment. Of course, I had to support you, no matter
+what I thought. But O Ethan, Ethan, it's so easy to kill the fineness in
+a proud and sensitive heart like Jason's."
+
+"Nevertheless," returned the minister, "when he spurns the giving hand
+of God, forgiveness is God's, not mine. We'll discuss it no more."
+
+Nor was the matter discussed again. Jason appeared at breakfast, with
+dark rings about his eyes, after having done his chores, as usual. Once,
+it seemed to his mother that he looked at her with a gaze half
+wondering, half hurt, as if she had failed him when his trust and need
+had been greatest. But he said nothing and she hoped that her mind had
+suggested what was in her aching heart and that Jason's was only a
+child's hurt that would soon heal.
+
+He never again asked for the magazines. On Christmas morning his father
+placed them, tattered and marred, from their many lendings, beside his
+plate. Jason did not take them when he left the table and later on his
+mother carried them up to his room. Whether he read them or not, she did
+not know. But she was glad to see him begin again to watch for the
+packet and read the current numbers as they arrived.
+
+She dyed Billy Ames' striped pants in walnut juice and they really
+looked very well. Jason wore them without comment as he did the shirts
+she fashioned for him from many shirt tails.
+
+And in the spring they left High Hill for a valley town.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE CIRCUIT RIDER
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+II
+
+THE CIRCUIT RIDER
+
+
+The years sped on with unbelievable swiftness as they are very prone to
+do after the corner into the teens is turned.
+
+Jason worked every summer, but he did not offer to buy his mother a
+dress nor did he buy himself either clothing or books. He put all he
+earned by toward his course in medicine. When he was a little fellow,
+his mother had given him a lacquered sewing box that had belonged to her
+French mother. It had proved an admirable treasure box for childish
+hoardings. Jason, the summer he was thirteen, cleared it out and put
+into it his summer earnings, ten dollars.
+
+With his newly acquired reticence, he did not speak of the box, nor did
+he mention the extra bills, quarters and dollars that appeared there
+from time to time. The little hoard grew slowly, very slowly, in spite
+of these anonymous additions--it grew as slowly as the years sped
+rapidly, it seemed to Jason's mother.
+
+Jason must have been sixteen, the summer he went with his father on one
+of the Sunday circuit trips. He never had been on one before. But it had
+been decided that he was to begin his medical studies in the fall. He
+was to be apprenticed to a doctor in Baltimore and his mother was
+anxious for father and son to draw together if possible before the son
+went into the world. Not that Jason and the minister quarreled. But
+there never had been the understanding between the two that except for
+the unfortunate magazine episode, always had existed between Jason and
+his mother.
+
+The trip lay in the hills of West Virginia. Brother Wilkins rode his old
+horse, Charley, a handsome gray. Jason rode an old brown mare, borrowed
+from a parishioner for the trip.
+
+Mrs. Wilkins, standing in the door, watched the two ride off together
+with a thrill of pride. Jason was almost as tall in the saddle as his
+father. He had shot up amazingly of late. The minister was getting very
+gray. He had been late in his thirties when he married. But he sat a
+horse as though bred to the saddle and Old Charley was a beauty.
+Brother Wilkins was very fond of horses and was a good judge of horse
+flesh. Sometimes Mrs. Wilkins had thought, that if Ethan had not chosen
+to be a Methodist minister he would have made a first-class country
+squire.
+
+She watched the two out of sight down the valley road, then with a
+little sigh turned back to the empty home.
+
+Jason, though always a little self-conscious when alone with his father,
+was delighted with the idea of the trip. They crossed the Ohio on the
+ferry and rode rapidly into the West Virginia hills. The minister made a
+great effort to be entertaining and Jason was astonished at his father's
+intimate knowledge of the countryside.
+
+"I don't see how you remember all the places, father," he said at noon,
+when the minister had turned to a side road to find a farmer whom he
+wished to greet.
+
+"I had this circuit years ago before you were born, my boy. I know the
+people intimately."
+
+"Don't you get tired of it?" asked Jason, suddenly.
+
+"Tired of saving souls?" returned his father. "Do you think you'll ever
+get tired of saving bodies?"
+
+"O that's different," answered the boy. "You've got something to take
+hold of, with a body."
+
+"And the body ceases to exist when the soul departs. Never forget that,
+my boy."
+
+"But you work so hard," insisted Jason, "and you get so little for it. I
+don't mean money alone," flushing as if at some memory, "but it doesn't
+seem as if the people care. They'll take all they can get out of each
+minister as he comes along, and then forget him."
+
+Brother Wilkins looked at Jason, thoughtfully. "Sixteen is very young,
+Jason. I'm afraid you were born carnal minded. I pray every night of my
+life that as you grow older, you'll grow toward Christ and not away
+from Him."
+
+Again Jason flushed uncomfortably and a silence fell that lasted until
+they reached the remote hill settlement where service was to be held
+that night. The settlement consisted of a log church, surrounded by a
+scattered handful of log houses, each already with its tiny glow of
+light, for night comes early in the hills. The two had eaten a cold
+lunch in the saddles, for church service would begin as soon as they
+arrived.
+
+There were twenty-five or thirty people in the rough little church. They
+crowded round Brother Wilkins enthusiastically when he entered and he
+called them all by name as he shook hands with them. Jason slid into a
+back seat. His father mounted to the pulpit.
+
+"Let us open by singing
+
+    'How tedious and tasteless the hours
+    When Jesus no longer I see--'"
+
+The old familiar tune! Jason wondered how many meetings his father had
+opened with it. The audience sang it with a will. In fact with too much
+will. A group of young men on the rear seat opposite Jason sang with
+unnecessary fervor, quite drowning out the female voices in the
+congregation. Jason saw his father, his face heavily shadowed in the
+candle-light, glance askance at the rear seat.
+
+"Let us pray," said Brother Wilkins. There was a rustle as the
+congregation knelt. "O God, I have come to You again in this mountain
+place after many years and many wanderings. I thank You for giving me
+this privilege. I have greeted old friends who have not forgotten me and
+who all these years have remembered You and Christ, Your only begotten
+Son. Tonight, O Heavenly Father, I have brought with me to this sacred
+fold my own one lamb that he might see how sacred and how great is Your
+power. Look on him tonight, O Supreme Master, and mark him for Your
+own. And remember, that if the young men in the rear seat plan any
+disturbance tonight, O Heavenly Father, that the arm of Thy priest is
+strong and the soul of Thy servant is resolute. For Jesus Christ's sake,
+Amen."
+
+The boom of "Amens" from the back seat was tremendous. Brother Wilkins,
+rising after his prayer, looked at the four young men for a long moment,
+over his glasses. Then he said:
+
+"Let us sing
+
+    'From Greenland's icy mountains
+    To India's coral strands.'"
+
+This was sung with tremendous vim, and the minister began his sermon.
+Jason's father was a good preacher. His vocabulary was rich and his
+ideas those of a thinking man whose religion was a passion. But the
+young men on the rear seat were unimpressed. One of them snored. Brother
+Wilkins stopped his sermon.
+
+"Be silent, ye sons of Satan," he thundered. There was silence and he
+took up the thread of his talk. A low cat call interrupted him. The
+minister stopped and slipped off his coat, folding it carefully as he
+laid it on his desk. It was old and the seams would not stand strain. He
+rolled up his cuffs as he descended from the pulpit, the congregation
+watching him spell-bound. Jason had seen his father in action before and
+was deeply embarrassed but not surprised.
+
+Brother Wilkins strode up to the pew where the offenders sat and seized
+by the ear the largest of the group, a hulk of twenty-one or so, larger
+than the minister. He led the young man into the aisle and reached up
+and boxed his ears, with the sound of impact of a club on an empty
+barrel.
+
+"Now leave this house of God," roared the minister. The young fellow
+sneaked out the door. Brother Wilkins turned back to the pew.
+
+"Don't you tech me or I'll brain ye," cried the youth who was about
+Brother Wilkins' own size.
+
+"Hah!" snorted the minister. There was the sound of blows, a quick
+scuffling of feet and the second offender was booted out of the door.
+The remaining two made a quick and unassisted exit. Breathing a little
+heavily, Brother Wilkins returned to his sermon; and to his hypnotized
+and immensely regaled congregation it seemed that the rest of his
+preaching was as from one inspired by God.
+
+Jason sat brooding deeply. Something within him revolted at the
+spectacle of his father descending from the pulpit to beat recalcitrant
+members of his congregation. An old and familiar sense of shame
+enveloped him, and he was thankful when once again darkness had
+enveloped them and they were traveling rapidly along the mountain road.
+They were to have a late supper and spend the night at a cabin well
+along the road they must travel on the morrow.
+
+Brother Wilkins was in the abstracted state that always followed his
+preaching and Jason was glad to respect his silence, until it had lasted
+so long that he became uneasy.
+
+"Father, didn't you say that Herd's was five miles beyond the church?"
+
+The minister pulled up his horse. In the darkness Jason could barely see
+the outlines of his body.
+
+"Heavens, Jason! Why didn't you rouse me sooner? This isn't the main
+traveled road. When did we leave it?"
+
+"I don't know, sir. I thought you knew this part of the country so
+well--"
+
+"So I do, ordinarily. But I can't recognize by-paths on a night like
+this. Wait, isn't that a light up the mountainside yonder? Come along,
+my boy, we'll find out where we are."
+
+The light glowed only faintly from the open door of a cabin. An old
+woman, with a pipe in her mouth, sat crooning over a little fire in the
+crude fireplace. She looked up in astonishment when the two appeared in
+the doorway.
+
+"Why, it's Brother Wilkins!" she cackled. "Lord's sake, what you doin'
+clar up hyar!"
+
+"Why, Sister Clark! I am glad to see you," exclaimed Jason's father,
+shaking one of the old woman's hands, and shouting into her other, which
+she cupped round her ear. "My son and I must have got off the main road
+five miles back. We're on our way to Milton."
+
+Sister Clark was visibly excited. "Ye ain't going on a step tonight. I
+can fix a shake-down for ye. Thing like this don't happen to a lone old
+woman twice in a lifetime. Bring in your saddle-bags--but Lord!" she
+stopped aghast. "I ain't got a bit of pork in the house, nor there ain't
+a chicken on the place. All I got is corn-meal and molasses."
+
+"Plenty, Sister Clark! Plenty! Get the saddle-bags, Jason, and tie the
+horses to graze."
+
+They ate their supper by candle-light after their hostess had cooked the
+mush in a kettle hanging from the crane. Brother Wilkins had a violent
+choking fit during the meal and Sister Clark pounded him on the back,
+apologizing as she did so for her familiarity with the minister.
+
+Jason slept profoundly on his share of the shake-down that night, and at
+dawn, after more mush, they were up and away.
+
+Twice on this day, Sunday, Brother Wilkins held service in the mountains
+and it was nine o'clock at night when they started toward the Ohio
+again. It was not until they had reached the river at dawn and had
+roused the ferryman that the minister recovered from his Sunday
+abstraction.
+
+"Did you have a pleasant trip, Jason?" he asked as they led the horses
+into the boat.
+
+"Yes, father," answered Jason dutifully.
+
+Brother Wilkins looked at the boy, as if he were beholding him from a
+new angle.
+
+"You don't look as much like your dear mother as you did in your
+childhood, my boy. Sometimes--I wonder--Jason, do you think this life
+has been too hard on your mother?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I do. It's hard on a boy, why shouldn't it be doubly hard on
+a woman?"
+
+The minister sighed. "Your reply is hardly polite, Jason, though I
+suppose my question merited it." Then with sudden heat: "Never mistake
+this cold frankness of yours for courage, my son. It takes more courage
+usually to be courteous than to be impolite. Did you notice that I
+coughed violently yesterday evening at Sister Clark's?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, the cause of it was this. She went down to the spring and fetched
+a pail of water for the mush. When I was eating my helping, I felt a
+lump in my mouth. But the old lady had her eye on me every minute for
+fear I wouldn't enjoy the frugal meal, so I could only investigate with
+my tongue. I found that she had cooked a little bit of a frog in the
+mush. Now, Jason, if she had discovered that she never would have
+recovered from the mortification. The only time in her life the minister
+stopped with her. So, though it made me choke, I swallowed it. That,
+sir, is my idea of courtesy. I wish you not to forget it."
+
+Jason's cool, speculative young gaze was on his father's face as he
+answered:
+
+"I understand, father."
+
+The minister turned away. "No, you don't. I doubt if you ever do." And
+he did not speak again until they reached home.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WAR
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+III
+
+WAR
+
+
+And so Jason went away to study medicine. He worked very hard and
+progressed very rapidly. By the time he was twenty he was no longer "the
+doctor's boy." He was a real assistant in all but fees. He had no share
+in the doctor's income and always was desperately hard up.
+
+At first, he did not ask his father and mother for help. He did all
+sorts of odd chores to pay his way. But as he progressed in his
+profession, he had less and less time for earning his up-keep and had
+finally to write home for money. His mother always answered his letters
+and she never failed to send him money when he asked for it. How she
+managed it, Jason never asked. Perhaps he was ashamed to know.
+
+In all these four years he did not come home. He would have liked to but
+the trip was prohibitively expensive.
+
+Late in the fall of 1861, he received a letter from his mother
+containing a ten-dollar bill. It was a short letter. "Your father can't
+live more than a week. Come at once."
+
+Jason put his head down on that letter and sobbed, then dried his eyes
+and sought the doctor, who loaned him the rest of the money needed for
+the trip.
+
+The minister's circuit had swung him round again to High Hill. Jason
+disembarked from the packet late one November afternoon, carrying his
+carpet bag. Even in November, High Hill was beautiful. Through his
+sadness, Jason again felt the thrill of the giant headlands, the
+thousand hills of his boyish imaginings.
+
+There was the same little cottage, more weather-beaten than he had
+remembered it. His mother was waiting for him at the door. The four
+years had changed her, yet she seemed to Jason more beautiful than his
+mental picture of her had been.
+
+She kissed him with trembling lips. "He's still with us," she whispered.
+"I'm sure he waited for you."
+
+"What is the matter with him?" asked Jason, huskily, as he deposited his
+carpet bag on the sitting-room table.
+
+"Lung fever. He took a bad cold a month ago coming home from West
+Virginia in the rain. He was absent-minded, you know. If it hadn't been
+for Pilgrim, I don't think he'd ever got here."
+
+"Pilgrim?" asked Jason, warming his hands at the fire.
+
+"Surely I've written you about Pilgrim. Father bought him soon after you
+left. He's the wisest horse that ever lived. If you're warm, now, Jason,
+come to your father."
+
+He followed her into the bedroom which opened off the kitchen. His
+father lay on the feather bed, his eyes closed. O how worn--O how
+changed! Young Jason was hardened to suffering and death. He had not
+realized that to the sickness and death of one's own, nothing can harden
+us. He stood breathing hard while his mother stooped over the bed.
+
+"Ethan," she said softly, "our boy is here."
+
+Brother Wilkins opened his eyes and smiled faintly. He tried to say
+something and Jason sprang to take his hand.
+
+"Oh, he wants to speak to you and can't. O my poor dear! O Ethan, my
+dearest."
+
+Jason's mother broke down. Jason put his finger on his father's wrist.
+
+After a long moment, "Mother, he's gone," he whispered.
+
+After the funeral, Jason wandered about the village for a day or so,
+trying to plan for his mother's future and his own. All the townspeople
+were kind to him.
+
+"Haven't forgot how you loaned me those _Harper's Monthlies_ before you
+read 'em yourself," said Mr. Inchpin. "Anything I can do for you or your
+mother, let me know."
+
+The two had met in Hardwich's store, which was also the post office and
+the evening club for the males of High Hill. Jason had dropped in to
+post a letter.
+
+A tall scraggly man joined in. "Your father was the best preacher in
+Ohio. We was all glad when he got back here."
+
+"He had the gift of prayer," said an old man, in the back of the store.
+
+There was a silence which Jason struggled in vain to break.
+
+Then a young fellow who carried a buggy whip and smoked a cigar said,
+"How does the doctoring go, Jason?"
+
+"Well, thanks," returned Jason, looking at the young fellow, intently.
+It was Billy Ames, he of the striped pants.
+
+Back through Jason's heart, until now strangely softened by the
+happenings of the past few days, surged the accumulated bitterness of
+his poverty-stricken youth. He turned abruptly and left the store.
+
+His mother was watching for him, anxiously. "Jason, Pilgrim had an
+accident. He's got a frightful cut on his right fore shoulder. He must
+have got caught on a nail somehow."
+
+"Let's have a look at him," said Jason.
+
+The big gray was standing stolidly in his stall. Mrs. Wilkins held the
+candle while Jason examined him. On the right fore shoulder was a great
+three-cornered tear from which the skin hung in a bloody fold.
+
+"I'll have to sew it up." Jason was all surgeon now. "Do you think he'll
+stand still for us?"
+
+"Stand still," replied Jason's mother, indignantly. "Why, he'll know
+exactly what you are doing, and why."
+
+"All right then. You get me some clean rags and a darning-needle and
+I'll get the rest of the things I'll need."
+
+In a few moments the operation was well in hand.
+
+Pilgrim kept his ears back and his eyes on his mistress. He breathed
+heavily, but otherwise he did not stir. He was a large horse, with a
+small, intelligent head and a mighty chest. Jason's mother held the
+candle with one hand while she stroked the big gray's nose with the
+other.
+
+"Be careful, Jason, do!" she said softly.
+
+Jason grunted. "You keep him from biting or kicking and I'll do my
+share," he said.
+
+"Pilgrim bite!" cried Jason's mother indignantly.
+
+Again Jason grunted, working swiftly, with the skill of trained and
+accustomed fingers. The candle flickered on his cool young face, on his
+black hair and on his long, strong, surgeon's fingers. It flickered too
+on his mother's sweet lips, on her tired brown eyes and iron-gray hair.
+It put high-lights on the cameo at her throat and made a grotesque
+shadow of her hoop-skirts on the stable wall.
+
+Finally Jason straightened himself with a sigh and wiped his hands on a
+towel.
+
+"That's a good job," he said. "Must be some bad spikes here or in the
+pasture fence to have given him that rip. I'll hunt them up
+tomorrow.--Get over there!"
+
+This last to Pilgrim, who suddenly had put his head on Jason's shoulder
+with a soft nuzzling of his nose against the young doctor's cheek and a
+little whinny that was almost human.
+
+"Why, Jason, he's thanking you!" cried his mother. "He'll never forget
+what you've done for him tonight."
+
+Jason gave the horse a careless slap and started out the stable door.
+
+"You'll be having it that he speaks Greek next," he said.
+
+"You don't know him," replied Jason's mother. "This is the first time
+you ever saw him, remember. These last three years of your father's life
+he's been like one of the family." She followed Jason into the cottage.
+"Often and often before your poor father died he said he'd never have
+been able to keep on with the circuit-riding and the preaching if he'd
+had to depend on any other horse than Pilgrim. That horse just knew
+father was forgetful. He wouldn't budge if father forgot the
+saddle-bags. When Pilgrim balked, father always knew he'd forgotten
+something and he'd go back for it. I'll have supper on by the time
+you've washed up, Jason."
