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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43934 ***
+
+HARBOR JIM
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SIGNAL HILL, HARBOUR OF ST. JOHNS.]
+
+
+
+
+  HARBOR JIM
+
+  OF NEWFOUNDLAND
+
+
+
+
+  By
+  A. EUGENE BARTLETT, D.D.
+  _Author of "The Joy Maker," etc._
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  NEW YORK        CHICAGO
+  Fleming H. Revell Company
+  LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+  Copyright, 1922, by
+  FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+  New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
+  Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
+  London: 21 Paternoster Square
+  Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
+
+
+
+
+  _To those Newfoundlanders who, in gathering
+  harvests from the sea for the world's hungry,
+  have garnered for themselves both faith and
+  courage, I dedicate this book._
+
+
+
+
+  Contents
+
+
+     I. JIM AND BOB                            9
+
+    II. THE CONVERSION OF JIM                 20
+
+   III. AN ENGAGEMENT AS PLANNED              30
+
+    IV. SOME MIRACLES                         40
+
+     V. "I ASKED FOR FISH"                    49
+
+    VI. LIVIN' ALONG                          56
+
+   VII. THE HEAVEN HOME                       61
+
+  VIII. CHRISTMAS WITH JIM'S FRIENDS          68
+
+    IX. HONEY-MOONING ON THE FLAKES           80
+
+     X. JIM AND HIS BOOK                      86
+
+    XI. RAILROADING WITH THE KID              93
+
+   XII. THROUGH THE VALLEY WITH THE LITTLE
+        FELLOW                               100
+
+  XIII. THE QUEER ONE                        107
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+JIM AND BOB
+
+
+Bob McCartney was spreading cod on the flakes and I was watching
+him and estimating the chances of better weather. The sun had not
+succeeded in rolling back the fog and St. John's was still half asleep
+in blankets of mist. Signal Hill was altogether hidden and the harbor
+entrance could not be seen. In the water-soaked atmosphere the flakes
+were merged together and the tiny houses of the fishers were almost
+joined into one long rambling house. The air was heavy with the smell
+of fish and the morning was not conducive to enthusiastic conversation.
+
+Bob McCartney was a Newfoundlander born and bred and had left with his
+ancestors in Ireland the gift of blarney. This morning in particular he
+contented himself with monosyllabic answers, that occasionally did not
+come even to the estate words, but ended only in an effective grunt.
+Finally he condescended to speak a whole sentence with some little life
+in his voice.
+
+"Yes, I guess she's agoin' to lift, fer there goes Harbor Jim."
+
+I strained my eyes to see thru the fog and could just discern a sail
+boat headed toward what I supposed was the harbor entrance.
+
+"And who is Harbor Jim?" I asked.
+
+"Why, he's my friend and he can knock spalls off'n any Lander in the
+Dominion," replied Bob and then lapsed into silence as he went on
+slowly laying out his cod on the flakes.
+
+Just then the sun made a gain and succeeded in piercing thru the fog
+and I saw, suddenly, a little boat some seventy-five yards out from the
+shore, and standing out near the bow stood a man as erect as the mast
+behind him, and looking straight out to sea.
+
+"There's Harbor Jim!" and Bob pointed over his shoulder in the
+direction of the boat as he spoke the words.
+
+It gave me a thrill, as the light brought him sharply to my attention,
+to see him standing there, intently looking toward the harbor entrance.
+I looked from the shore even as he looked from his boat and the sun at
+that moment uncovered the rocks on both sides. He lifted his hand and
+the helper behind him brought the sail to the faint breeze that was
+springing up, and the boat headed for the harbor entrance and the open
+sea.
+
+The sun seemed to lift Bob's spirit and the sight of Harbor Jim to warm
+the cockles of his heart, for he began in a good-natured drawl to tell
+me of the finding of his friend.