+
+The little stove that was set in the fireplace roared lustily. The
+kettle was singing. The old yellow cat slept cozily in the wooden rocker
+on the patch-work cushion. All the furniture, so simple and worn, was as
+familiar to Jason as the back of his hand.
+
+Jason washed at the bench in the corner, then sat down while his mother
+put the supper before him--fried mush, fried salt pork, tea and apple
+sauce.
+
+"Well," said Jason soberly, "what are we going to do now, mother?
+Father's gone and--"
+
+His mother's trembling lips warned him to stop.
+
+"It doesn't seem possible," she said, "that it's only a week since we
+laid him away."
+
+Jason interrupted gently. "I know, mother; but you and I have got to go
+on living!"
+
+"It's you I'm worrying about," said his mother.
+
+"I've been wondering if you hadn't better come back to Baltimore with
+me," mused Jason. "I can eke out a living somehow for the two of us."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Wilkins decidedly. "You've got burden enough to take
+care of yourself. I can get along till you're doctoring for yourself.
+Mr. Inchpin will let me have the cottage near the wharf if I'll go up to
+his house and cook his dinner for him. Then with a little sewing and a
+little nursing here in the village, the cow, the chickens and Pilgrim, I
+can get along. But I don't see how I can send you anything, Jason."
+
+Jason had brightened perceptibly. "If I can just get through this year,
+mother, I'll be on my feet. But I've got to pay Dr. Edwards back. He's a
+hard driver. If we can get together enough for that, I'll manage,
+somehow."
+
+Jason's mother sighed. "It does seem as if, all through the years, I
+ought to have saved something, but I haven't, not a cent, except what I
+raked and scraped together for your doctoring. Two hundred and fifty
+dollars a year beside donation parties is quite a sum, Jason, and I feel
+guilty that I haven't saved anything for you. But it all went,
+especially after father got sickly. I've sold a lot of things, Jason, so
+as to send you the money. I'm most at my wit's end now. Grandma's silver
+teapot, that kept you three months, and your father's watch, nearly six.
+That's the way the things have gone. My, how thankful I was we had 'em."
+
+Jason was still so very like his mother, so very unlike. Where her face
+was sweet and tremulous, his was cool and still. His brown eyes were
+careless and yet eager. Hers were not inscrutable now. The light had
+gone out of them from weeping. Jason's long, strong hands were smooth
+and quiet. Hers were knotted and work calloused and a little uncertain.
+
+As if something in her words irritated him, Jason said quickly, "Well,
+what did you and father start me on this doctor idea for, if you thought
+it was going to cost too much?"
+
+"O, Jason, you know that thought never occurred to either of us! There
+are still some things to go that I've sort of hung on to. Take the St.
+Bartholomew candlestick to Mr. Inchpin. That will give you the money you
+need right now."
+
+Jason looked up at the queerly wrought silver candlestick that was more
+like an old oil lamp than a candlestick. His mother's people had brought
+it from France with them. The family legend was that some Huguenot
+ancestor had come through the massacre of St. Bartholomew with this only
+relic of his home wrapped in his bosom.
+
+"Good!" said Jason eagerly. "The old thing is neither fish nor flesh,
+anyhow. Too big mouthed for a candle and folks are going to use coal
+oil more and more, anyhow. I can be off tomorrow."
+
+"Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, Jason."
+
+"I'll be glad to forget it," grumbled Jason. "What have we to be
+thankful for?"
+
+His mother looked at him a little curiously, but she said nothing. Jason
+caught the expression in her eyes.
+
+"Don't look at me that way, mother," he burst forth angrily, "I can't
+forgive father, with his big brain and body for doing so little for you
+and me. I can't forgive him for what he dragged us through--those
+donation parties! He had no right to put me through what he did that
+year at High Hill. And what did he get out of his life? They lay him
+away with the remark that he had a gift of prayer! And his widow may
+starve, for all of them."
+
+"Jason, be silent," cried his mother. She had risen and stood facing
+him, her face deathly white. "Not one word against your father. Because
+you never could appreciate him, you needn't belittle him now. Not one
+word," as Jason would have spoken. "He was my husband and I loved him,
+God knows. O Ethan, Ethan, how shall I finish my span of years alone!"
+she broke down utterly.
+
+Jason put his arms about her. "Mother, I didn't mean to hurt you. Truly
+I didn't. It's only that--" he stopped and set his lips tightly while he
+petted her in silence.
+
+"I pray, Jason," said his mother, finally, "that you will never have a
+grief or a punishment great enough to soften your heart."
+
+Jason did not answer. He went up to see Mr. Inchpin that night, and the
+following day started back East again.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+MR. LINCOLN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+IV
+
+MR. LINCOLN
+
+
+Three times a week during the year that followed, Jason's mother saddled
+Pilgrim and rode him to the post office after the shrieks of the whistle
+had warned her that the tri-weekly packet had come and gone. Four times
+during the year she heard from Jason.
+
+
+    "April 3, 1862.
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "I am very well indeed, and hope that you are not overworking.
+    Things are not going very well here. Everybody is hard pressed
+    because of the war and Dr. Edwards simply can't make any
+    collections. We get a good many soldiers who are sent home half
+    cured and, of course, we get nothing at all from them--don't want
+    to, in fact. Is there any way we could raise just a little money?
+    Not a cent that you've earned, understand, but perhaps you could
+    sell your old mahogany hat-box. Mrs. Chadwick always wanted it. I
+    never did care for those old things and I don't think you do. After
+    I get started in practice, I'll buy you a dozen hat-boxes. Won't it
+    be great when you can come down here and live with me?
+
+                                                 "Your loving son,
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+    "June 7, 1862.
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "I have been quite sick with a sore hand--almost got gangrene from a
+    soldier. That's why you haven't been hearing from me. I received the
+    ten dollars. Thank you very much. I didn't think the old trap would
+    bring that much. Dr. Edwards said yesterday that I had a genius for
+    surgery. The ten dollars paid my board for six weeks, giving me a
+    chance to take some extra cases for the doctor. The war looks bad,
+    doesn't it? They need surgeons and though I'm doing something in
+    patching up these poor fellows and sending them back, I wonder often
+    if I oughtn't to go into a war hospital. Do you remember the little
+    cameo pin you used to wear till father thought it was too dressy for
+    you? If you haven't lost it, I wish you'd send it down here for me
+    to pawn. I can get it back after the war. I think of you often
+    though I don't write. Don't work too hard.
+
+                                                 "Your loving son,
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+    "Sept. 24, 1862.
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "Could you possibly sell something to get five dollars to me by
+    return packet? Will write fully later.
+
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+But there was nothing more to sell.
+
+
+    "My dear boy," wrote Jason's mother, "I am heartbroken, for I know
+    how hard you are working, but truly, I have nothing left of the
+    least value. The cameo pin was the last. Am very much worried lest
+    you are sick. Do let me know. I am very well and the neighbors are
+    kind. Pilgrim is well, too, though the scar is there on his
+    shoulder. I'm sure he will always remember what you did for him. He
+    is all but human. _Please_ write me.
+
+                                         "A hug and kiss, from Mother."
+
+
+Jason's fourth letter was urgent and prompt in reply.
+
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "I am going into the army, mother. The need for surgeons is urgent
+    and I've got to help lick the South. I thought, barring the five
+    from you, I could raise enough to buy into practice with Dr. Edwards
+    before I leave, so that if I live, I will have that to return to. It
+    will cost a hundred dollars. But I can't do it. So I guess you'll
+    have to sell Pilgrim. I hate to ask it of you but after all he's
+    only an expense to you and I'll buy you another, after the war. Sell
+    him to the government for an army horse. Mr. Inchpin will attend to
+    it for you.
+
+                                                        "Lovingly,
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+Jason's mother read the letter with tears running down her cheeks. It
+was November. Drearily the Kentucky hills rolled back from the river and
+drearily the Ohio valleys stretched inland. Pilgrim plodded patiently
+toward the stable and his mistress, huddled in the saddle, gave him no
+heed until Pilgrim stamped impatiently at the stable door. Then she
+dismounted and the great horse stamped into his stall.
+
+"O Pilgrim," she sobbed, "Jason is going to war. Jason is going to war.
+I can't lose him too!"
+
+The horse turned his fine head and nickered softly as he rubbed his soft
+nose on her shoulder.
+
+"And I've got to let you go, old friend," she added. "I know that I
+don't need you, Pilgrim. It's just that you are like a living bit of
+father--and if Jason would only seem to understand that, it wouldn't be
+so hard to let you go. I wonder if all young folks are like Jason?"
+
+Old Pilgrim leaned his head over his stall and in the November gloaming
+he looked long at his mistress with his wise and gentle eyes. It was as
+if he would tell her that he had learned that youth is always a little
+hard; that only long years in harness with always the back-breaking load
+to pull, not for oneself, but for others, can make the really grateful
+heart. One of the sweet, deep compensations of the years, the gray horse
+seemed to say, is that gratitude grows in the soul.
+
+So Jason and Old Pilgrim both went to war. They did not see each other,
+but each one, in his own way, made a brilliant record. Pilgrim learned
+the sights and sounds and smells of war. The fearful pools of blood
+ceased to send him plunging and rearing in harness. The screams of utter
+fear or of mortal agony no longer set him to neighing or sweating in
+sympathy. Pilgrim, superb in strength and superb in intelligence,
+plodded efficiently through a battle just as he had plodded efficiently
+over the circuit of Jason's Methodist father.
+
+And Jason, cool and clear-headed, with his wonderful long strong hands,
+sawed and sewed and probed and purged his way through field hospital
+after field hospital, until the men began to hear of his skill and to
+ask for him when the fear of death was on them. His work absorbed him
+more and more, until months went by, and he neglected to write to his
+mother! Just why, who can say? Each of us looking into his heart,
+perhaps can find some answer. But Jason was young, and work and world
+hungry. He did not ask himself embarrassing questions. The months
+slipped into a year, and the first year into a second year. Still Jason
+did not write to his mother, nor did he longer hear from her.
+
+In November of the second year Jason was stationed in a hospital near
+Washington. One rainy morning as he made his way to the cot of a man who
+was dying of gangrene, an orderly stopped him.
+
+"This is Dr. Jason Wilkins?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sorry, Doctor, but I've got to arrest you and take you to Washington--"
+
+Jason looked the orderly over incredulously. "You've got the wrong man,
+friend."
+
+The soldier drew a heavy envelop carefully from his breast pocket, and
+handed it to Jason. Jason opened it uneasily, and gasped. This is what
+he read: "Show this to Surgeon Jason Wilkins, ---- Regiment. Arrest him.
+Bring him to me immediately.--A. LINCOLN."
+
+Jason whitened. "What's up?" he asked the orderly.
+
+"I didn't ask the President," replied the orderly dryly. "We'll start at
+once, if you please, Doctor."
+
+In a daze, Jason left for Washington. He thought of all the minor
+offenses he had committed. But they were only such as any young fellow
+might have committed. He could not believe that any of them had reached
+Mr. Lincoln's ears, or that, if they had, the great man in the White
+House would have heeded them.
+
+Jason was locked in a room in a Washington boarding-house for one night.
+The next day at noon the orderly called for him. Weak-kneed, Jason
+followed him up the long drive to the door of the White House, and into
+a room where there were more orderlies and a man at a desk writing. An
+hour of dazed waiting, then a man came out of a door and spoke to the
+man at the desk.
+
+"Surgeon Jason Wilkins," said the sentry.
+
+"Here!" answered Jason.
+
+"This way," jerked the orderly, and Jason found himself in the inner
+room, with the door closed behind him. The room was empty, yet filled.
+There was but one man in it besides Jason, but that man was Mr. Lincoln.
+He sat at a desk, with his somber eyes on Jason's face--still a cool
+young face, despite trembling knees.
+
+"You are Jason Wilkins?" said Mr. Lincoln.
+
+"Yes, Mr. President," replied the young surgeon.
+
+"Where are you from?"
+
+"High Hill, Ohio."
+
+"Have you any relatives?"
+
+"Only my mother is living."
+
+"Yes, only a mother! Well, young man, how is your mother?"
+
+Jason stammered. "Why, why--I don't know."
+
+"You don't know!" thundered Lincoln. "And why don't you know? Is she
+living or dead?"
+
+"I don't know," said Jason. "To tell the truth, I've neglected to write
+and I don't suppose she knows where I am."
+
+There was a silence in the room. Mr. Lincoln clenched a great fist on
+his desk, and his eyes scorched Jason. "I had a letter from her. She
+supposes you dead and asked me to trace your grave. What was the matter
+with her? No good? Like most mothers, a poor sort? Eh? Answer me, sir?"
+
+Jason bristled a little. "The best woman that ever lived, Mr.
+President."
+
+"Ah!" breathed Mr. Lincoln. "Still you have no reason to be grateful to
+her! How'd you get your training as a surgeon? Who paid for it? Your
+father?"
+
+Jason reddened. "Well, no; father was a poor Methodist preacher. Mother
+raised the money, though I worked for my board mostly."
+
+"Yes, how'd she raise the money?"
+
+Jason's lips were stiff. "Selling things, Mr. President."
+
+"What did she sell?"
+
+"Father's watch--the old silver teapot--the mahogany hat-box--the St.
+Bartholomew candlestick. Old things mostly; beyond use except in
+museums."
+
+Again silence in the room, while a look of contempt gathered in Abraham
+Lincoln's eyes that seared Jason's cool young soul till it scorched him.
+"You poor fool!" said Lincoln. "You poor worm! Her household
+treasures--one by one--for you. 'Useless things--fit for museums!' Oh,
+you fool!"
+
+Jason flushed angrily and bit his lips. Suddenly the President rose and
+pointed a long, bony finger at his desk. "Come here and sit down and
+write a letter to your mother!"
+
+Jason stalked obediently over and sat down in the President's seat.
+Anger and mortification were ill inspirations for letter-writing, but
+under Lincoln's burning eyes Jason seized a pen and wrote his mother a
+stilted note. Lincoln paced the floor, pausing now and again to look
+over Jason's shoulder.
+
+"Address it and give it to me," said the President. "I'll see that it
+gets to her." Then, his stern voice rising a little: "And now, Jason
+Wilkins, as long as you are in the army, you write to your mother once a
+week. If I have reason to correct you on the matter again, I'll have you
+court-martialed."
+
+Jason rose and handed the letter to the President, then stood, angry and
+silent, awaiting further orders. Abraham Lincoln took another turn or
+two up and down the room. Then he paused before the window and looked
+from it a long, long time. Finally he turned to Jason.
+
+"My boy," he said gently, "there's no finer quality in the world than
+gratitude. There is nothing a man can have in his heart so mean, so low
+as ingratitude. Even a dog appreciates a kindness, never forgets a soft
+word, or a bone. To my mind, the noblest holiday in the world is
+Thanksgiving. And, next the Creator, there is no one the holiday should
+be dedicated to as much as to mothers."
+
+Again Lincoln paused, and looked from the boyish face of the young
+surgeon out of the window at the bleak November skies, and Lincoln said
+to Jason, with God knows what tragedy of memory in his lonely heart:
+
+    "Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+    Thou dost not bite so nigh
+      As benefits forgot."
+
+Another pause. "You may go, my boy." And Lincoln shook hands with
+Jason, who stumbled from the room, his mind a chaos of resentment and
+anger. He made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, pausing as two army
+officers rode up to a hotel and dismounted, leaving their horses.
+Something about the big gray that one of the officers rode seemed
+vaguely familiar to the young doctor. The gray turned his small,
+intelligent head toward Jason, then with a sudden soft whinny, laid his
+head on Jason's shoulder and nuzzled his cheek gently. Jason looked at
+the right fore shoulder. A three-cornered scar was there. Jason and Old
+Pilgrim never had met but once, and yet--Jason was little more than a
+boy. Suddenly he threw his arms around Old Pilgrim's neck, and sobbed
+into the silky mane. Passers-by glanced curiously and then went on.
+Washington was full of tears those days.
+
+Pilgrim whinnied and waited patiently. Finally Jason dried his eyes,
+then stood in thought. The officer who had ridden Pilgrim came out at
+last. Jason saluted.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Captain, I'd like to buy that horse from you."
+
+The captain laughed. "There are a number of others like you."
+
+"No, but let me tell you about him, Captain. Give me ten minutes. I'm
+Dr. Wilkins of ---- Hospital."
+
+"O yes, I know of your work. What's the story, Doctor?"
+
+Jason told Pilgrim's history. "She gave him up for me and now I've found
+him," he finished. "I want to buy him back, get a furlough and take him
+home to her, myself. I've been saving my money."
+
+"You may have him for just what I paid for him, Doctor," said the
+captain, who was considerably Jason's senior. "Tell your mother I wish
+my own mother were living and that I do this in her memory."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Jason.
+
+A week later Jason led Pilgrim out of the freight car in which he had
+traveled from Washington to a railway station twenty-five miles from
+home. The river packets were not running and this was the nearest
+station to High Hill. It was noon and cold. Jason mounted and started
+south briskly and once more the Ohio valley opened up before him.
+
+It seemed to Jason that he was seeing the hills for absolutely the first
+time. And yet that could not be, for back with the first sight of the
+distant river came all his old boyish reverence for the headlands. The
+last time he had ridden horseback in the hills had been in the West
+Virginia circuit, with his father.
+
+For the first time since his interview with the President, Jason began
+to think of his father. All his newly awakened sense of gratitude had
+been centered on his mother. Did he then owe his father nothing?
+
+It took courage, it took nerve, it took stomach to patch together the
+bloody wrecks on the field of battle. It had taken tenacity to an ideal
+to starve and toil for his profession as he had done in Baltimore.
+Whence had come these qualities to Jason? He thought once more of his
+father on that trip on the West Virginian circuit, of the boys expelled
+from the church, of Sister Clark, of his own sense of mortification and
+his own contempt. And he dropped his head on his breast with a groan.