+
+"It was the third week in March, eleven years ago, come next spring,
+that we were sealing down North. Harbor Jim and I were then on Cap'en
+Boynton's ship. I didn't know Jim then more'n any other fellow. It was
+an odd kind of a trip. For days it hung nasty and we couldn't have seen
+a seal if he had been within shot of us.
+
+"Then, one day, I think it was a Friday, but that doesn't matter, it
+come bright and sparkling and grew cold. By noon our ship was frozen in
+the ice, and we were waiting and hoping the look-out would see seals.
+The ice had been piled up in some places and just south it looked like
+a town, a little village with houses and meeting house and school, all
+a sparklin' pretty. I never seed bluer sky, deep as chicory flowers and
+you could see fer miles, seems though you was a-goin' to see thru it
+almost to 'tother side o' the world.
+
+"Long about two o'clock the look-out yelled: 'Seals to the nor-east!'
+
+"No sooner did he yell than the Cap'en shouted: 'Look alive men! Over
+and after!'
+
+"Then with gaffs and guns and ropes we went over the ship's side and
+after the seals. The ice was uncertain and some of the men went thru
+the crust into the sea, but we quickly pulled them out and were off
+agin.
+
+"Now in the days before we had decided to make a contest of it, as we
+often did. It made good sport and we would get more seals. Harbor Jim
+and I had chosen up, like they do in a spellin' bee, and all the men
+had been divided into two sides to see which one on'em would bring the
+biggest load o' seals back to the ship.
+
+"Unfortunately the seals were some distance from the ship and it was
+after two when we started. We were so intent on getting the catch that
+we failed to note it was not only beginning to snow, but also getting
+on toward the end o' the day.
+
+"At the moment when we should have turned back, I saw an old hood,
+that's an old seal that pulls a visor over his eyes and fights to a
+finish. I'd been tender-hearted and passed by just then a young seal
+that looked kinder pitiful at me and begged for life and I resolved
+that I'd get the old hood, come what would. He lured me away from the
+crowd, and when I finally succeeded in silencing him, the men were
+gone, and thru the snow I could not see the ship.
+
+"Worse luck still the ice-pan on which I stood was beginning to shake
+and break up. I thought of the woman at home and the boy, and I thought
+of freezing to death out to sea and I guess, too, I thought o' my sins.
+The other fellows had gone back to the ship and I was alone, facing
+the cold, the storm and the night. Then I began to shout in the hope
+that they were not too far away to hear me. After some waiting, that
+seemed longer than probably 'twas, I heared two words and I don't
+honest think, if I gets to Paradise and the good Lord says, 'Come, Bob,
+there's room,' it'll sound half so good as it did to me then when I
+heared ringing out:
+
+"'Comin', Bob!' It was the shout of Harbor Jim. I kept hollering and he
+found me and together we made our way back. I don't know jes' how and
+I don't believe he does, but when we reached the rest, we joined hands
+and felt our way back to the ship.
+
+"I have asked him about it, many a time, but he always says, '_He_
+showed me the way, Bob, and He'll show you the way. Ask Him, Bob.'
+
+"He went after me when all the rest said he was a fool and a riskin'
+of his life. That's how I found my friend and I don't believe Jonathan
+ever loved David more'n I love Jim. He never goes scow-ways; he always
+sails straight. But you mustn't think I am the only one that loves him.
+Jerusalem spriggins, I do believe the whole world would love Jim, if
+they only could know him."
+
+The lethargy that had been born out of the morning had completely
+disappeared. Bob had become all animation as he told of the finding of
+his friend. If I had not known that Bob was a man who never showed his
+feelings, except in most orderly and measured fashion, I should have
+thought, once or twice, that the tears were starting, but it must have
+been the dampness of the morning, that the sun was now fast drying up.
+
+The city of St. John's now stood out clear in the sunshine. Harbor
+Jim's boat had gone thru the narrow entrance and disappeared out to
+sea. Both sides of the bay stood out sharp, revealing a harbor that
+from many viewpoints is as beautiful as that of Naples.