+
+And so as the sun set, Pilgrim with the scar on his right fore shoulder
+and Jason with the scar on his soul that only remorse implants there,
+stopped before the cottage in High Hill. And through the window, Jason's
+mother saw them. She rushed to the door and Jason, dismounting, ran up
+to her, and dropping on his knees, threw his arms about her waist and
+sobbed against her bosom:
+
+"O mother! O mother! Forgive me! I didn't realize. I didn't know!" Just
+as many, many sons have done before, and just as many more will do,
+please God, as long as love and gratitude endure.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Benefits Forgot, by Honoré Willsie
+
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Benefits Forgot, by Honoré Willsie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Benefits Forgot
+       A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love
+
+Author: Honoré Willsie
+
+Illustrator: Charles E. Cartwright
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18951]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENEFITS FORGOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-001" id="illus-001"></a>
+<img class='border' src='images/illus-001.jpg' alt='"COME HERE AND SIT DOWN AND WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR MOTHER!"--Page 74.' title='' /><br />
+<p class='caption'>"COME HERE AND SIT DOWN AND WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR MOTHER!"&mdash;<i>Page 74.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<table width="450" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="" border="1">
+  <col style="width:100%;" />
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+    <table width="90%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="" border="0">
+      <col style="width:100%;" />
+      <tr>
+        <td align="center">
+        <br /><br />
+        <hr style='width:80%' />
+        <span style="font-size: 220%;">BENEFITS FORGOT</span><br /><br />
+        <span style="font-size: 140%;"><i>A STORY OF LINCOLN AND</i></span><br />
+        <span style="font-size: 140%;"><i>MOTHER LOVE</i></span><br />
+        <hr style='width:80%' />
+        <span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /><br />BY</span><br />
+        <span style="font-size: 140%;">HONOR&Eacute; WILLSIE</span><br />
+        <span style="font-size: 80%;">AUTHOR OF "STILL JIM," "LYDIA OF THE PINES," ETC.</span><br /><br /><br />
+        <span style="font-size: 90%;"><i>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES E. CARTWRIGHT</i></span><br /><br /><br />
+        </td></tr>
+        <tr><td>
+        <div class='figcenter' style='width: 100px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+        <a name="illus-emb" id="illus-emb"></a>
+        <img class='noborder'  src='images/illus-002.jpg' alt='150' title='' /><br />
+        </div>
+        </td></tr>
+        <tr><td align="center">
+        <span style="font-size: 90%;">PUBLISHERS</span><br />
+        <span style="font-size: 110%;">FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY</span><br />
+        <span style="font-size: 90%;"><br />NEW YORK</span><br /><br />
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<p style='text-align:center'>
+<i>Copyright, 1917, by</i> <span class="smcap">Frederick A. Stokes Company</span><br />
+<i>All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages</i>
+</p>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</h2>
+<div class="smcap">
+<table border="0" width="500" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<col style="width:20%;" />
+<col style="width:70%;" />
+<col style="width:10%;" />
+<tr><td align="left">I</td><td align="left">THE DONATION PARTY</td><td align="right"><a href="#I">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">II</td><td align="left">THE CIRCUIT RIDER</td><td align="right"><a href="#II">24</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">III</td><td align="left">WAR</td><td align="right"><a href="#III">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">IV</td><td align="left">MR. LINCOLN</td><td align="right"><a href="#IV">63</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-002" id="illus-002"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-006.jpg'   alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="I" id="I"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span>
+<h2>I</h2><h3>THE DONATION PARTY</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Brother Meaker rose from his pew and looked at Jason appraisingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, brethren," he said. "Of course, he's a growing boy. Just
+turned twelve, didn't you say, ma'am?" Jason's mother nodded faintly
+without looking up, and Brother Meaker went on. "As I said, he's a
+growing boy, but he's dark and wiry. And I've always noted, the dark
+wiry kind eat smaller than any other kind. I should take at least
+twelve pounds of sugar off the allowance for the year and four gallon
+less of molasses than you was calculatin' on."</p>
+
+<p>He sat do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span>wn and Sister Cantwell rose. She was a fat woman, famous in the
+southern Ohio country for the lavish table she set.</p>
+
+<p>"Short sweetening," she said in a thin high voice, "is dreadful high. I
+said to Hiram yesterday that the last sugar loaf I bought was worth its
+weight in silver. I should say, cut down on short sweetening. Long
+sweetening is all right except for holidays."</p>
+
+<p>Jason whispered to his mother, "What's long sweetening, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"They must mean molasses," she whispered in return, with a glance at
+Jason's father, who sat at the far end of the pew reading his Bible as
+he always did at this annual ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>Jason looked from his mother's quiet, sensitive face, like yet so unlike
+his own, to the bare pulpit of the little country church, then back at
+Brother Ames, who was conducting the meeting. This annual conference and
+the annual donation party were the black spots in Jason's year. His
+mother, he suspected, suffered as he did: her face told him that. Her
+tender lips, usually so wistful and eager, were a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span>t these times thin and
+compressed. Her brown eyes, that except at times of death or illness
+always held a remote twinkle, were inscrutable.</p>
+
+<p>Jason's face was so like, yet already so unlike his mother's! The same
+brown eyes, with the same twinkle, but tonight instead of being
+inscrutable, boyishly hard. The same tender mouth, with tonight an
+unboyish sardonic twist. What Jason's father's face might have said one
+could not know, for it was hidden under a close-cropped brown beard. He
+turned the leaves of his Bible composedly, looking up only as the
+meeting reached a final triumphant conclusion with Brother Ames'
+announcement:</p>
+
+<p>"So, Brother Wilkins, there you are, a liberal allowance if I must say
+it. Two hundred and fifty dollars for the year, with the usual donation
+party to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span> place in the fall of the year."</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins, who was Jason's father, rose, bowed and said: "I thank
+you, brethren. Let us pray!"</p>
+
+<p>The fifty or sixty souls in the church knelt, and Jason's father, his
+eyes closed, lifted his great bass voice in prayer:</p>
+
+<p>"O God, You have led our feeble and trusting steps to this town of High
+Hill, Ohio. You have put into the hearts and minds of these people, O
+God, the purpose of feeding and clothing us. Whether they do it well or
+ill, concerns them and You, O God, and not us. We are but Your humble
+servants, doing Your divine bidding. Yet this is perhaps the proper
+occasion, Our Heavenly Father, to thank You that You have sent us but
+one child and that unlike Solomon, Your servant has but one wife. And
+now, O God, bless these people in their giving. And make me, in my
+solitary circuit riding in the hills and valleys a proper mouthpiece of
+Your will. For Lord Jesus' sake, Amen."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span></p>
+<p>There was a short pause after the rich voice stopped, then a few weak
+"Amens" came from different corners of the church and Brother Ames,
+jumping to his feet, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us close the meeting by singing</p>
+
+<p style='padding-left: 3em'>
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>'How tedious and tasteless the hours</span><br />
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>When Jesus no longer I see&mdash;'"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>This ended Jason's first day at High Hill. The salary was small, even
+for a Methodist circuit rider, in the decade before the Civil War. It
+was smaller by fifty dollars than what they had been allowed the year
+before. Yet, High Hill, as Mrs. Wilkins pointed out to Jason the next
+day, was much more attractive than any town they had been in for years.
+There was a good school, and the Ohio river-packet stopped twice a week,
+and a Mr. Inchpin in the town was reported to be the owner of a number
+of books. Jason's mother was an Eastern woman and sometimes the
+loneliness and hardship of her life made her find solace in what seemed
+to Jason inconsequential things. Still, he was glad of the school, for
+he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span>was a first-class student and already had decided to take his
+father's and mother's advice that he study medicine. And the packet,
+warping in twice a week, was, after all, something to which one might
+look forward and Mr. Inchpin's books would be wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>Jason was sure that the Ohio valley in which he had spent the whole of
+his short life was the most beautiful spot in the world. The lovely
+green heights rolling back into the Kentucky sky line, were, he thought,
+great enough for David, whose cattle fed upon a thousand hills. The fine
+headlands on the Ohio side, wooded, mysterious, were, he was sure, clad
+in verdure like the utmost bound of the everlasting hills of Jacob. And
+High Hill with its fifteen hundred souls was "a city, builded on a hill
+that could not be laid."</p>
+
+<p>For Jason was brought up on the Bible. His father believed that it ought
+to b<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span>e, outside of his school text books, his only literature. His
+mother, with her Eastern traditions, thought otherwise. A Methodist
+circuit rider before the Civil War moved every year, and every year Mrs.
+Wilkins combed each new community for books. It was wonderful how she
+and Jason scented them out.</p>
+
+<p>They had been in High Hill about a week when Jason came panting into the
+house late one afternoon. His father was writing a sermon in the sitting
+room. Jason tip-toed into the kitchen, where his mother was preparing
+supper.</p>
+
+<p>"The packet's in, mother, and I carried a man's carpet bag up to the
+hotel and look&mdash;what he gave me!"</p>
+
+<p>His slender boyish brown hands fairly trembled as he held a torn and
+soiled magazine toward his mother. She dropped the biscuit she was
+molding and seized it.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Harper's Monthly!</i> O Jason dear, how wonderful! You shall read it
+aloud to me aft<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span>er supper."</p>
+
+<p>"It's prayer meeting night," said Jason in a sick voice.</p>
+
+<p>His mother flushed a little. "So it is! My goodness, Jason! Print makes
+a heathen of me and you're most as bad. You haven't fed the horse or
+milked."</p>
+
+<p>"So I won't get a look at it till tomorrow," cried Jason, bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilkins glanced toward the closed door that led into the sitting
+room. Then she looked at Jason's wide brown eyes, at the round-about she
+had cut over from his father's old sermon coat, at the darned stockings
+and the trousers that had belonged to the rich boy of the town they had
+lived in the year before.</p>
+
+<p>"Jason," she said, "you ought to get plenty of sleep because you're a
+growing boy. But a thing like this won't happen for years
+again&mdash;and&mdash;well, I've saved up several candle ends, hoping to get some
+sewing done nights when your father was using the lamp. When you go up
+to bed tonight, take those and read <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>your magazine."</p>
+
+<p>"But you ought to keep them," protested Jason.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," exclaimed his mother, vigorously, "it's all for your
+education. Run along now and milk."</p>
+
+<p>So Jason reveled in his <i>Harper's Monthly</i>, and the next day as he wiped
+the dishes for his mother, he produced his great idea.</p>
+
+<p>"If I can earn the money, this summer, mother, can I subscribe to
+<i>Harper's Monthly</i> for a year?"</p>
+
+<p>"My goodness, Jason, it's five dollars and this is the first of August!
+School begins in a month."</p>
+
+<p>"I know all that," replied Jason impatiently, "but if I earn the money
+can I have it for <i>Harpers Monthly</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you can. It's all for your education, my dear. I never forget
+that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A money paying job for a boy of twelve was a hard thing to find in High
+Hill and Jason was late for supper that night. But his brown eyes were
+shining with triumph when he slid into his seat and held out his bowl
+for his evening meal of mush and milk.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a job," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"A job?" queried his father. He smiled a little at Jason's mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. Mr. Inchpin is having a new barn built on the hill back of
+his house. The brook runs at the foot of it and I'm going to haul gravel
+and sand and water up to the building site. It'll take about a month. He
+provides the horse and wagon."</p>
+
+<p>"And how much will he pay you?" asked Mrs. Wilkins.</p>
+
+<p>"He says he can't tell till he's through. But I'm going to ask him for
+five dollars."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span></p>
+<p>Jason's father looked amused and a little troubled. "Jason, I hope
+you're not too interested in Mammon. But I must say I'm glad to see you
+have your mother's energy."</p>
+
+<p>"Or your father's," said Mrs. Wilkins, smiling into the blue eyes
+opposite hers. "Nobody can say that a circuit rider lacks energy."</p>
+
+<p>And so during the hot August days, Jason toiled on Mr. Inchpin's new
+barn, never once visiting the swimming hole in the brook, never once
+heeding the long-drawn invitation of the cicada to loll under the trees
+with one of Mr. Inchpin's books, never once breaking away when the toot
+of the packet reverberated among the hills.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a fine lad," Mr. Inchpin told Jason's father. "I never have seen
+such determination in a little fellow."</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins looked gratified, but when he repeated the little
+compliment to Jason's mother he added, "I don't believe I understand
+Jason altogether."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I do," said Mrs. Wilkins, stoutly.</p>
+
+<p>August came to an end with cool nights and shorter days and Mr.
+Inchpin's barn was finished of a Saturday evening. He called Jason into
+the house, into the library where there were bound volumes of <i>Godey's
+Lady's Book</i> and Blackwood, and handed him three paper dollars.</p>
+
+<p>"There you are, my man. I'd intended to give you only two. But you've
+done well, by ginger, so here's three dollars."</p>
+
+<p>Jason looked up at him dumbly, mumbled something, stuffed the bills into
+his trousers pocket and bolted for home. He burst in on his mother in
+the kitchen, buried his face against her bosom and sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't have it after all! He only gave me three dollars! I can't have
+it! And now I'll never know how that story 'Bleak House' ended."</p>
+
+<p>Jason's father came into the kitchen, hastily: "What in the world&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Jason! Jas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>on! don't sob so!" cried Mrs. Wilkins. "We'll raise the rest
+of the money some way. I'll find it. Hush, dear, hush! Mercy, the mush
+is burning!"</p>
+
+<p>Jason's father took the boy's grimy blistered hand, such a strong
+slender hand and so like his mother's, and sitting down in the kitchen
+chair, he pulled Jason to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Jason," he urged gently, "what money?"</p>
+
+<p>Jason still torn with occasional sobs, managed to tell the story.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Harper's Monthly</i>," exclaimed Brother Wilkins. "Dear! Dear! I had
+hoped you'd give the money to a foreign mission, Jason."</p>
+
+<p>"Foreign mission!" cried Jason's mother. "Well, I guess not! Jason's
+education is going to be taken care of before the heathen."</p>
+
+<p>"But how'll we get the extra dollars?" asked Brother Wilkins,
+helplessly.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span></p>
+<p>"I'll manage," replied Jason's mother, her gentle voice a little louder
+than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Then let us eat supper," said Jason's father, clearing his throat for
+grace.</p>
+
+<p>Jason's mother sold a girlhood treasure, a little silver-tipped
+hair-pin, to the storekeeper's wife, the following Monday, for two
+dollars, and the jubilant Jason exchanged the single bills for a single
+note. The note was cut in two and sent in separate letters to New York,
+this being the before the war method of safeguarding loss of money in
+the mail. There was a period of several weeks of waiting during which
+Jason met every mail. Then a third letter was sent by Jason's mother,
+asking why the delay, and telling Jason's little story.</p>
+
+<p>Jason met the return packet, his heart now high, now low. He had met so
+many futile packets since the first of September. But this time there
+was a letter explaining that but one-half of the note had arrived in New
+York, but that on faith, the editors were sending the back numbers of
+the magazine requested and that the rest o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>f the year's subscription
+would follow. And Jason never did know whether or not the second half of
+the note arrived.</p>
+
+<p>And there they were, a fat pile of magazines! Jason clasped them in his
+arms and rushed home with them. A tag tail of boys followed him and by
+nightfall most of the town knew that Jason Wilkins had four numbers of
+<i>Harper's Monthly</i> on hand.</p>
+
+<p>Jason was out milking the cow when Mr. Inchpin arrived.</p>
+
+<p>"Heard Jason had some new magazines in hand. Don't s'pose you could lend
+me a few, over night?"</p>
+
+<p>Jason's mother was in the kitchen. It was donation party night and she
+had been cooking all day in preparation.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely, surely," said Jason's father, picking up the pile of magazines.
+"Jason can't get at them before the end o<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>f the week. Take them and
+welcome."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Inchpin rode away. Jason came in with the milk pail and the family
+sat down to a hasty supper.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't I have a minute of time to look at my magazines, mother?" asked
+Jason. "O, I hate donation parties!"</p>
+
+<p>"Jason!" thundered his father. "Would you show ingratitude to God? And
+the books are not here anyway. I loaned them to Mr. Inchpin."</p>
+
+<p>"Father!"</p>
+
+<p>"O Ethan!"</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins' eyes were steel gray, instead of blue. "Jason can read
+his Bible until the end of the week. His ingratitude deserves
+punishment."</p>
+
+<p>Jason rushed from the table and flung himself sobbing into the hay loft.
+His mother found him there a few moments later.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span></p>
+<p>"I know, dear! I know! It's hard. But father doesn't love books as you
+and I do, so he doesn't understand. And you must hurry and get ready for
+the party."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want the donation party, I want my magazines," sobbed Jason.</p>
+
+<p>"I know. But life seldom, so very seldom, gives us what we want, dear
+heart. Just be thankful that you will be happy at the end of the week
+and come and help mother with the party."</p>
+
+<p>As donation parties go, this one was a huge success. Fully a hundred
+people attended it. They played games, they sang hymns, they ate a
+month's provisions and Mrs. Wilkins' chance of a new dress in the cake
+and coffee she provided. They left behind them a pile of potatoes and
+apples that filled two barrels and a heap of old clothing that Jason,
+candle in hand, turned over with his foot.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Billy Ames' striped pants," he grumbled. "Every time his mother
+licked him into wearing 'em, I know he prayed I'd get 'em, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span> ugly
+beasts, and I have. And there's seven old patched shirts. I suppose I'll
+get the tails sewed together into school shirts for me and there's Old
+Mrs. Arley's plush dress&mdash;I suppose poor mother'll have to fix that up
+and wear it to church. Why don't they give stuff father'll have to wear,
+too? I wonder why a minister's supposed to be so much better than his
+wife or son."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that you're saying, Jason?" asked his father sharply as he
+brought the little oil lamp from the sitting room into the kitchen. Mrs.
+Wilkins followed. This was a detestable job, the sorting of the donation
+debris, and was best gotten through with, at once. Jason, shading the
+candle light from his eyes, with one slender hand, looked at his father
+belligerently.</p>
+
+<p>"I was saying," he said, "that it was too bad you don't have to wear
+some of the old rags someti<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>mes, then you'd know how mother and I feel
+about donation parties."</p>
+
+<p>There was absolute silence for a moment in the little kitchen. A late
+October cricket chirped somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Then, "O Jason!" gasped his mother.</p>
+
+<p>The boy was only twelve, but he had been bred in a difficult school and
+was old for his years. He looked again at the heaps of cast-off clothing
+on the floor and his gorge rose within him.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you," he cried, before his father could speak, "that I'll never
+wear another donation party pair of pants. No, nor a shirt-tail shirt,
+either. I'm through with having the boys make fun of me. I'll earn my
+own clothes every summer and I'll earn mother's too."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do nothing of the sort, sir," thundered Jason's father, his
+great bass voice rising as it did in revival meetings. "You'll do
+nothing but wear donation clothes as long as you're u<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>nder my roof. I've
+long noted your tendency to vanity and mammon. To my prayers, I shall
+begin to add stout measures."</p>
+
+<p>Jason threw back his head, a finely shaped head it was with good breadth
+between the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, sir, I'm through with donation pants. If folks don't think
+enough of the religion you preach to pay you for it I'd&mdash;I'd advise you
+to get another religion."</p>
+
+<p>Under his beard, Ethan Wilkins went white, but not so white as Jason's
+mother. But she spoke quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Jason, apologize to your father at once."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't accept an apology now," said the minister. "I shall have to
+pray to get my mind into shape. In the meantime Jason shall be punished
+for this. Not until everyone in the town who desires to read his
+<i>Harper's Monthlies</i> has done so, can Jason touch them."</p>
+
+<p>"O father, not that," cried Jason. "I'll apologize! I'll wear the pants!
+Why, it would be Christmas b<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span>efore I'd see them again!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't accept your apology now. Neither your spirit nor mine is right.