+
+Bob carefully laid out his last fish and left it to dry on the flakes.
+Rubbing his sleeve across his face, he abruptly turned and said:
+
+"I needs a plug of terbaccy. Walk down town and I'll tell you how Jim
+got his name."
+
+I did not need a second invitation and we started toward town.
+
+"You see it was this-away. His mother gave him the Jim, but his friends
+and neighbors give him the Harbor.
+
+"Jim was always one to take chances, 'specially if some one needed him.
+Didn't he take a chance--a big one--when he saved me on the ice-pan?
+But somehow he always pulled thru. Other boats would lie outside and
+wait but Jim would pull thru the Narrows and tie up and be home afore
+the others. The others dasn't come into the Harbor, a fear o' the rocks.
+
+"Folks come to say, 'Jim always makes the Harbor.' Then jes' naturally
+they come to call him Harbor Jim. It's so now that the women folks
+are always glad if their men can go with Jim, for they feel that then
+they'll sure come back. Everybody who lives yere loves Harbor Jim."
+
+"I would like to meet Harbor Jim and have a talk with him," I said,
+when Bob ceased talking and trudged on in silence. "I am sure he has a
+philosophy worth hearing about and adopting."
+
+"You can meet him all right," replied Bob, "but as for talkin' much
+with him, I don't know. He isn't very strong on talkin'. He says some
+folks talk so much, they set their tongue to goin' and go off and leave
+it runnin' and it does a heap a mischief. Another time he sed to me
+that he thought most folks would _do_ more if they talked less.
+
+"I remember a year ago a white-washed Yankee was here travelling for
+some soap concern. He heared about Harbor Jim and wanted me to take
+him over to his house and introduce him and I did. That Yankee started
+right in doing all the talkin'. He had a tongue that was balanced and
+would wag easy. He told Jim he was making a mistake in not having a
+bigger garden, that he ought to farm more and fish less. He told him
+what the Dominion needed and when at last he began to get out of breath
+he turned to Jim and said:
+
+"'What do you think?'
+
+"And Harbor Jim just said kind of slow like and deliberate:
+
+"'Guess you have said it all, sir, but mebbe when everybody goes to
+farming they will need a little fish to change off from potatoes and
+cabbage, and I guess I better bid you good day and go fishing.' That
+was every word Jim said and that Yankee watched him go out of sight and
+what that Yankee said then want a credit to him nor favorable to the
+Dominion."
+
+I smiled at the thought of the discomforted travelling man and wondered
+if my own luck or my own tact would succeed any better, for I was
+already convinced that Harbor Jim was a man worth knowing.
+
+"Suppose we go and meet Mrs. Harbor Jim," I said to Bob when the
+tobacco had been purchased and his pipe was doing right.
+
+"If you say so, but meetin' her ain't the same as meetin' him. She's
+all right, but she's jes' learning from Jim, she says so herself,"
+answered Bob.
+
+Their home was in a little town a few miles out from St. John's and
+it was kind of Bob to go out with me. After a walk of about an hour
+we stood looking down upon a little fishing village with great,
+brown-stained rocks protecting it a little from the sea.
+
+"This is his town," said Bob, "can you find his house?"
+
+But they looked alike to me; for all were small rectangular affairs,
+flat-roofed, shingled and painted white. Jim's house was evidently no
+different from his neighbor's.
+
+"I guess I'll have to tell you," Bob chuckled, as we went down a lane
+and saw two rather dirty children at play in front of a house where a
+woman was bending over a tub of clothes.
+
+"Hello, Bob, did Jim go out?" the woman called, as soon as she
+recognized Bob.
+
+"Yes, he went out a couple of hours ago. Here's a man who wants to meet
+Mrs. Harbor Jim."