+And I cannot retract. Your punishment must stand."</p>
+
+<p>Jason was all child now. "Mother," he cried, "don't let him! Don't let
+him!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilkins' lips quivered. For a moment she could not speak. Then with
+an inscrutable look into her husband's eyes she said:</p>
+
+<p>"You must obey your father, Jason. You have been very wicked."</p>
+
+<p>Jason put down his candle and sobbed. "I know it. But I'll be good. Let
+me have my magazines. They're mine. I paid for them."</p>
+
+<p>"No!" roared the minister. "Go to bed, sir, and see to it that you pray
+for a better heart."</p>
+
+<p>Jason's sobs sounded through the little house long after his father and
+mother had gone to bed. The minister s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>ighed and turned restlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why was I given such a rebellious son, do you suppose?" he asked
+finally.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps God hopes it'll make you have a better understanding of
+children," replied Mrs. Wilkins. "Christ said that unless you became
+like one of them you could not enter the kingdom."</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence with Jason's sobs growing fainter, then, "But
+he was wicked, Mary, and he deserved punishment."</p>
+
+<p>"But not such a punishment. Of course, I had to support you, no matter
+what I thought. But O Ethan, Ethan, it's so easy to kill the fineness in
+a proud and sensitive heart like Jason's."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless," returned the minister, "when he spurns the giving hand
+of God, forgiveness is God's, not mine. We'll discuss it no more."</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the matter discussed again. Jason appeared at breakfast, with
+dark rings about his eyes, after havin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>g done his chores, as usual. Once,
+it seemed to his mother that he looked at her with a gaze half
+wondering, half hurt, as if she had failed him when his trust and need
+had been greatest. But he said nothing and she hoped that her mind had
+suggested what was in her aching heart and that Jason's was only a
+child's hurt that would soon heal.</p>
+
+<p>He never again asked for the magazines. On Christmas morning his father
+placed them, tattered and marred, from their many lendings, beside his
+plate. Jason did not take them when he left the table and later on his
+mother carried them up to his room. Whether he read them or not, she did
+not know. But she was glad to see him begin again to watch for the
+packet and read the current numbers as they arrived.</p>
+
+<p>She dyed Billy Ames' striped pants in walnut juice and they really
+looked very well. Jason wore them without comment as he did the shirts
+she fashioned for him from many shirt tails.</p>
+
+<p>And in the spring they left High Hill for a valley town.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-003" id="illus-003"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-029.jpg'  alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-004" id="illus-004"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-032.jpg'  alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="II" id="II"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>
+<h2>II</h2><h3>THE CIRCUIT RIDER</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>The years sped on with unbelievable swiftness as they are very prone to
+do after the corner into the teens is turned.</p>
+
+<p>Jason worked every summer, but he did not offer to buy his mother a
+dress nor did he buy himself either clothing or books. He put all he
+earned by toward his course in medicine. When he was a little fellow,
+his mother had given him a lacquered sewing box that had belonged to her
+French mother. It had proved an admirable treasure box for childish
+hoardings. Ja<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>son, the summer he was thirteen, cleared it out and put
+into it his summer earnings, ten dollars.</p>
+
+<p>With his newly acquired reticence, he did not speak of the box, nor did
+he mention the extra bills, quarters and dollars that appeared there
+from time to time. The little hoard grew slowly, very slowly, in spite
+of these anonymous additions&mdash;it grew as slowly as the years sped
+rapidly, it seemed to Jason's mother.</p>
+
+<p>Jason must have been sixteen, the summer he went with his father on one
+of the Sunday circuit trips. He never had been on one before. But it had
+been decided that he was to begin his medical studies in the fall. He
+was to be apprenticed to a doctor in Baltimore and his mother was
+anxious for father and son to draw together if possible before the son
+went into the world. Not that Jason and the minister quarreled. But
+there never had been the understanding between the two that except for
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> unfortunate magazine episode, always had existed between Jason and
+his mother.</p>
+
+<p>The trip lay in the hills of West Virginia. Brother Wilkins rode his old
+horse, Charley, a handsome gray. Jason rode an old brown mare, borrowed
+from a parishioner for the trip.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Wilkins, standing in the door, watched the two ride off together
+with a thrill of pride. Jason was almost as tall in the saddle as his
+father. He had shot up amazingly of late. The minister was getting very
+gray. He had been late in his thirties when he married. But he sat a
+horse as though bred to the saddle and Old Charley was a beauty.
+Brother Wilkins was very fond of horses and was a good judge of horse
+flesh. Sometimes Mrs. Wilkins had thought, that if Ethan had not chosen
+to be a Methodist minister he would have made a first-class country
+squire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She watched the two out of sight down the valley road, then with a
+little sigh turned back to the empty home.</p>
+
+<p>Jason, though always a little self-conscious when alone with his father,
+was delighted with the idea of the trip. They crossed the Ohio on the
+ferry and rode rapidly into the West Virginia hills. The minister made a
+great effort to be entertaining and Jason was astonished at his father's
+intimate knowledge of the countryside.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how you remember all the places, father," he said at noon,
+when the minister had turned to a side road to find a farmer whom he
+wished to greet.</p>
+
+<p>"I had this circuit years ago before you were born, my boy. I know the
+people intimately."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you get tired of it?" asked Jason, suddenly.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span></p>
+<p>"Tired of saving souls?" returned his father. "Do you think you'll ever
+get tired of saving bodies?"</p>
+
+<p>"O that's different," answered the boy. "You've got something to take
+hold of, with a body."</p>
+
+<p>"And the body ceases to exist when the soul departs. Never forget that,
+my boy."</p>
+
+<p>"But you work so hard," insisted Jason, "and you get so little for it. I
+don't mean money alone," flushing as if at some memory, "but it doesn't
+seem as if the people care. They'll take all they can get out of each
+minister as he comes along, and then forget him."</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins looked at Jason, thoughtfully. "Sixteen is very young,
+Jason. I'm afraid you were born carnal minded. I pray every night of my
+life that as you grow older, you'll grow toward Christ and not away
+from Him."</p>
+
+<p>Again Jason flushed uncomfortably and a silence fell that lasted until
+they reached the remote hill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span> settlement where service was to be held
+that night. The settlement consisted of a log church, surrounded by a
+scattered handful of log houses, each already with its tiny glow of
+light, for night comes early in the hills. The two had eaten a cold
+lunch in the saddles, for church service would begin as soon as they
+arrived.</p>
+
+<p>There were twenty-five or thirty people in the rough little church. They
+crowded round Brother Wilkins enthusiastically when he entered and he
+called them all by name as he shook hands with them. Jason slid into a
+back seat. His father mounted to the pulpit.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us open by singing</p>
+
+<p style='padding-left: 3em'>
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>'How tedious and tasteless the hours</span><br />
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>When Jesus no longer I see&mdash;'"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The old familiar tune! Jason wondered how many meetings his father had
+opened with it. The audience sang it with a will. In fact with too much
+will. A group of young men on the rear seat opposite Jason sang with
+unnecessary fervor, quite drowning out the female voices in the
+congregation. Jason saw his father, h<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>is face heavily shadowed in the
+candle-light, glance askance at the rear seat.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us pray," said Brother Wilkins. There was a rustle as the
+congregation knelt. "O God, I have come to You again in this mountain
+place after many years and many wanderings. I thank You for giving me
+this privilege. I have greeted old friends who have not forgotten me and
+who all these years have remembered You and Christ, Your only begotten
+Son. Tonight, O Heavenly Father, I have brought with me to this sacred
+fold my own one lamb that he might see how sacred and how great is Your
+power. Look on him tonight, O Supreme Master, and mark him for Your
+own. And remember, that if the young men in the rear seat plan any
+disturbance tonight, O Heavenly Father, that the arm of Thy priest is
+strong and the soul of Thy servant is resolute. For Jesus Christ's sake,
+Amen."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The boom of "Amens" from the back seat was tremendous. Brother Wilkins,
+rising after his prayer, looked at the four young men for a long moment,
+over his glasses. Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Let us sing</p>
+
+<p style='padding-left: 3em'>
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>'From Greenland's icy mountains</span><br />
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>To India's coral strands.'"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>This was sung with tremendous vim, and the minister began his sermon.
+Jason's father was a good preacher. His vocabulary was rich and his
+ideas those of a thinking man whose religion was a passion. But the
+young men on the rear seat were unimpressed. One of them snored. Brother
+Wilkins stopped his sermon.</p>
+
+<p>"Be silent, ye sons of Satan," he thundered. There was silence and he
+took up the thread of his talk. A low cat call interrupted him. The
+minister stopped and slippe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>d off his coat, folding it carefully as he
+laid it on his desk. It was old and the seams would not stand strain. He
+rolled up his cuffs as he descended from the pulpit, the congregation
+watching him spell-bound. Jason had seen his father in action before and
+was deeply embarrassed but not surprised.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins strode up to the pew where the offenders sat and seized
+by the ear the largest of the group, a hulk of twenty-one or so, larger
+than the minister. He led the young man into the aisle and reached up
+and boxed his ears, with the sound of impact of a club on an empty
+barrel.</p>
+
+<p>"Now leave this house of God," roared the minister. The young fellow
+sneaked out the door. Brother Wilkins turned back to the pew.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you tech me or I'll brain ye," cried the youth who was about
+Brother Wilkins' own size.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span></p>
+<p>"Hah!" snorted the minister. There was the sound of blows, a quick
+scuffling of feet and the second offender was booted out of the door.
+The remaining two made a quick and unassisted exit. Breathing a little
+heavily, Brother Wilkins returned to his sermon; and to his hypnotized
+and immensely regaled congregation it seemed that the rest of his
+preaching was as from one inspired by God.</p>
+
+<p>Jason sat brooding deeply. Something within him revolted at the
+spectacle of his father descending from the pulpit to beat recalcitrant
+members of his congregation. An old and familiar sense of shame
+enveloped him, and he was thankful when once again darkness had
+enveloped them and they were traveling rapidly along the mountain road.
+They were to have a late supper and spend the night at a cabin well
+along the road they must travel on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins was in the abstracted state that always followed his
+preaching and Jason was glad to respect h<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>is silence, until it had lasted
+so long that he became uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, didn't you say that Herd's was five miles beyond the church?"</p>
+
+<p>The minister pulled up his horse. In the darkness Jason could barely see
+the outlines of his body.</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens, Jason! Why didn't you rouse me sooner? This isn't the main
+traveled road. When did we leave it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, sir. I thought you knew this part of the country so
+well&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"So I do, ordinarily. But I can't recognize by-paths on a night like
+this. Wait, isn't that a light up the mountainside yonder? Come along,
+my boy, we'll find out where we are."</p>
+
+<p>The light glowed only faintly from the open door of a cabin. An old
+woman, with a pipe in her mouth, sat crooning over a little fire in the
+crude fireplace. She looked up in astonishment when the two appeared in
+the doorway.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span></p>
+<p>"Why, it's Brother Wilkins!" she cackled. "Lord's sake, what you doin'
+clar up hyar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Sister Clark! I am glad to see you," exclaimed Jason's father,
+shaking one of the old woman's hands, and shouting into her other, which
+she cupped round her ear. "My son and I must have got off the main road
+five miles back. We're on our way to Milton."</p>
+
+<p>Sister Clark was visibly excited. "Ye ain't going on a step tonight. I
+can fix a shake-down for ye. Thing like this don't happen to a lone old
+woman twice in a lifetime. Bring in your saddle-bags&mdash;but Lord!" she
+stopped aghast. "I ain't got a bit of pork in the house, nor there ain't
+a chicken on the place. All I got is corn-meal and molasses."</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty, Sister Clark! Plenty! Get the saddle-bags, Jason, and tie the
+horses to graze."</p>
+
+<p>They ate their supper by candle-light after their hostess had cooked the
+mush in a kettle hanging from the cran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>e. Brother Wilkins had a violent
+choking fit during the meal and Sister Clark pounded him on the back,
+apologizing as she did so for her familiarity with the minister.</p>
+
+<p>Jason slept profoundly on his share of the shake-down that night, and at
+dawn, after more mush, they were up and away.</p>
+
+<p>Twice on this day, Sunday, Brother Wilkins held service in the mountains
+and it was nine o'clock at night when they started toward the Ohio
+again. It was not until they had reached the river at dawn and had
+roused the ferryman that the minister recovered from his Sunday
+abstraction.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you have a pleasant trip, Jason?" he asked as they led the horses
+into the boat.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father," answered Jason dutifully.</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins looked at the boy, as if he were beholding him from a
+new angle.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span></p>
+<p>"You don't look as much like your dear mother as you did in your
+childhood, my boy. Sometimes&mdash;I wonder&mdash;Jason, do you think this life
+has been too hard on your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I do. It's hard on a boy, why shouldn't it be doubly hard on
+a woman?"</p>
+
+<p>The minister sighed. "Your reply is hardly polite, Jason, though I
+suppose my question merited it." Then with sudden heat: "Never mistake
+this cold frankness of yours for courage, my son. It takes more courage
+usually to be courteous than to be impolite. Did you notice that I
+coughed violently yesterday evening at Sister Clark's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the cause of it was this. She went down to the spring and fetched
+a pail of water for the mush. When I was eating my helping, I felt a
+lump in my mouth. But the old lady had her eye on me every minute for
+fear I wouldn't enjoy the frugal meal, so I could only investigate with
+my tongue. I found that she had cooked a little bit of a frog in the
+mush. Now, Jason, if she had discovered that she never would have
+recovered from the mortification. The only time in her life the minister
+stopped with her. So, though it made me choke, I swallowed it. That,
+sir, is my idea of courtesy. I wish you not to forget it."</p>
+
+<p>Jason's cool, speculative young gaze was on his father's face as he
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, father."</p>
+
+<p>The minister turned away. "No, you don't. I doubt if you ever do." And
+he did not speak again until they reached home.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-005" id="illus-005"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-046.jpg'  alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-006" id="illus-006"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-050.jpg'  alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="III" id="III"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+<h2>III</h2><h3>WAR</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>And so Jason went away to study medicine. He worked very hard and
+progressed very rapidly. By the time he was twenty he was no longer "the
+doctor's boy." He was a real assistant in all but fees. He had no share
+in the doctor's income and always was desperately hard up.</p>
+
+<p>At first, he did not ask his father and mother for help. He did all
+sorts of odd chores to pay his way. But as he progressed in his
+profession, he had less and less time for earning his up-k<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>eep and had
+finally to write home for money. His mother always answered his letters
+and she never failed to send him money when he asked for it. How she
+managed it, Jason never asked. Perhaps he was ashamed to know.</p>
+
+<p>In all these four years he did not come home. He would have liked to but
+the trip was prohibitively expensive.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the fall of 1861, he received a letter from his mother
+containing a ten-dollar bill. It was a short letter. "Your father can't
+live more than a week. Come at once."</p>
+
+<p>Jason put his head down on that letter and sobbed, then dried his eyes
+and sought the doctor, who loaned him the rest of the money needed for
+the trip.</p>
+
+<p>The minister's circuit had swung him round again to High Hill. Jason
+disembarked from the packet late one November afternoon, carrying his
+carpet bag. Even in November, High Hill was beautiful. Through his
+sadness, Jason again felt the thrill of the giant headlands, the
+thousand hills of his boyish imaginings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was the same little cottage, more weather-beaten than he had
+remembered it. His mother was waiting for him at the door. The four
+years had changed her, yet she seemed to Jason more beautiful than his
+mental picture of her had been.</p>
+
+<p>She kissed him with trembling lips. "He's still with us," she whispered.
+"I'm sure he waited for you."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with him?" asked Jason, huskily, as he deposited his
+carpet bag on the sitting-room table.</p>
+
+<p>"Lung fever. He took a bad cold a month ago coming home from West
+Virginia in the rain. He was absent-minded, you know. If it hadn't been
+for Pilgrim, I don't think he'd ever got here."</p>
+
+<p>"Pilgrim?" asked Jason, warming his hands at the fire.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span></p>
+<p>"Surely I've written you about Pilgrim. Father bought him soon after you
+left. He's the wisest horse that ever lived. If you're warm, now, Jason,
+come to your father."</p>
+
+<p>He followed her into the bedroom which opened off the kitchen. His
+father lay on the feather bed, his eyes closed. O how worn&mdash;O how
+changed! Young Jason was hardened to suffering and death. He had not
+realized that to the sickness and death of one's own, nothing can harden
+us. He stood breathing hard while his mother stooped over the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ethan," she said softly, "our boy is here."</p>
+
+<p>Brother Wilkins opened his eyes and smiled faintly. He tried to say
+something and Jason sprang to take his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he wants to speak to you and can't. O my poor dear! O Ethan, my
+dearest."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span></p>
+<p>Jason's mother broke down. Jason put his finger on his father's wrist.</p>
+
+<p>After a long moment, "Mother, he's gone," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>After the funeral, Jason wandered about the village for a day or so,
+trying to plan for his mother's future and his own. All the townspeople
+were kind to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't forgot how you loaned me those <i>Harper's Monthlies</i> before you
+read 'em yourself," said Mr. Inchpin. "Anything I can do for you or your
+mother, let me know."</p>
+
+<p>The two had met in Hardwich's store, which was also the post office and
+the evening club for the males of High Hill. Jason had dropped in to
+post a letter.</p>
+
+<p>A tall scraggly man joined in. "Your father was the best preacher in
+Ohio. We was all glad when he got back here."</p>
+
+<p>"He had the gift of prayer," said an old man, in the back of the store.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence which Jason struggled in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span>vain to break.</p>
+
+<p>Then a young fellow who carried a buggy whip and smoked a cigar said,
+"How does the doctoring go, Jason?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, thanks," returned Jason, looking at the young fellow, intently.
+It was Billy Ames, he of the striped pants.</p>
+
+<p>Back through Jason's heart, until now strangely softened by the
+happenings of the past few days, surged the accumulated bitterness of
+his poverty-stricken youth. He turned abruptly and left the store.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was watching for him, anxiously. "Jason, Pilgrim had an
+accident. He's got a frightful cut on his right fore shoulder. He must
+have got caught on a nail somehow."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a look at him," said Jason.</p>
+
+<p>The big gray was standing stolidly in his stall. Mrs. Wilkins held the
+candle while Jason examined him. On the right fore shoulder was a great
+three-cornered tear from which the skin hung in a bloody fold.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to sew it up." Jason was all surgeon now. "Do you think he'll
+stand still <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>for us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Stand still," replied Jason's mother, indignantly. "Why, he'll know
+exactly what you are doing, and why."</p>
+
+<p>"All right then. You get me some clean rags and a darning-needle and
+I'll get the rest of the things I'll need."</p>
+
+<p>In a few moments the operation was well in hand.</p>
+
+<p>Pilgrim kept his ears back and his eyes on his mistress. He breathed
+heavily, but otherwise he did not stir. He was a large horse, with a
+small, intelligent head and a mighty chest. Jason's mother held the
+candle with one hand while she stroked the big gray's nose with the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful, Jason, do!" she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>Jason grunted. "You keep him from biting or kicking and I'll do my
+share," he said.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span></p>
+<p>"Pilgrim bite!" cried Jason's mother indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>Again Jason grunted, working swiftly, with the skill of trained and
+accustomed fingers. The candle flickered on his cool young face, on his
+black hair and on his long, strong, surgeon's fingers. It flickered too
+on his mother's sweet lips, on her tired brown eyes and iron-gray hair.
+It put high-lights on the cameo at her throat and made a grotesque
+shadow of her hoop-skirts on the stable wall.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Jason straightened himself with a sigh and wiped his hands on a
+towel.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a good job," he said. "Must be some bad spikes here or in the
+pasture fence to have given him that rip. I'll hunt them up
+tomorrow.&mdash;Get over there!"</p>
+
+<p>This last to Pilgrim, who suddenly had put his head on Jason's shoulder
+with a soft nuzzling of his nose against the young doctor's cheek and a
+little whinny that was almost human.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Jason, he's thanking you!" cried his mother. "He'll never forget
+what you've done for him tonight."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Jason gave the horse a careless slap and started out the stable door.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be having it that he speaks Greek next," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know him," replied Jason's mother. "This is the first time
+you ever saw him, remember. These last three years of your father's life
+he's been like one of the family." She followed Jason into the cottage.
+"Often and often before your poor father died he said he'd never have
+been able to keep on with the circuit-riding and the preaching if he'd
+had to depend on any other horse than Pilgrim. That horse just knew
+father was forgetful. He wouldn't budge if father forgot the
+saddle-bags. When Pilgrim balked, father always knew he'd forgotten
+something and he'd go back for it. I'll have supper on by the time
+you've washed up, Jason."</p>
+
+<p>The little stove that was set in the fireplace roared lustily. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+kettle was singing. The old yellow cat slept cozily in the wooden rocker
+on the patch-work cushion. All the furniture, so simple and worn, was as
+familiar to Jason as the back of his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Jason washed at the bench in the corner, then sat down while his mother
+put the supper before him&mdash;fried mush, fried salt pork, tea and apple
+sauce.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Jason soberly, "what are we going to do now, mother?
+Father's gone and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His mother's trembling lips warned him to stop.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't seem possible," she said, "that it's only a week since we
+laid him away."</p>
+
+<p>Jason interrupted gently. "I know, mother; but you and I have got to go
+on living!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's you I'm worrying about," said his mother.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>wondering if you hadn't better come back to Baltimore with
+me," mused Jason. "I can eke out a living somehow for the two of us."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Mrs. Wilkins decidedly. "You've got burden enough to take
+care of yourself. I can get along till you're doctoring for yourself.
+Mr. Inchpin will let me have the cottage near the wharf if I'll go up to
+his house and cook his dinner for him. Then with a little sewing and a
+little nursing here in the village, the cow, the chickens and Pilgrim, I
+can get along. But I don't see how I can send you anything, Jason."</p>
+
+<p>Jason had brightened perceptibly. "If I can just get through this year,
+mother, I'll be on my feet. But I've got to pay Dr. Edwards back. He's a
+hard driver. If we can get together enough for that, I'll manage,
+somehow."</p>
+
+<p>Jason's mother sighed. "It does seem as if, all through the years, I
+ought to have saved something, but I haven't, not a cent, except what I
+raked and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> scraped together for your doctoring. Two hundred and fifty
+dollars a year beside donation parties is quite a sum, Jason, and I feel
+guilty that I haven't saved anything for you. But it all went,
+especially after father got sickly. I've sold a lot of things, Jason, so
+as to send you the money. I'm most at my wit's end now. Grandma's silver
+teapot, that kept you three months, and your father's watch, nearly six.
+That's the way the things have gone. My, how thankful I was we had 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Jason was still so very like his mother, so very unlike. Where her face
+was sweet and tremulous, his was cool and still. His brown eyes were
+careless and yet eager. Hers were not inscrutable now. The light had
+gone out of them from weeping. Jason's long, strong hands were smooth
+and quiet. Hers were knotted and work calloused and a little uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>As if something in her words irritated him, Jason said quickly, "Well,
+what did you and father start me on this doctor idea for, if you thought
+it was going to cost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span> too much?"</p>
+
+<p>"O, Jason, you know that thought never occurred to either of us! There
+are still some things to go that I've sort of hung on to. Take the St.
+Bartholomew candlestick to Mr. Inchpin. That will give you the money you
+need right now."</p>
+
+<p>Jason looked up at the queerly wrought silver candlestick that was more
+like an old oil lamp than a candlestick. His mother's people had brought
+it from France with them. The family legend was that some Huguenot
+ancestor had come through the massacre of St. Bartholomew with this only
+relic of his home wrapped in his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" said Jason eagerly. "The old thing is neither fish nor flesh,
+anyhow. Too big mouthed for a candle and folks are going to use coal
+oil more and more, anyhow. I can be off tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, Jason."</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span></p>
+<p>"I'll be glad to forget it," grumbled Jason. "What have we to be
+thankful for?"</p>
+
+<p>His mother looked at him a little curiously, but she said nothing. Jason
+caught the expression in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look at me that way, mother," he burst forth angrily, "I can't
+forgive father, with his big brain and body for doing so little for you
+and me. I can't forgive him for what he dragged us through&mdash;those
+donation parties! He had no right to put me through what he did that
+year at High Hill. And what did he get out of his life? They lay him
+away with the remark that he had a gift of prayer! And his widow may
+starve, for all of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Jason, be silent," cried his mother. She had risen and stood facing
+him, her face deathly white. "Not one word against your father. Because
+you never could appreciate him, you needn't belittle him now. Not one
+word," as Jason would have spoken. "He was my husband and I loved him,
+God knows. O Ethan, Ethan, how shall I finish my span of years alone!"
+she broke down utterly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+Jason put his arms about her. "Mother, I didn't mean to hurt you. Truly
+I didn't. It's only that&mdash;" he stopped and set his lips tightly while he
+petted her in silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I pray, Jason," said his mother, finally, "that you will never have a
+grief or a punishment great enough to soften your heart."</p>
+
+<p>Jason did not answer. He went up to see Mr. Inchpin that night, and the
+following day started back East again.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-008" id="illus-008"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-064.jpg'  alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-009" id="illus-009"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-068.jpg'  alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="IV" id="IV"></a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>
+<h2>IV</h2><h3>MR. LINCOLN</h3>
+</div>
+
+<p>Three times a week during the year that followed, Jason's mother saddled
+Pilgrim and rode him to the post office after the shrieks of the whistle
+had warned her that the tri-weekly packet had come and gone. Four times
+during the year she heard from Jason.</p>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p style='text-align:right'>"April 3, 1862.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>
+<span class="smcap">"Dear Mother:</span></p>
+<p style='text-align:left'>"I am very well indeed, and hope that you are not overworking. Things
+are not going very well here. Everybody is hard pressed because of the
+war and Dr. Edwards simply can't make any collections. We get a good
+many soldiers who are sent home half cured and, of course, we get
+nothing at all from them&mdash;don't want to, in fact. Is there any way we
+could raise just a little money? Not a cent that you've earned,
+understand, but perhaps you could sell your old mahogany hat-box. Mrs.
+Chadwick always wanted it. I never did care for those old things and I
+don't think you do. After I get started in practice, I'll buy you a
+dozen hat-boxes. Won't it be great when you can come down here and live
+with me?</p>
+<p style='text-align:right'>"Your loving son,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+"<span class="smcap">Jason</span>."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='minor' />
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p style='text-align:right'>"June 7, 1862.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">"Dear Mother:</span></p>
+<p style='text-align:left'>"I have been quite sick with a sore hand&mdash;almost got gangrene from a
+soldier. That's why you haven't been hearing from me. I received the ten
+dollars. Thank you very much. I didn't think the old trap would bring
+that much. Dr. Edwards said yesterday that I had a genius for surgery.
+The ten dollars paid my board for six weeks, giving me a chance to take
+some extra cases for the doctor. The war looks bad, doesn't it? They
+need surgeons and though I'm doing something in patching up these poor
+fellows and sending them back, I wonder often if I oughtn't to go into a
+war hospital. Do you remember the little cameo pin you used to wear till
+father thought it was too dressy for you? If you haven't lost it, I wish
+you'd send it down here for me to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>pawn. I can get it back after the war.
+I think of you often though I don't write. Don't work too hard.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right'>"Your loving son,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+"<span class="smcap">Jason</span>."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='minor' />
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p style='text-align:right'>"Sept. 24, 1862.</p>
+<p><span class="smcap">"Dear Mother:</span></p>
+<p style='text-align:left'>"Could you possibly sell something to get five dollars to me by return
+packet? Will write fully later.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right'>"Your loving son,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+"<span class="smcap">Jason</span>."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>But there was nothing more to sell.</p>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p style='text-align:left'>"My dear boy," wrote Jason's mother, "I am heartbroken, for I know how
+hard you are working, but truly, I have nothing left of the least value.
+The cameo pin was the last. Am very much worried lest you are sick. Do
+let me know. I am very well and the neighbors are kind. Pilgrim is well,
+too, though the scar is there on his shoulder. I'm sure he will always
+remember what you did for him. He is all but human. <i>Please</i> write me.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:right'>"A hug and kiss, from Mother."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Jason's fourth letter was urgent and prompt in reply.</p>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span><span class="smcap">"Dear Mother:</span></p>
+<p style='text-align:left'>"I am going into the army, mother. The need for surgeons is urgent and
+I've got to help lick the South. I thought, barring the five from you, I
+could raise enough to buy into practice with Dr. Edwards before I leave,
+so that if I live, I will have that to return to. It will cost a hundred
+dollars. But I can't do it. So I guess you'll have to sell Pilgrim. I
+hate to ask it of you but after all he's only an expense to you and I'll
+buy you another, after the war. Sell him to the government for an army
+horse. Mr. Inchpin will attend to it for you.</p>
+<p style='text-align:right'>"Lovingly,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
+"<span class="smcap">Jason</span>."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Jason's mother read the letter with tears running down her cheeks. It
+was November. Drearily the Kentucky hills rolled back from the river and
+drearily the Ohio valleys stretched inland. Pilgrim plodded patiently
+toward the stable and his mistress, huddled in the saddle, gave him no
+heed until Pilgrim stamped impatiently at the stable door. Then she
+dismounted and the great horse stamped into his stall.</p>
+
+<p>"O Pilgrim," she sobbed, "Jason is going to war. Jason is going to war.
+I can't lose him too!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The horse turned his fine head and nickered softly as he rubbed his soft
+nose on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"And I've got to let you go, old friend," she added. "I know that I
+don't need you, Pilgrim. It's just that you are like a living bit of
+father&mdash;and if Jason would only seem to understand that, it wouldn't be
+so hard to let you go. I wonder if all young folks are like Jason?"</p>
+
+<p>Old Pilgrim leaned his head over his stall and in the November gloaming
+he looked long at his mistress with his wise and gentle eyes. It was as
+if he would tell her that he had learned that youth is always a little
+hard; that only long years in harness with always the back-breaking load
+to pull, not for oneself, but for others, can make the really grateful
+heart. One of the sweet, deep compensations of the years, the gray horse
+seemed to say, is that gratitude grows in the soul.</p>
+
+<p>So Jason and Old Pilgrim <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>both went to war. They did not see each other,
+but each one, in his own way, made a brilliant record. Pilgrim learned
+the sights and sounds and smells of war. The fearful pools of blood
+ceased to send him plunging and rearing in harness. The screams of utter
+fear or of mortal agony no longer set him to neighing or sweating in
+sympathy. Pilgrim, superb in strength and superb in intelligence,
+plodded efficiently through a battle just as he had plodded efficiently
+over the circuit of Jason's Methodist father.</p>
+
+<p>And Jason, cool and clear-headed, with his wonderful long strong hands,
+sawed and sewed and probed and purged his way through field hospital
+after field hospital, until the men began to hear of his skill and to
+ask for him when the fear of death was on them. His work absorbed him
+more and more, until months went by, and he neglected to write to his
+mother! Just why, who can say? Each of us looking into his heart,
+perhaps can find some answer. But Jason was young, and work and world
+hungry. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>did not ask himself embarrassing questions. The months
+slipped into a year, and the first year into a second year. Still Jason
+did not write to his mother, nor did he longer hear from her.</p>
+
+<p>In November of the second year Jason was stationed in a hospital near
+Washington. One rainy morning as he made his way to the cot of a man who
+was dying of gangrene, an orderly stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Dr. Jason Wilkins?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, Doctor, but I've got to arrest you and take you to Washington&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Jason looked the orderly over incredulously. "You've got the wrong man,
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>The soldier drew a heavy envelop carefully from his breast pocket, and
+handed it to Jason. Jason opened it uneasily, and gasped. This is what
+he read:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span> "Show this to Surgeon Jason Wilkins, &mdash;&mdash; Regiment. Arrest him.
+Bring him to me immediately.&mdash;<span class="smcap">A. Lincoln</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Jason whitened. "What's up?" he asked the orderly.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't ask the President," replied the orderly dryly. "We'll start at
+once, if you please, Doctor."</p>
+
+<p>In a daze, Jason left for Washington. He thought of all the minor
+offenses he had committed. But they were only such as any young fellow
+might have committed. He could not believe that any of them had reached
+Mr. Lincoln's ears, or that, if they had, the great man in the White
+House would have heeded them.</p>
+
+<p>Jason was locked in a room in a Washington boarding-house for one night.
+The next day at noon the orderly called for him. Weak-kneed, Jason
+followed him up the long drive to the door of the White House, and into
+a room where there were more orderlies and a man at a desk writing. An
+hour of dazed waiting, then a man came out of a door and spoke to the
+man at t<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>he desk.</p>
+
+<p>"Surgeon Jason Wilkins," said the sentry.</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" answered Jason.</p>
+
+<p>"This way," jerked the orderly, and Jason found himself in the inner
+room, with the door closed behind him. The room was empty, yet filled.
+There was but one man in it besides Jason, but that man was Mr. Lincoln.
+He sat at a desk, with his somber eyes on Jason's face&mdash;still a cool
+young face, despite trembling knees.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Jason Wilkins?" said Mr. Lincoln.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. President," replied the young surgeon.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you from?"</p>
+
+<p>"High Hill, Ohio."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any relatives?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only my mother is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span> living."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, only a mother! Well, young man, how is your mother?"</p>
+
+<p>Jason stammered. "Why, why&mdash;I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know!" thundered Lincoln. "And why don't you know? Is she
+living or dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Jason. "To tell the truth, I've neglected to write
+and I don't suppose she knows where I am."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence in the room. Mr. Lincoln clenched a great fist on
+his desk, and his eyes scorched Jason. "I had a letter from her. She
+supposes you dead and asked me to trace your grave. What was the matter
+with her? No good? Like most mothers, a poor sort? Eh? Answer me, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>Jason bristled a little. "The best woman that ever lived, Mr.
+President."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" breathed Mr. Lincoln. "Still you have no reason to be grateful to
+her! How'd you get your training as a surgeon? Who paid for it? Your
+father?"</p>
+
+<p>Jason reddened. "Well, no; father was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>a poor Methodist preacher. Mother
+raised the money, though I worked for my board mostly."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, how'd she raise the money?"</p>
+
+<p>Jason's lips were stiff. "Selling things, Mr. President."</p>
+
+<p>"What did she sell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Father's watch&mdash;the old silver teapot&mdash;the mahogany hat-box&mdash;the St.
+Bartholomew candlestick. Old things mostly; beyond use except in
+museums."</p>
+
+<p>Again silence in the room, while a look of contempt gathered in Abraham
+Lincoln's eyes that seared Jason's cool young soul till it scorched him.
+"You poor fool!" said Lincoln. "You poor worm! Her household
+treasures&mdash;one by one&mdash;for you. 'Useless things&mdash;fit for museums!' Oh,
+you fool!"</p>
+
+<p>Jason flushed angrily and bit his lips. Suddenly the President rose and
+pointed a long, bony finger at his desk. "Come here and sit down and
+write a le<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>tter to your mother!"</p>
+
+<p>Jason stalked obediently over and sat down in the President's seat.
+Anger and mortification were ill inspirations for letter-writing, but
+under Lincoln's burning eyes Jason seized a pen and wrote his mother a
+stilted note. Lincoln paced the floor, pausing now and again to look
+over Jason's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Address it and give it to me," said the President. "I'll see that it
+gets to her." Then, his stern voice rising a little: "And now, Jason
+Wilkins, as long as you are in the army, you write to your mother once a
+week. If I have reason to correct you on the matter again, I'll have you
+court-martialed."</p>
+
+<p>Jason rose and handed the letter to the President, then stood, angry and
+silent, awaiting further orders. Abraham Lincoln took another turn or
+two up and down the room. Then he paused before the window and looked
+from it a long, long time. Finally he turned to Jason.</p>
+
+<p>"My boy," he said gently, "there's no finer quality in the world than
+gratitude. There is nothi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>ng a man can have in his heart so mean, so low
+as ingratitude. Even a dog appreciates a kindness, never forgets a soft
+word, or a bone. To my mind, the noblest holiday in the world is
+Thanksgiving. And, next the Creator, there is no one the holiday should
+be dedicated to as much as to mothers."</p>
+
+<p>Again Lincoln paused, and looked from the boyish face of the young
+surgeon out of the window at the bleak November skies, and Lincoln said
+to Jason, with God knows what tragedy of memory in his lonely heart:</p>
+
+<p style='padding-left: 3em'>
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,</span><br />
+<span style='margin-left: 0em;'>Thou dost not bite so nigh</span><br />
+<span style='margin-left: 2em;'>As benefits forgot."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Another pause. "You may go, my boy." And Lincoln shook hands with
+Jason, who stumbled from the room, his mind a chaos of resentment and
+anger. He made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, pausing as two army
+officers rode up to a hotel and dismounted, leaving their horses.
+Something about the big gray that on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>e of the officers rode seemed
+vaguely familiar to the young doctor. The gray turned his small,
+intelligent head toward Jason, then with a sudden soft whinny, laid his
+head on Jason's shoulder and nuzzled his cheek gently. Jason looked at
+the right fore shoulder. A three-cornered scar was there. Jason and Old
+Pilgrim never had met but once, and yet&mdash;Jason was little more than a
+boy. Suddenly he threw his arms around Old Pilgrim's neck, and sobbed
+into the silky mane. Passers-by glanced curiously and then went on.
+Washington was full of tears those days.</p>
+
+<p>Pilgrim whinnied and waited patiently. Finally Jason dried his eyes,
+then stood in thought. The officer who had ridden Pilgrim came out at
+last. Jason saluted.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter' style='width: 300px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;'>
+<a name="illus-010" id="illus-010"></a>
+<img class='border'  src='images/illus-082.jpg'  alt='' title='' /><br />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span></p>
+<p>"Captain, I'd like to buy that horse from you."</p>
+
+<p>The captain laughed. "There are a number of others like you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but let me tell you about him, Captain. Gi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>ve me ten minutes. I'm
+Dr. Wilkins of &mdash;&mdash; Hospital."</p>
+
+<p>"O yes, I know of your work. What's the story, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>Jason told Pilgrim's history. "She gave him up for me and now I've found
+him," he finished. "I want to buy him back, get a furlough and take him
+home to her, myself. I've been saving my money."</p>
+
+<p>"You may have him for just what I paid for him, Doctor," said the
+captain, who was considerably Jason's senior. "Tell your mother I wish
+my own mother were living and that I do this in her memory."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," said Jason.</p>
+
+<p>A week later Jason led Pilgrim out of the freight car in which he had
+traveled from Washington to a railway station twenty-five miles from
+home. The river packets were not running and this was the nearest
+station to High Hill. It was noon and cold. Jason mounted and started
+south briskly and once more the Ohio valley opened up before him.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Jason that he w<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>as seeing the hills for absolutely the first
+time. And yet that could not be, for back with the first sight of the
+distant river came all his old boyish reverence for the headlands. The
+last time he had ridden horseback in the hills had been in the West
+Virginia circuit, with his father.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time since his interview with the President, Jason began
+to think of his father. All his newly awakened sense of gratitude had
+been centered on his mother. Did he then owe his father nothing?</p>
+
+<p>It took courage, it took nerve, it took stomach to patch together the
+bloody wrecks on the field of battle. It had taken tenacity to an ideal
+to starve and toil for his profession as he had done in Baltimore.