+
+She wiped her hands on her wet apron, pushed the hair back from the
+baby's face as she passed her and beckoned us to follow her into the
+house. Extending her hand she said:
+
+"I think, sir, you want to see my husband, but he's a fishin' and may
+not be back afore tomorrow. Can I do anything for you, sir? There's
+some brewse,[1] on the back of the stove, if you care to eat. I am
+wondering what you can be awantin' this time of a working morning? Is
+it that some one has fell sick and wants Jim to watch or pray?"
+
+"We were a bit tired with walking and thought we would like to rest and
+see you and the children in passing," I said none to easily, for the
+little woman was searching us hard to find the reason of our visit.
+
+Bob came to our rescue by starting a conversation about the promise
+of prices for fish and what Bill Coaker was doing for the Fishermen's
+Protective Union. Relieved by the shift in the conversation I looked
+about the room. It was positively no different from other fishermen's
+homes that I had visited; no better furniture, no more of it; the house
+was no cleaner; and the woman, who was Jim's wife, was on a par with
+other women of the neighborhood; only she seemed a little brighter and
+a certain light was in her eyes when she spoke of Jim. There was just
+one object that attracted my attention, a spruce tree in one corner,
+and I asked the purpose of it.
+
+She replied: "Jim keeps a tree in that corner. He says it keeps him
+remembering how beautiful the world is. He says it connects us with out
+o' doors and Jim loves the open country just as he does the sea."
+
+Then after a pause she added: "But you must come again when Jim is
+home. I want you to know him. I wish every one could know Jim; he is so
+good, so true, so kind!"
+
+That was all I could find out about Harbor Jim that day, but I did not
+forget that tribute to her husband, spoken simply, out of her heart,
+and it made me feel as I went back to the city with Bob, that perhaps
+I had under-estimated her ability and worth. It was more than a week
+afterward that in unexpected fashion and without introduction, I met
+Jim, But there was not a day of that week that I did not think of the
+little woman in faded blue, her flaxen hair falling over her face in
+confusion, because of wind and work, as I had seen her that morning
+over the white-picketed fence of Jim's house. I knew that I should not
+leave St. John's until I had seen Harbor Jim and his wife again.
+
+[1] A Newfoundland dish of hard bread, fish and pork.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE CONVERSION OF JIM
+
+
+The pressure of my own work, during the following days, postponed my
+intended visit to Harbor Jim's. Then, one afternoon, I started for a
+walk, not to Jim's, but to Signal Tower by way of the flakes. The path
+I chose, wound around among the little fishermen's summer homes and
+past the flakes now heavy with fish curing in the sun; then across the
+little valley, near the end of the promontory, up back of the hospital
+to Cabot Tower and down around the reservoir back to the city. St.
+John's offers many attractive walks. There is the road out to Quidi
+Vidi, past the little lake where the regattas are held. There is the
+road to Bowring Park that gives one the quiet of woods there, with many
+flowers and a little, singing brook; but for one who loves the sea
+and the fishers, the walk that goes along the flakes must ever be the
+favorite.
+
+The afternoon of my walk was clear and the deep, blue water of the
+harbor was in sight most of the way. I had reached Cabot Tower and had
+been looking across the unhindered sea toward Ireland, the nearest
+land beyond, and was turning to go down toward the city, that lay
+comfortably upon the hills in the mellow, warm light of late afternoon,
+when I noticed a rather tall, bronzed fisherman, standing close by,
+evidently sharing the view with me.
+
+I turned and looked squarely at him and thought, "John Cabot himself
+might have been such a one as you are."
+
+I nodded and the fellow returned it and said, removing his hat as he
+spoke:
+
+"Don't you think we had better uncover before such a view as that?"
+
+I did as he suggested and drawn to the fellow by his winsome smile
+I decided to go back to the city with him; but there was a certain
+reserve in his manner, that did not make it quite easy to go with him
+unbidden. I hesitated and then asked:
+
+"Have you any objection to my walking back to the city with you?"