+Whence had come these qualities to Jason? He thought once more of his
+father on that trip on the West Virginian circuit, of the boys expelled
+from the church, of Sister Clark, of his own sense of mortification and
+his own contempt. And he dropped his head on his breast with a groan.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span></p>
+<p>And so as the sun set, Pilgrim with the scar on his right fore shoulder
+and Jason with the scar on his soul that only remorse implants there,
+stopped before the cottage in High Hill. And through the window, Jason's
+mother saw them. She rushed to the door and Jason, dismounting, ran up
+to her, and dropping on his knees, threw his arms about her waist and
+sobbed against her bosom:</p>
+
+<p>"O mother! O mother! Forgive me! I didn't realize. I didn't know!" Just
+as many, many sons have done before, and just as many more will do,
+please God, as long as love and gratitude endure.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Benefits Forgot, by Honoré Willsie
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+
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@@ -0,0 +1,1834 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Benefits Forgot, by Honore Willsie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Benefits Forgot
+       A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love
+
+Author: Honore Willsie
+
+Illustrator: Charles E. Cartwright
+
+Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18951]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENEFITS FORGOT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "COME HERE AND SIT DOWN AND WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR
+MOTHER!"--Page 74.]
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+BENEFITS FORGOT
+
+A Story Of Lincoln And Mother Love
+
+
+BY HONORE WILLSIE
+
+Author Of "Still Jim," "Lydia Of The Pines," Etc.
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHARLES E. CARTWRIGHT
+
+
+Publishers
+
+FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+New York
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Copyright, 1917, by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
+
+All rights reserved, including that of translation
+into foreign languages
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+
+I   THE DONATION PARTY                             1
+
+II  THE CIRCUIT RIDER                             27
+
+III WAR                                           45
+
+IV  MR. LINCOLN                                   63
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE DONATION PARTY
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I
+
+THE DONATION PARTY
+
+
+Brother Meaker rose from his pew and looked at Jason appraisingly.
+
+"I don't know, brethren," he said. "Of course, he's a growing boy. Just
+turned twelve, didn't you say, ma'am?" Jason's mother nodded faintly
+without looking up, and Brother Meaker went on. "As I said, he's a
+growing boy, but he's dark and wiry. And I've always noted, the dark
+wiry kind eat smaller than any other kind. I should take at least
+twelve pounds of sugar off the allowance for the year and four gallon
+less of molasses than you was calculatin' on."
+
+He sat down and Sister Cantwell rose. She was a fat woman, famous in the
+southern Ohio country for the lavish table she set.
+
+"Short sweetening," she said in a thin high voice, "is dreadful high. I
+said to Hiram yesterday that the last sugar loaf I bought was worth its
+weight in silver. I should say, cut down on short sweetening. Long
+sweetening is all right except for holidays."
+
+Jason whispered to his mother, "What's long sweetening, mother?"
+
+"They must mean molasses," she whispered in return, with a glance at
+Jason's father, who sat at the far end of the pew reading his Bible as
+he always did at this annual ordeal.
+
+Jason looked from his mother's quiet, sensitive face, like yet so unlike
+his own, to the bare pulpit of the little country church, then back at
+Brother Ames, who was conducting the meeting. This annual conference and
+the annual donation party were the black spots in Jason's year. His
+mother, he suspected, suffered as he did: her face told him that. Her
+tender lips, usually so wistful and eager, were at these times thin and
+compressed. Her brown eyes, that except at times of death or illness
+always held a remote twinkle, were inscrutable.
+
+Jason's face was so like, yet already so unlike his mother's! The same
+brown eyes, with the same twinkle, but tonight instead of being
+inscrutable, boyishly hard. The same tender mouth, with tonight an
+unboyish sardonic twist. What Jason's father's face might have said one
+could not know, for it was hidden under a close-cropped brown beard. He
+turned the leaves of his Bible composedly, looking up only as the
+meeting reached a final triumphant conclusion with Brother Ames'
+announcement:
+
+"So, Brother Wilkins, there you are, a liberal allowance if I must say
+it. Two hundred and fifty dollars for the year, with the usual donation
+party to take place in the fall of the year."
+
+Brother Wilkins, who was Jason's father, rose, bowed and said: "I thank
+you, brethren. Let us pray!"
+
+The fifty or sixty souls in the church knelt, and Jason's father, his
+eyes closed, lifted his great bass voice in prayer:
+
+"O God, You have led our feeble and trusting steps to this town of High
+Hill, Ohio. You have put into the hearts and minds of these people, O
+God, the purpose of feeding and clothing us. Whether they do it well or
+ill, concerns them and You, O God, and not us. We are but Your humble
+servants, doing Your divine bidding. Yet this is perhaps the proper
+occasion, Our Heavenly Father, to thank You that You have sent us but
+one child and that unlike Solomon, Your servant has but one wife. And
+now, O God, bless these people in their giving. And make me, in my
+solitary circuit riding in the hills and valleys a proper mouthpiece of
+Your will. For Lord Jesus' sake, Amen."
+
+There was a short pause after the rich voice stopped, then a few weak
+"Amens" came from different corners of the church and Brother Ames,
+jumping to his feet, exclaimed:
+
+"Let us close the meeting by singing
+
+    'How tedious and tasteless the hours
+    When Jesus no longer I see--'"
+
+This ended Jason's first day at High Hill. The salary was small, even
+for a Methodist circuit rider, in the decade before the Civil War. It
+was smaller by fifty dollars than what they had been allowed the year
+before. Yet, High Hill, as Mrs. Wilkins pointed out to Jason the next
+day, was much more attractive than any town they had been in for years.
+There was a good school, and the Ohio river-packet stopped twice a week,
+and a Mr. Inchpin in the town was reported to be the owner of a number
+of books. Jason's mother was an Eastern woman and sometimes the
+loneliness and hardship of her life made her find solace in what seemed
+to Jason inconsequential things. Still, he was glad of the school, for
+he was a first-class student and already had decided to take his
+father's and mother's advice that he study medicine. And the packet,
+warping in twice a week, was, after all, something to which one might
+look forward and Mr. Inchpin's books would be wonderful.
+
+Jason was sure that the Ohio valley in which he had spent the whole of
+his short life was the most beautiful spot in the world. The lovely
+green heights rolling back into the Kentucky sky line, were, he thought,
+great enough for David, whose cattle fed upon a thousand hills. The fine
+headlands on the Ohio side, wooded, mysterious, were, he was sure, clad
+in verdure like the utmost bound of the everlasting hills of Jacob. And
+High Hill with its fifteen hundred souls was "a city, builded on a hill
+that could not be laid."
+
+For Jason was brought up on the Bible. His father believed that it ought
+to be, outside of his school text books, his only literature. His
+mother, with her Eastern traditions, thought otherwise. A Methodist
+circuit rider before the Civil War moved every year, and every year Mrs.
+Wilkins combed each new community for books. It was wonderful how she
+and Jason scented them out.
+
+They had been in High Hill about a week when Jason came panting into the
+house late one afternoon. His father was writing a sermon in the sitting
+room. Jason tip-toed into the kitchen, where his mother was preparing
+supper.
+
+"The packet's in, mother, and I carried a man's carpet bag up to the
+hotel and look--what he gave me!"
+
+His slender boyish brown hands fairly trembled as he held a torn and
+soiled magazine toward his mother. She dropped the biscuit she was
+molding and seized it.
+
+"_Harper's Monthly!_ O Jason dear, how wonderful! You shall read it
+aloud to me after supper."
+
+"It's prayer meeting night," said Jason in a sick voice.
+
+His mother flushed a little. "So it is! My goodness, Jason! Print makes
+a heathen of me and you're most as bad. You haven't fed the horse or
+milked."
+
+"So I won't get a look at it till tomorrow," cried Jason, bitterly.
+
+Mrs. Wilkins glanced toward the closed door that led into the sitting
+room. Then she looked at Jason's wide brown eyes, at the round-about she
+had cut over from his father's old sermon coat, at the darned stockings
+and the trousers that had belonged to the rich boy of the town they had
+lived in the year before.
+
+"Jason," she said, "you ought to get plenty of sleep because you're a
+growing boy. But a thing like this won't happen for years
+again--and--well, I've saved up several candle ends, hoping to get some
+sewing done nights when your father was using the lamp. When you go up
+to bed tonight, take those and read your magazine."
+
+"But you ought to keep them," protested Jason.
+
+"Not at all," exclaimed his mother, vigorously, "it's all for your
+education. Run along now and milk."
+
+So Jason reveled in his _Harper's Monthly_, and the next day as he wiped
+the dishes for his mother, he produced his great idea.
+
+"If I can earn the money, this summer, mother, can I subscribe to
+_Harper's Monthly_ for a year?"
+
+"My goodness, Jason, it's five dollars and this is the first of August!
+School begins in a month."
+
+"I know all that," replied Jason impatiently, "but if I earn the money
+can I have it for _Harpers Monthly_?"
+
+"Of course you can. It's all for your education, my dear. I never forget
+that."
+
+A money paying job for a boy of twelve was a hard thing to find in High
+Hill and Jason was late for supper that night. But his brown eyes were
+shining with triumph when he slid into his seat and held out his bowl
+for his evening meal of mush and milk.
+
+"I've got a job," he said.
+
+"A job?" queried his father. He smiled a little at Jason's mother.
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Inchpin is having a new barn built on the hill back of
+his house. The brook runs at the foot of it and I'm going to haul gravel
+and sand and water up to the building site. It'll take about a month. He
+provides the horse and wagon."
+
+"And how much will he pay you?" asked Mrs. Wilkins.
+
+"He says he can't tell till he's through. But I'm going to ask him for
+five dollars."
+
+Jason's father looked amused and a little troubled. "Jason, I hope
+you're not too interested in Mammon. But I must say I'm glad to see you
+have your mother's energy."
+
+"Or your father's," said Mrs. Wilkins, smiling into the blue eyes
+opposite hers. "Nobody can say that a circuit rider lacks energy."
+
+And so during the hot August days, Jason toiled on Mr. Inchpin's new
+barn, never once visiting the swimming hole in the brook, never once
+heeding the long-drawn invitation of the cicada to loll under the trees
+with one of Mr. Inchpin's books, never once breaking away when the toot
+of the packet reverberated among the hills.
+
+"He's a fine lad," Mr. Inchpin told Jason's father. "I never have seen
+such determination in a little fellow."
+
+Brother Wilkins looked gratified, but when he repeated the little
+compliment to Jason's mother he added, "I don't believe I understand
+Jason altogether."
+
+"I do," said Mrs. Wilkins, stoutly.
+
+August came to an end with cool nights and shorter days and Mr.
+Inchpin's barn was finished of a Saturday evening. He called Jason into
+the house, into the library where there were bound volumes of _Godey's
+Lady's Book_ and Blackwood, and handed him three paper dollars.
+
+"There you are, my man. I'd intended to give you only two. But you've
+done well, by ginger, so here's three dollars."
+
+Jason looked up at him dumbly, mumbled something, stuffed the bills into
+his trousers pocket and bolted for home. He burst in on his mother in
+the kitchen, buried his face against her bosom and sobbed.
+
+"I can't have it after all! He only gave me three dollars! I can't have
+it! And now I'll never know how that story 'Bleak House' ended."
+
+Jason's father came into the kitchen, hastily: "What in the world--"
+
+"Jason! Jason! don't sob so!" cried Mrs. Wilkins. "We'll raise the rest
+of the money some way. I'll find it. Hush, dear, hush! Mercy, the mush
+is burning!"
+
+Jason's father took the boy's grimy blistered hand, such a strong
+slender hand and so like his mother's, and sitting down in the kitchen
+chair, he pulled Jason to him.
+
+"Tell me, Jason," he urged gently, "what money?"
+
+Jason still torn with occasional sobs, managed to tell the story.
+
+"_Harper's Monthly_," exclaimed Brother Wilkins. "Dear! Dear! I had
+hoped you'd give the money to a foreign mission, Jason."
+
+"Foreign mission!" cried Jason's mother. "Well, I guess not! Jason's
+education is going to be taken care of before the heathen."
+
+"But how'll we get the extra dollars?" asked Brother Wilkins,
+helplessly.
+
+"I'll manage," replied Jason's mother, her gentle voice a little louder
+than usual.
+
+"Then let us eat supper," said Jason's father, clearing his throat for
+grace.
+
+Jason's mother sold a girlhood treasure, a little silver-tipped
+hair-pin, to the storekeeper's wife, the following Monday, for two
+dollars, and the jubilant Jason exchanged the single bills for a single
+note. The note was cut in two and sent in separate letters to New York,
+this being the before the war method of safeguarding loss of money in
+the mail. There was a period of several weeks of waiting during which
+Jason met every mail. Then a third letter was sent by Jason's mother,
+asking why the delay, and telling Jason's little story.
+
+Jason met the return packet, his heart now high, now low. He had met so
+many futile packets since the first of September. But this time there
+was a letter explaining that but one-half of the note had arrived in New
+York, but that on faith, the editors were sending the back numbers of
+the magazine requested and that the rest of the year's subscription
+would follow. And Jason never did know whether or not the second half of
+the note arrived.
+
+And there they were, a fat pile of magazines! Jason clasped them in his
+arms and rushed home with them. A tag tail of boys followed him and by
+nightfall most of the town knew that Jason Wilkins had four numbers of
+_Harper's Monthly_ on hand.
+
+Jason was out milking the cow when Mr. Inchpin arrived.
+
+"Heard Jason had some new magazines in hand. Don't s'pose you could lend
+me a few, over night?"
+
+Jason's mother was in the kitchen. It was donation party night and she
+had been cooking all day in preparation.
+
+"Surely, surely," said Jason's father, picking up the pile of magazines.
+"Jason can't get at them before the end of the week. Take them and
+welcome."
+
+Mr. Inchpin rode away. Jason came in with the milk pail and the family
+sat down to a hasty supper.
+
+"Won't I have a minute of time to look at my magazines, mother?" asked
+Jason. "O, I hate donation parties!"
+
+"Jason!" thundered his father. "Would you show ingratitude to God? And
+the books are not here anyway. I loaned them to Mr. Inchpin."
+
+"Father!"
+
+"O Ethan!"
+
+Brother Wilkins' eyes were steel gray, instead of blue. "Jason can read
+his Bible until the end of the week. His ingratitude deserves
+punishment."
+
+Jason rushed from the table and flung himself sobbing into the hay loft.
+His mother found him there a few moments later.
+
+"I know, dear! I know! It's hard. But father doesn't love books as you
+and I do, so he doesn't understand. And you must hurry and get ready for
+the party."
+
+"I don't want the donation party, I want my magazines," sobbed Jason.
+
+"I know. But life seldom, so very seldom, gives us what we want, dear
+heart. Just be thankful that you will be happy at the end of the week
+and come and help mother with the party."
+
+As donation parties go, this one was a huge success. Fully a hundred
+people attended it. They played games, they sang hymns, they ate a
+month's provisions and Mrs. Wilkins' chance of a new dress in the cake
+and coffee she provided. They left behind them a pile of potatoes and
+apples that filled two barrels and a heap of old clothing that Jason,
+candle in hand, turned over with his foot.
+
+"There's Billy Ames' striped pants," he grumbled. "Every time his mother
+licked him into wearing 'em, I know he prayed I'd get 'em, the ugly
+beasts, and I have. And there's seven old patched shirts. I suppose I'll
+get the tails sewed together into school shirts for me and there's Old
+Mrs. Arley's plush dress--I suppose poor mother'll have to fix that up
+and wear it to church. Why don't they give stuff father'll have to wear,
+too? I wonder why a minister's supposed to be so much better than his
+wife or son."
+
+"What's that you're saying, Jason?" asked his father sharply as he
+brought the little oil lamp from the sitting room into the kitchen. Mrs.
+Wilkins followed. This was a detestable job, the sorting of the donation
+debris, and was best gotten through with, at once. Jason, shading the
+candle light from his eyes, with one slender hand, looked at his father
+belligerently.
+
+"I was saying," he said, "that it was too bad you don't have to wear
+some of the old rags sometimes, then you'd know how mother and I feel
+about donation parties."
+
+There was absolute silence for a moment in the little kitchen. A late
+October cricket chirped somewhere.
+
+Then, "O Jason!" gasped his mother.
+
+The boy was only twelve, but he had been bred in a difficult school and
+was old for his years. He looked again at the heaps of cast-off clothing
+on the floor and his gorge rose within him.
+
+"I tell you," he cried, before his father could speak, "that I'll never
+wear another donation party pair of pants. No, nor a shirt-tail shirt,
+either. I'm through with having the boys make fun of me. I'll earn my
+own clothes every summer and I'll earn mother's too."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the sort, sir," thundered Jason's father, his
+great bass voice rising as it did in revival meetings. "You'll do
+nothing but wear donation clothes as long as you're under my roof. I've
+long noted your tendency to vanity and mammon. To my prayers, I shall
+begin to add stout measures."
+
+Jason threw back his head, a finely shaped head it was with good breadth
+between the eyes.
+
+"I tell you, sir, I'm through with donation pants. If folks don't think
+enough of the religion you preach to pay you for it I'd--I'd advise you
+to get another religion."
+
+Under his beard, Ethan Wilkins went white, but not so white as Jason's
+mother. But she spoke quietly.
+
+"Jason, apologize to your father at once."
+
+"I couldn't accept an apology now," said the minister. "I shall have to
+pray to get my mind into shape. In the meantime Jason shall be punished
+for this. Not until everyone in the town who desires to read his
+_Harper's Monthlies_ has done so, can Jason touch them."
+
+"O father, not that," cried Jason. "I'll apologize! I'll wear the pants!
+Why, it would be Christmas before I'd see them again!"
+
+"I can't accept your apology now. Neither your spirit nor mine is right.
+And I cannot retract. Your punishment must stand."
+
+Jason was all child now. "Mother," he cried, "don't let him! Don't let
+him!"
+
+Mrs. Wilkins' lips quivered. For a moment she could not speak. Then with
+an inscrutable look into her husband's eyes she said:
+
+"You must obey your father, Jason. You have been very wicked."
+
+Jason put down his candle and sobbed. "I know it. But I'll be good. Let
+me have my magazines. They're mine. I paid for them."
+
+"No!" roared the minister. "Go to bed, sir, and see to it that you pray
+for a better heart."
+
+Jason's sobs sounded through the little house long after his father and
+mother had gone to bed. The minister sighed and turned restlessly.
+
+"Why was I given such a rebellious son, do you suppose?" he asked
+finally.
+
+"Perhaps God hopes it'll make you have a better understanding of
+children," replied Mrs. Wilkins. "Christ said that unless you became
+like one of them you could not enter the kingdom."
+
+There was another silence with Jason's sobs growing fainter, then, "But
+he was wicked, Mary, and he deserved punishment."
+
+"But not such a punishment. Of course, I had to support you, no matter
+what I thought. But O Ethan, Ethan, it's so easy to kill the fineness in
+a proud and sensitive heart like Jason's."
+
+"Nevertheless," returned the minister, "when he spurns the giving hand
+of God, forgiveness is God's, not mine. We'll discuss it no more."
+
+Nor was the matter discussed again. Jason appeared at breakfast, with
+dark rings about his eyes, after having done his chores, as usual. Once,
+it seemed to his mother that he looked at her with a gaze half
+wondering, half hurt, as if she had failed him when his trust and need
+had been greatest. But he said nothing and she hoped that her mind had
+suggested what was in her aching heart and that Jason's was only a
+child's hurt that would soon heal.
+
+He never again asked for the magazines. On Christmas morning his father
+placed them, tattered and marred, from their many lendings, beside his
+plate. Jason did not take them when he left the table and later on his
+mother carried them up to his room. Whether he read them or not, she did
+not know. But she was glad to see him begin again to watch for the
+packet and read the current numbers as they arrived.
+
+She dyed Billy Ames' striped pants in walnut juice and they really
+looked very well. Jason wore them without comment as he did the shirts
+she fashioned for him from many shirt tails.
+
+And in the spring they left High Hill for a valley town.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE CIRCUIT RIDER
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+II
+
+THE CIRCUIT RIDER
+
+
+The years sped on with unbelievable swiftness as they are very prone to
+do after the corner into the teens is turned.
+
+Jason worked every summer, but he did not offer to buy his mother a
+dress nor did he buy himself either clothing or books. He put all he
+earned by toward his course in medicine. When he was a little fellow,
+his mother had given him a lacquered sewing box that had belonged to her
+French mother. It had proved an admirable treasure box for childish
+hoardings. Jason, the summer he was thirteen, cleared it out and put
+into it his summer earnings, ten dollars.
+
+With his newly acquired reticence, he did not speak of the box, nor did
+he mention the extra bills, quarters and dollars that appeared there
+from time to time. The little hoard grew slowly, very slowly, in spite
+of these anonymous additions--it grew as slowly as the years sped
+rapidly, it seemed to Jason's mother.
+
+Jason must have been sixteen, the summer he went with his father on one
+of the Sunday circuit trips. He never had been on one before. But it had
+been decided that he was to begin his medical studies in the fall. He
+was to be apprenticed to a doctor in Baltimore and his mother was
+anxious for father and son to draw together if possible before the son
+went into the world. Not that Jason and the minister quarreled. But
+there never had been the understanding between the two that except for
+the unfortunate magazine episode, always had existed between Jason and
+his mother.
+
+The trip lay in the hills of West Virginia. Brother Wilkins rode his old
+horse, Charley, a handsome gray. Jason rode an old brown mare, borrowed
+from a parishioner for the trip.
+
+Mrs. Wilkins, standing in the door, watched the two ride off together
+with a thrill of pride. Jason was almost as tall in the saddle as his
+father. He had shot up amazingly of late. The minister was getting very
+gray. He had been late in his thirties when he married. But he sat a
+horse as though bred to the saddle and Old Charley was a beauty.
+Brother Wilkins was very fond of horses and was a good judge of horse
+flesh. Sometimes Mrs. Wilkins had thought, that if Ethan had not chosen
+to be a Methodist minister he would have made a first-class country
+squire.
+
+She watched the two out of sight down the valley road, then with a
+little sigh turned back to the empty home.
+
+Jason, though always a little self-conscious when alone with his father,
+was delighted with the idea of the trip. They crossed the Ohio on the
+ferry and rode rapidly into the West Virginia hills. The minister made a
+great effort to be entertaining and Jason was astonished at his father's
+intimate knowledge of the countryside.
+
+"I don't see how you remember all the places, father," he said at noon,
+when the minister had turned to a side road to find a farmer whom he
+wished to greet.
+
+"I had this circuit years ago before you were born, my boy. I know the
+people intimately."
+
+"Don't you get tired of it?" asked Jason, suddenly.
+
+"Tired of saving souls?" returned his father. "Do you think you'll ever
+get tired of saving bodies?"
+
+"O that's different," answered the boy. "You've got something to take
+hold of, with a body."
+
+"And the body ceases to exist when the soul departs. Never forget that,
+my boy."
+
+"But you work so hard," insisted Jason, "and you get so little for it. I
+don't mean money alone," flushing as if at some memory, "but it doesn't
+seem as if the people care. They'll take all they can get out of each
+minister as he comes along, and then forget him."
+
+Brother Wilkins looked at Jason, thoughtfully. "Sixteen is very young,
+Jason. I'm afraid you were born carnal minded. I pray every night of my
+life that as you grow older, you'll grow toward Christ and not away
+from Him."
+
+Again Jason flushed uncomfortably and a silence fell that lasted until
+they reached the remote hill settlement where service was to be held
+that night. The settlement consisted of a log church, surrounded by a
+scattered handful of log houses, each already with its tiny glow of
+light, for night comes early in the hills. The two had eaten a cold
+lunch in the saddles, for church service would begin as soon as they
+arrived.
+
+There were twenty-five or thirty people in the rough little church. They
+crowded round Brother Wilkins enthusiastically when he entered and he
+called them all by name as he shook hands with them. Jason slid into a
+back seat. His father mounted to the pulpit.
+
+"Let us open by singing
+
+    'How tedious and tasteless the hours
+    When Jesus no longer I see--'"
+
+The old familiar tune! Jason wondered how many meetings his father had
+opened with it. The audience sang it with a will. In fact with too much
+will. A group of young men on the rear seat opposite Jason sang with
+unnecessary fervor, quite drowning out the female voices in the
+congregation. Jason saw his father, his face heavily shadowed in the
+candle-light, glance askance at the rear seat.
+
+"Let us pray," said Brother Wilkins. There was a rustle as the
+congregation knelt. "O God, I have come to You again in this mountain
+place after many years and many wanderings. I thank You for giving me
+this privilege. I have greeted old friends who have not forgotten me and
+who all these years have remembered You and Christ, Your only begotten
+Son. Tonight, O Heavenly Father, I have brought with me to this sacred
+fold my own one lamb that he might see how sacred and how great is Your
+power. Look on him tonight, O Supreme Master, and mark him for Your
+own. And remember, that if the young men in the rear seat plan any
+disturbance tonight, O Heavenly Father, that the arm of Thy priest is
+strong and the soul of Thy servant is resolute. For Jesus Christ's sake,
+Amen."
+
+The boom of "Amens" from the back seat was tremendous. Brother Wilkins,
+rising after his prayer, looked at the four young men for a long moment,
+over his glasses. Then he said:
+
+"Let us sing
+
+    'From Greenland's icy mountains
+    To India's coral strands.'"
+
+This was sung with tremendous vim, and the minister began his sermon.
+Jason's father was a good preacher. His vocabulary was rich and his
+ideas those of a thinking man whose religion was a passion. But the
+young men on the rear seat were unimpressed. One of them snored. Brother
+Wilkins stopped his sermon.
+
+"Be silent, ye sons of Satan," he thundered. There was silence and he
+took up the thread of his talk. A low cat call interrupted him. The
+minister stopped and slipped off his coat, folding it carefully as he
+laid it on his desk. It was old and the seams would not stand strain. He
+rolled up his cuffs as he descended from the pulpit, the congregation
+watching him spell-bound. Jason had seen his father in action before and
+was deeply embarrassed but not surprised.
+
+Brother Wilkins strode up to the pew where the offenders sat and seized
+by the ear the largest of the group, a hulk of twenty-one or so, larger
+than the minister. He led the young man into the aisle and reached up
+and boxed his ears, with the sound of impact of a club on an empty
+barrel.
+
+"Now leave this house of God," roared the minister. The young fellow
+sneaked out the door. Brother Wilkins turned back to the pew.
+
+"Don't you tech me or I'll brain ye," cried the youth who was about
+Brother Wilkins' own size.
+
+"Hah!" snorted the minister. There was the sound of blows, a quick
+scuffling of feet and the second offender was booted out of the door.
+The remaining two made a quick and unassisted exit. Breathing a little
+heavily, Brother Wilkins returned to his sermon; and to his hypnotized
+and immensely regaled congregation it seemed that the rest of his
+preaching was as from one inspired by God.
+
+Jason sat brooding deeply. Something within him revolted at the
+spectacle of his father descending from the pulpit to beat recalcitrant
+members of his congregation. An old and familiar sense of shame
+enveloped him, and he was thankful when once again darkness had
+enveloped them and they were traveling rapidly along the mountain road.
+They were to have a late supper and spend the night at a cabin well
+along the road they must travel on the morrow.
+
+Brother Wilkins was in the abstracted state that always followed his
+preaching and Jason was glad to respect his silence, until it had lasted
+so long that he became uneasy.
+
+"Father, didn't you say that Herd's was five miles beyond the church?"
+
+The minister pulled up his horse. In the darkness Jason could barely see
+the outlines of his body.
+
+"Heavens, Jason! Why didn't you rouse me sooner? This isn't the main
+traveled road. When did we leave it?"
+
+"I don't know, sir. I thought you knew this part of the country so
+well--"
+
+"So I do, ordinarily. But I can't recognize by-paths on a night like
+this. Wait, isn't that a light up the mountainside yonder? Come along,
+my boy, we'll find out where we are."
+
+The light glowed only faintly from the open door of a cabin. An old
+woman, with a pipe in her mouth, sat crooning over a little fire in the
+crude fireplace. She looked up in astonishment when the two appeared in
+the doorway.
+
+"Why, it's Brother Wilkins!" she cackled. "Lord's sake, what you doin'
+clar up hyar!"
+
+"Why, Sister Clark! I am glad to see you," exclaimed Jason's father,
+shaking one of the old woman's hands, and shouting into her other, which
+she cupped round her ear. "My son and I must have got off the main road
+five miles back. We're on our way to Milton."
+
+Sister Clark was visibly excited. "Ye ain't going on a step tonight. I
+can fix a shake-down for ye. Thing like this don't happen to a lone old
+woman twice in a lifetime. Bring in your saddle-bags--but Lord!" she
+stopped aghast. "I ain't got a bit of pork in the house, nor there ain't
+a chicken on the place. All I got is corn-meal and molasses."
+
+"Plenty, Sister Clark! Plenty! Get the saddle-bags, Jason, and tie the
+horses to graze."
+
+They ate their supper by candle-light after their hostess had cooked the
+mush in a kettle hanging from the crane. Brother Wilkins had a violent
+choking fit during the meal and Sister Clark pounded him on the back,
+apologizing as she did so for her familiarity with the minister.
+
+Jason slept profoundly on his share of the shake-down that night, and at
+dawn, after more mush, they were up and away.
+
+Twice on this day, Sunday, Brother Wilkins held service in the mountains
+and it was nine o'clock at night when they started toward the Ohio
+again. It was not until they had reached the river at dawn and had
+roused the ferryman that the minister recovered from his Sunday
+abstraction.
+
+"Did you have a pleasant trip, Jason?" he asked as they led the horses
+into the boat.
+
+"Yes, father," answered Jason dutifully.
+
+Brother Wilkins looked at the boy, as if he were beholding him from a
+new angle.
+
+"You don't look as much like your dear mother as you did in your
+childhood, my boy. Sometimes--I wonder--Jason, do you think this life
+has been too hard on your mother?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I do. It's hard on a boy, why shouldn't it be doubly hard on
+a woman?"
+
+The minister sighed. "Your reply is hardly polite, Jason, though I
+suppose my question merited it." Then with sudden heat: "Never mistake
+this cold frankness of yours for courage, my son. It takes more courage
+usually to be courteous than to be impolite. Did you notice that I
+coughed violently yesterday evening at Sister Clark's?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, the cause of it was this. She went down to the spring and fetched
+a pail of water for the mush. When I was eating my helping, I felt a
+lump in my mouth. But the old lady had her eye on me every minute for
+fear I wouldn't enjoy the frugal meal, so I could only investigate with
+my tongue. I found that she had cooked a little bit of a frog in the
+mush. Now, Jason, if she had discovered that she never would have
+recovered from the mortification. The only time in her life the minister
+stopped with her. So, though it made me choke, I swallowed it. That,
+sir, is my idea of courtesy. I wish you not to forget it."
+
+Jason's cool, speculative young gaze was on his father's face as he
+answered:
+
+"I understand, father."
+
+The minister turned away. "No, you don't. I doubt if you ever do." And
+he did not speak again until they reached home.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+WAR
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+III
+
+WAR
+
+
+And so Jason went away to study medicine. He worked very hard and
+progressed very rapidly. By the time he was twenty he was no longer "the
+doctor's boy." He was a real assistant in all but fees. He had no share
+in the doctor's income and always was desperately hard up.
+
+At first, he did not ask his father and mother for help. He did all
+sorts of odd chores to pay his way. But as he progressed in his
+profession, he had less and less time for earning his up-keep and had
+finally to write home for money. His mother always answered his letters
+and she never failed to send him money when he asked for it. How she
+managed it, Jason never asked. Perhaps he was ashamed to know.
+
+In all these four years he did not come home. He would have liked to but
+the trip was prohibitively expensive.
+
+Late in the fall of 1861, he received a letter from his mother
+containing a ten-dollar bill. It was a short letter. "Your father can't
+live more than a week. Come at once."
+
+Jason put his head down on that letter and sobbed, then dried his eyes
+and sought the doctor, who loaned him the rest of the money needed for
+the trip.
+
+The minister's circuit had swung him round again to High Hill. Jason
+disembarked from the packet late one November afternoon, carrying his
+carpet bag. Even in November, High Hill was beautiful. Through his
+sadness, Jason again felt the thrill of the giant headlands, the
+thousand hills of his boyish imaginings.
+
+There was the same little cottage, more weather-beaten than he had
+remembered it. His mother was waiting for him at the door. The four
+years had changed her, yet she seemed to Jason more beautiful than his
+mental picture of her had been.
+
+She kissed him with trembling lips. "He's still with us," she whispered.
+"I'm sure he waited for you."
+
+"What is the matter with him?" asked Jason, huskily, as he deposited his
+carpet bag on the sitting-room table.
+
+"Lung fever. He took a bad cold a month ago coming home from West
+Virginia in the rain. He was absent-minded, you know. If it hadn't been
+for Pilgrim, I don't think he'd ever got here."
+
+"Pilgrim?" asked Jason, warming his hands at the fire.
+
+"Surely I've written you about Pilgrim. Father bought him soon after you
+left. He's the wisest horse that ever lived. If you're warm, now, Jason,
+come to your father."
+
+He followed her into the bedroom which opened off the kitchen. His
+father lay on the feather bed, his eyes closed. O how worn--O how
+changed! Young Jason was hardened to suffering and death. He had not
+realized that to the sickness and death of one's own, nothing can harden
+us. He stood breathing hard while his mother stooped over the bed.
+
+"Ethan," she said softly, "our boy is here."
+
+Brother Wilkins opened his eyes and smiled faintly. He tried to say
+something and Jason sprang to take his hand.
+
+"Oh, he wants to speak to you and can't. O my poor dear! O Ethan, my
+dearest."
+
+Jason's mother broke down. Jason put his finger on his father's wrist.
+
+After a long moment, "Mother, he's gone," he whispered.
+
+After the funeral, Jason wandered about the village for a day or so,
+trying to plan for his mother's future and his own. All the townspeople
+were kind to him.
+
+"Haven't forgot how you loaned me those _Harper's Monthlies_ before you
+read 'em yourself," said Mr. Inchpin. "Anything I can do for you or your
+mother, let me know."
+
+The two had met in Hardwich's store, which was also the post office and
+the evening club for the males of High Hill. Jason had dropped in to
+post a letter.
+
+A tall scraggly man joined in. "Your father was the best preacher in
+Ohio. We was all glad when he got back here."
+
+"He had the gift of prayer," said an old man, in the back of the store.
+
+There was a silence which Jason struggled in vain to break.
+
+Then a young fellow who carried a buggy whip and smoked a cigar said,
+"How does the doctoring go, Jason?"
+
+"Well, thanks," returned Jason, looking at the young fellow, intently.
+It was Billy Ames, he of the striped pants.
+
+Back through Jason's heart, until now strangely softened by the
+happenings of the past few days, surged the accumulated bitterness of
+his poverty-stricken youth. He turned abruptly and left the store.
+
+His mother was watching for him, anxiously. "Jason, Pilgrim had an
+accident. He's got a frightful cut on his right fore shoulder. He must
+have got caught on a nail somehow."
+
+"Let's have a look at him," said Jason.
+
+The big gray was standing stolidly in his stall. Mrs. Wilkins held the
+candle while Jason examined him. On the right fore shoulder was a great
+three-cornered tear from which the skin hung in a bloody fold.
+
+"I'll have to sew it up." Jason was all surgeon now. "Do you think he'll
+stand still for us?"
+
+"Stand still," replied Jason's mother, indignantly. "Why, he'll know
+exactly what you are doing, and why."
+
+"All right then. You get me some clean rags and a darning-needle and
+I'll get the rest of the things I'll need."
+
+In a few moments the operation was well in hand.
+
+Pilgrim kept his ears back and his eyes on his mistress. He breathed
+heavily, but otherwise he did not stir. He was a large horse, with a
+small, intelligent head and a mighty chest. Jason's mother held the
+candle with one hand while she stroked the big gray's nose with the
+other.
+
+"Be careful, Jason, do!" she said softly.
+
+Jason grunted. "You keep him from biting or kicking and I'll do my
+share," he said.
+
+"Pilgrim bite!" cried Jason's mother indignantly.
+
+Again Jason grunted, working swiftly, with the skill of trained and
+accustomed fingers. The candle flickered on his cool young face, on his
+black hair and on his long, strong, surgeon's fingers. It flickered too
+on his mother's sweet lips, on her tired brown eyes and iron-gray hair.
+It put high-lights on the cameo at her throat and made a grotesque
+shadow of her hoop-skirts on the stable wall.
+
+Finally Jason straightened himself with a sigh and wiped his hands on a
+towel.
+
+"That's a good job," he said. "Must be some bad spikes here or in the
+pasture fence to have given him that rip. I'll hunt them up
+tomorrow.--Get over there!"
+
+This last to Pilgrim, who suddenly had put his head on Jason's shoulder
+with a soft nuzzling of his nose against the young doctor's cheek and a
+little whinny that was almost human.
+
+"Why, Jason, he's thanking you!" cried his mother. "He'll never forget
+what you've done for him tonight."
+
+Jason gave the horse a careless slap and started out the stable door.
+
+"You'll be having it that he speaks Greek next," he said.
+
+"You don't know him," replied Jason's mother. "This is the first time
+you ever saw him, remember. These last three years of your father's life
+he's been like one of the family." She followed Jason into the cottage.
+"Often and often before your poor father died he said he'd never have
+been able to keep on with the circuit-riding and the preaching if he'd
+had to depend on any other horse than Pilgrim. That horse just knew
+father was forgetful. He wouldn't budge if father forgot the
+saddle-bags. When Pilgrim balked, father always knew he'd forgotten
+something and he'd go back for it. I'll have supper on by the time
+you've washed up, Jason."
+
+The little stove that was set in the fireplace roared lustily. The
+kettle was singing. The old yellow cat slept cozily in the wooden rocker
+on the patch-work cushion. All the furniture, so simple and worn, was as
+familiar to Jason as the back of his hand.
+
+Jason washed at the bench in the corner, then sat down while his mother
+put the supper before him--fried mush, fried salt pork, tea and apple
+sauce.
+
+"Well," said Jason soberly, "what are we going to do now, mother?
+Father's gone and--"
+
+His mother's trembling lips warned him to stop.
+
+"It doesn't seem possible," she said, "that it's only a week since we
+laid him away."
+
+Jason interrupted gently. "I know, mother; but you and I have got to go
+on living!"
+
+"It's you I'm worrying about," said his mother.
+
+"I've been wondering if you hadn't better come back to Baltimore with
+me," mused Jason. "I can eke out a living somehow for the two of us."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Wilkins decidedly. "You've got burden enough to take
+care of yourself. I can get along till you're doctoring for yourself.
+Mr. Inchpin will let me have the cottage near the wharf if I'll go up to
+his house and cook his dinner for him. Then with a little sewing and a
+little nursing here in the village, the cow, the chickens and Pilgrim, I
+can get along. But I don't see how I can send you anything, Jason."
+
+Jason had brightened perceptibly. "If I can just get through this year,
+mother, I'll be on my feet. But I've got to pay Dr. Edwards back. He's a
+hard driver. If we can get together enough for that, I'll manage,
+somehow."
+
+Jason's mother sighed. "It does seem as if, all through the years, I
+ought to have saved something, but I haven't, not a cent, except what I
+raked and scraped together for your doctoring. Two hundred and fifty
+dollars a year beside donation parties is quite a sum, Jason, and I feel
+guilty that I haven't saved anything for you. But it all went,
+especially after father got sickly. I've sold a lot of things, Jason, so
+as to send you the money. I'm most at my wit's end now. Grandma's silver
+teapot, that kept you three months, and your father's watch, nearly six.
+That's the way the things have gone. My, how thankful I was we had 'em."
+
+Jason was still so very like his mother, so very unlike. Where her face
+was sweet and tremulous, his was cool and still. His brown eyes were
+careless and yet eager. Hers were not inscrutable now. The light had
+gone out of them from weeping. Jason's long, strong hands were smooth
+and quiet. Hers were knotted and work calloused and a little uncertain.
+
+As if something in her words irritated him, Jason said quickly, "Well,
+what did you and father start me on this doctor idea for, if you thought
+it was going to cost too much?"
+
+"O, Jason, you know that thought never occurred to either of us! There
+are still some things to go that I've sort of hung on to. Take the St.
+Bartholomew candlestick to Mr. Inchpin. That will give you the money you
+need right now."
+
+Jason looked up at the queerly wrought silver candlestick that was more
+like an old oil lamp than a candlestick. His mother's people had brought
+it from France with them. The family legend was that some Huguenot
+ancestor had come through the massacre of St. Bartholomew with this only
+relic of his home wrapped in his bosom.
+
+"Good!" said Jason eagerly. "The old thing is neither fish nor flesh,
+anyhow. Too big mouthed for a candle and folks are going to use coal
+oil more and more, anyhow. I can be off tomorrow."
+
+"Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, Jason."
+
+"I'll be glad to forget it," grumbled Jason. "What have we to be
+thankful for?"
+
+His mother looked at him a little curiously, but she said nothing. Jason
+caught the expression in her eyes.
+
+"Don't look at me that way, mother," he burst forth angrily, "I can't
+forgive father, with his big brain and body for doing so little for you
+and me. I can't forgive him for what he dragged us through--those
+donation parties! He had no right to put me through what he did that
+year at High Hill. And what did he get out of his life? They lay him
+away with the remark that he had a gift of prayer! And his widow may
+starve, for all of them."
+
+"Jason, be silent," cried his mother. She had risen and stood facing
+him, her face deathly white. "Not one word against your father. Because
+you never could appreciate him, you needn't belittle him now. Not one
+word," as Jason would have spoken. "He was my husband and I loved him,
+God knows. O Ethan, Ethan, how shall I finish my span of years alone!"
+she broke down utterly.
+
+Jason put his arms about her. "Mother, I didn't mean to hurt you. Truly
+I didn't. It's only that--" he stopped and set his lips tightly while he
+petted her in silence.
+
+"I pray, Jason," said his mother, finally, "that you will never have a
+grief or a punishment great enough to soften your heart."
+
+Jason did not answer. He went up to see Mr. Inchpin that night, and the
+following day started back East again.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+MR. LINCOLN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+IV
+
+MR. LINCOLN
+
+
+Three times a week during the year that followed, Jason's mother saddled
+Pilgrim and rode him to the post office after the shrieks of the whistle
+had warned her that the tri-weekly packet had come and gone. Four times
+during the year she heard from Jason.
+
+
+    "April 3, 1862.
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "I am very well indeed, and hope that you are not overworking.
+    Things are not going very well here. Everybody is hard pressed
+    because of the war and Dr. Edwards simply can't make any
+    collections. We get a good many soldiers who are sent home half
+    cured and, of course, we get nothing at all from them--don't want
+    to, in fact. Is there any way we could raise just a little money?
+    Not a cent that you've earned, understand, but perhaps you could
+    sell your old mahogany hat-box. Mrs. Chadwick always wanted it. I
+    never did care for those old things and I don't think you do. After
+    I get started in practice, I'll buy you a dozen hat-boxes. Won't it
+    be great when you can come down here and live with me?
+
+                                                 "Your loving son,
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+    "June 7, 1862.
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "I have been quite sick with a sore hand--almost got gangrene from a
+    soldier. That's why you haven't been hearing from me. I received the
+    ten dollars. Thank you very much. I didn't think the old trap would
+    bring that much. Dr. Edwards said yesterday that I had a genius for
+    surgery. The ten dollars paid my board for six weeks, giving me a
+    chance to take some extra cases for the doctor. The war looks bad,
+    doesn't it? They need surgeons and though I'm doing something in
+    patching up these poor fellows and sending them back, I wonder often
+    if I oughtn't to go into a war hospital. Do you remember the little
+    cameo pin you used to wear till father thought it was too dressy for
+    you? If you haven't lost it, I wish you'd send it down here for me
+    to pawn. I can get it back after the war. I think of you often
+    though I don't write. Don't work too hard.
+
+                                                 "Your loving son,
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+    "Sept. 24, 1862.
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "Could you possibly sell something to get five dollars to me by
+    return packet? Will write fully later.
+
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+But there was nothing more to sell.
+
+
+    "My dear boy," wrote Jason's mother, "I am heartbroken, for I know
+    how hard you are working, but truly, I have nothing left of the
+    least value. The cameo pin was the last. Am very much worried lest
+    you are sick. Do let me know. I am very well and the neighbors are
+    kind. Pilgrim is well, too, though the scar is there on his
+    shoulder. I'm sure he will always remember what you did for him. He
+    is all but human. _Please_ write me.
+
+                                         "A hug and kiss, from Mother."
+
+
+Jason's fourth letter was urgent and prompt in reply.
+
+
+    "DEAR MOTHER:
+
+    "I am going into the army, mother. The need for surgeons is urgent
+    and I've got to help lick the South. I thought, barring the five
+    from you, I could raise enough to buy into practice with Dr. Edwards
+    before I leave, so that if I live, I will have that to return to. It
+    will cost a hundred dollars. But I can't do it. So I guess you'll
+    have to sell Pilgrim. I hate to ask it of you but after all he's
+    only an expense to you and I'll buy you another, after the war. Sell
+    him to the government for an army horse. Mr. Inchpin will attend to
+    it for you.
+
+                                                        "Lovingly,
+                                                               "JASON."
+
+
+Jason's mother read the letter with tears running down her cheeks. It
+was November. Drearily the Kentucky hills rolled back from the river and
+drearily the Ohio valleys stretched inland. Pilgrim plodded patiently
+toward the stable and his mistress, huddled in the saddle, gave him no
+heed until Pilgrim stamped impatiently at the stable door. Then she
+dismounted and the great horse stamped into his stall.
+
+"O Pilgrim," she sobbed, "Jason is going to war. Jason is going to war.
+I can't lose him too!"
+
+The horse turned his fine head and nickered softly as he rubbed his soft
+nose on her shoulder.
+
+"And I've got to let you go, old friend," she added. "I know that I
+don't need you, Pilgrim. It's just that you are like a living bit of
+father--and if Jason would only seem to understand that, it wouldn't be
+so hard to let you go. I wonder if all young folks are like Jason?"
+
+Old Pilgrim leaned his head over his stall and in the November gloaming
+he looked long at his mistress with his wise and gentle eyes. It was as
+if he would tell her that he had learned that youth is always a little
+hard; that only long years in harness with always the back-breaking load
+to pull, not for oneself, but for others, can make the really grateful
+heart. One of the sweet, deep compensations of the years, the gray horse
+seemed to say, is that gratitude grows in the soul.
+
+So Jason and Old Pilgrim both went to war. They did not see each other,
+but each one, in his own way, made a brilliant record. Pilgrim learned
+the sights and sounds and smells of war. The fearful pools of blood
+ceased to send him plunging and rearing in harness. The screams of utter
+fear or of mortal agony no longer set him to neighing or sweating in
+sympathy. Pilgrim, superb in strength and superb in intelligence,
+plodded efficiently through a battle just as he had plodded efficiently
+over the circuit of Jason's Methodist father.
+
+And Jason, cool and clear-headed, with his wonderful long strong hands,
+sawed and sewed and probed and purged his way through field hospital
+after field hospital, until the men began to hear of his skill and to
+ask for him when the fear of death was on them. His work absorbed him
+more and more, until months went by, and he neglected to write to his
+mother! Just why, who can say? Each of us looking into his heart,
+perhaps can find some answer. But Jason was young, and work and world
+hungry. He did not ask himself embarrassing questions. The months
+slipped into a year, and the first year into a second year. Still Jason
+did not write to his mother, nor did he longer hear from her.
+
+In November of the second year Jason was stationed in a hospital near
+Washington. One rainy morning as he made his way to the cot of a man who
+was dying of gangrene, an orderly stopped him.
+
+"This is Dr. Jason Wilkins?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Sorry, Doctor, but I've got to arrest you and take you to Washington--"
+
+Jason looked the orderly over incredulously. "You've got the wrong man,
+friend."
+
+The soldier drew a heavy envelop carefully from his breast pocket, and
+handed it to Jason. Jason opened it uneasily, and gasped. This is what
+he read: "Show this to Surgeon Jason Wilkins, ---- Regiment. Arrest him.
+Bring him to me immediately.--A. LINCOLN."
+
+Jason whitened. "What's up?" he asked the orderly.
+
+"I didn't ask the President," replied the orderly dryly. "We'll start at
+once, if you please, Doctor."
+
+In a daze, Jason left for Washington. He thought of all the minor
+offenses he had committed. But they were only such as any young fellow
+might have committed. He could not believe that any of them had reached
+Mr. Lincoln's ears, or that, if they had, the great man in the White
+House would have heeded them.
+
+Jason was locked in a room in a Washington boarding-house for one night.
+The next day at noon the orderly called for him. Weak-kneed, Jason
+followed him up the long drive to the door of the White House, and into
+a room where there were more orderlies and a man at a desk writing. An
+hour of dazed waiting, then a man came out of a door and spoke to the
+man at the desk.
+
+"Surgeon Jason Wilkins," said the sentry.
+
+"Here!" answered Jason.
+
+"This way," jerked the orderly, and Jason found himself in the inner
+room, with the door closed behind him. The room was empty, yet filled.
+There was but one man in it besides Jason, but that man was Mr. Lincoln.
+He sat at a desk, with his somber eyes on Jason's face--still a cool
+young face, despite trembling knees.
+
+"You are Jason Wilkins?" said Mr. Lincoln.
+
+"Yes, Mr. President," replied the young surgeon.
+
+"Where are you from?"
+
+"High Hill, Ohio."
+
+"Have you any relatives?"
+
+"Only my mother is living."
+
+"Yes, only a mother! Well, young man, how is your mother?"
+
+Jason stammered. "Why, why--I don't know."
+
+"You don't know!" thundered Lincoln. "And why don't you know? Is she
+living or dead?"
+
+"I don't know," said Jason. "To tell the truth, I've neglected to write
+and I don't suppose she knows where I am."
+
+There was a silence in the room. Mr. Lincoln clenched a great fist on
+his desk, and his eyes scorched Jason. "I had a letter from her. She
+supposes you dead and asked me to trace your grave. What was the matter
+with her? No good? Like most mothers, a poor sort? Eh? Answer me, sir?"
+
+Jason bristled a little. "The best woman that ever lived, Mr.
+President."
+
+"Ah!" breathed Mr. Lincoln. "Still you have no reason to be grateful to
+her! How'd you get your training as a surgeon? Who paid for it? Your
+father?"
+
+Jason reddened. "Well, no; father was a poor Methodist preacher. Mother
+raised the money, though I worked for my board mostly."
+
+"Yes, how'd she raise the money?"
+
+Jason's lips were stiff. "Selling things, Mr. President."
+
+"What did she sell?"
+
+"Father's watch--the old silver teapot--the mahogany hat-box--the St.
+Bartholomew candlestick. Old things mostly; beyond use except in
+museums."
+
+Again silence in the room, while a look of contempt gathered in Abraham
+Lincoln's eyes that seared Jason's cool young soul till it scorched him.
+"You poor fool!" said Lincoln. "You poor worm! Her household
+treasures--one by one--for you. 'Useless things--fit for museums!' Oh,
+you fool!"
+
+Jason flushed angrily and bit his lips. Suddenly the President rose and
+pointed a long, bony finger at his desk. "Come here and sit down and
+write a letter to your mother!"
+
+Jason stalked obediently over and sat down in the President's seat.
+Anger and mortification were ill inspirations for letter-writing, but
+under Lincoln's burning eyes Jason seized a pen and wrote his mother a
+stilted note. Lincoln paced the floor, pausing now and again to look
+over Jason's shoulder.
+
+"Address it and give it to me," said the President. "I'll see that it
+gets to her." Then, his stern voice rising a little: "And now, Jason
+Wilkins, as long as you are in the army, you write to your mother once a
+week. If I have reason to correct you on the matter again, I'll have you
+court-martialed."
+
+Jason rose and handed the letter to the President, then stood, angry and
+silent, awaiting further orders. Abraham Lincoln took another turn or
+two up and down the room. Then he paused before the window and looked
+from it a long, long time. Finally he turned to Jason.
+
+"My boy," he said gently, "there's no finer quality in the world than
+gratitude. There is nothing a man can have in his heart so mean, so low
+as ingratitude. Even a dog appreciates a kindness, never forgets a soft
+word, or a bone. To my mind, the noblest holiday in the world is
+Thanksgiving. And, next the Creator, there is no one the holiday should
+be dedicated to as much as to mothers."
+
+Again Lincoln paused, and looked from the boyish face of the young
+surgeon out of the window at the bleak November skies, and Lincoln said
+to Jason, with God knows what tragedy of memory in his lonely heart:
+
+    "Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
+    Thou dost not bite so nigh
+      As benefits forgot."
+
+Another pause. "You may go, my boy." And Lincoln shook hands with
+Jason, who stumbled from the room, his mind a chaos of resentment and
+anger. He made his way down Pennsylvania Avenue, pausing as two army
+officers rode up to a hotel and dismounted, leaving their horses.
+Something about the big gray that one of the officers rode seemed
+vaguely familiar to the young doctor. The gray turned his small,
+intelligent head toward Jason, then with a sudden soft whinny, laid his
+head on Jason's shoulder and nuzzled his cheek gently. Jason looked at
+the right fore shoulder. A three-cornered scar was there. Jason and Old
+Pilgrim never had met but once, and yet--Jason was little more than a
+boy. Suddenly he threw his arms around Old Pilgrim's neck, and sobbed
+into the silky mane. Passers-by glanced curiously and then went on.
+Washington was full of tears those days.
+
+Pilgrim whinnied and waited patiently. Finally Jason dried his eyes,
+then stood in thought. The officer who had ridden Pilgrim came out at
+last. Jason saluted.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Captain, I'd like to buy that horse from you."
+
+The captain laughed. "There are a number of others like you."
+
+"No, but let me tell you about him, Captain. Give me ten minutes. I'm
+Dr. Wilkins of ---- Hospital."
+
+"O yes, I know of your work. What's the story, Doctor?"
+
+Jason told Pilgrim's history. "She gave him up for me and now I've found
+him," he finished. "I want to buy him back, get a furlough and take him
+home to her, myself. I've been saving my money."
+
+"You may have him for just what I paid for him, Doctor," said the
+captain, who was considerably Jason's senior. "Tell your mother I wish
+my own mother were living and that I do this in her memory."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Jason.
+
+A week later Jason led Pilgrim out of the freight car in which he had
+traveled from Washington to a railway station twenty-five miles from
+home. The river packets were not running and this was the nearest
+station to High Hill. It was noon and cold. Jason mounted and started
+south briskly and once more the Ohio valley opened up before him.
+
+It seemed to Jason that he was seeing the hills for absolutely the first
+time. And yet that could not be, for back with the first sight of the
+distant river came all his old boyish reverence for the headlands. The
+last time he had ridden horseback in the hills had been in the West
+Virginia circuit, with his father.
+
+For the first time since his interview with the President, Jason began
+to think of his father. All his newly awakened sense of gratitude had
+been centered on his mother. Did he then owe his father nothing?
+
+It took courage, it took nerve, it took stomach to patch together the
+bloody wrecks on the field of battle. It had taken tenacity to an ideal
+to starve and toil for his profession as he had done in Baltimore.
+Whence had come these qualities to Jason? He thought once more of his
+father on that trip on the West Virginian circuit, of the boys expelled
+from the church, of Sister Clark, of his own sense of mortification and
+his own contempt. And he dropped his head on his breast with a groan.
+
+And so as the sun set, Pilgrim with the scar on his right fore shoulder
+and Jason with the scar on his soul that only remorse implants there,
+stopped before the cottage in High Hill. And through the window, Jason's
+mother saw them. She rushed to the door and Jason, dismounting, ran up
+to her, and dropping on his knees, threw his arms about her waist and
+sobbed against her bosom:
+
+"O mother! O mother! Forgive me! I didn't realize. I didn't know!" Just
+as many, many sons have done before, and just as many more will do,
+please God, as long as love and gratitude endure.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Benefits Forgot, by Honore Willsie
+
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