+
+"Not in the least," he replied, "provided you do not spoil the last of
+the day with too many words. You see, sir, I need some time to let that
+scene sink into my soul."
+
+For a New Yorker who had been interviewing Dominion leaders and talking
+politics in the interests of a newspaper, the command to keep silent
+was at least a surprise, but no doubt altogether wholesome.
+
+We started toward the city. The hill drops rather rapidly, you may
+remember, and then winds more leisurely. Forbidden to spoil the
+afternoon with words, I could at least watch my unknown companion who
+chose to practice the vow of silence like a Trappist monk.
+
+He was a fisherman. His clothes told me that, but there was to his walk
+an elasticity, a certain springiness that the fishermen I knew had
+lacked. He carried his head higher, his back was straighter. He walked
+as the son of a King might have walked, who had decided for the time to
+travel incognito and had chosen the garb of a fisherman.
+
+Now and then I would get a little ahead of him for the chance of
+looking back and up into his face. The very smile with which he had
+closed my mouth lingered and lit his face, just as light sometimes
+lingers on clouds at sunset. I fell to wondering how long it would
+last, just as sometimes I had estimated the length of sunsets.
+
+We came to a house and a little girl, seeing him, came running down
+and, without a word, slipped her hand into the man's and walked on some
+three rods and then left him and went back into the house from which
+she had come. She also smiled and seemed glad to walk and be silent.
+
+The houses increased in number as we came down the hill. Two boys came
+and, grabbing each a hand of my companion, walked a little way with
+him. This time he bestowed upon the boys, not words but a marble a
+piece. The boys utterly ignored me, kept their eyes rivetted upon him
+and left, giving him a hearty "Thank you!"
+
+When we came to the last dip of the hill that descends into the city,
+he paused and, keeping his eyes on the western sky, said:
+
+"Hard on you, sir! I didn't intend to be rude, but since I was
+converted I have to have more time to myself. Seems only fair that a
+fellow should have a little time now and then to enjoy his own company.
+Here's a good place to watch the Lord as He blesses the city at the
+close of the day."
+
+He waved me to a seat beside him and we sat watching. The silence was
+not as oppressive. I was a little nearer to my companion and the great
+gray clouds suffused with pink rivetted my attention. As the sunset
+waned and the cold, gray of night came on, he got up and, starting
+toward the city, said:
+
+"Thank you for praying with me."
+
+Now I had not been aware of having said anything at all, but I
+remembered that prayer may be uttered or unexpressed and ventured no
+reply.
+
+"Words often weigh down as well as lift. A lot of folks are smothered
+with them." He was breaking the silence which he had stipulated should
+be maintained until the view had sunk into his soul. "Words have to be
+well chosen, then they lift their pound. I'm not averse to talking on
+occasion; only, I find, when I'm talking too much, I'm thinking too
+little. Then, again, God wants to have His say now and then, and how
+can He, if we are sputtering all the while? Guess He talks still to
+some folks in the cool of the evening just as He did in the old garden."
+
+Released from the command to be silent and no longer with the
+opportunity of seeing my companion clearly, for it was fast growing
+dark, I felt that I would very much like to know something more of this
+strange, yet likable, fellow, and the words that he had spoken about
+his conversion prompted me in turn to break the silence.
+
+"I think I have received more out of this walk and this sunset than any
+I can remember, but my conversion was evidently not the same as yours.
+I would like to know about your conversion. Maybe it would open my eyes
+wider and let me see more as you do."
+
+I spoke now, not curiously, but earnestly, for I wanted to know how he
+could find so much on the old familiar hill and how I might find what
+he was finding.
+
+He laughed heartily and his laugh left the situation less tense and
+made him seem more human.
+
+"Maybe my conversion won't interest you," he said, "then again, it may
+help you. It was on this very road, I was converted. Only it was in the
+morning at half past nine. It was a foggy morning. Newfoundland has a
+good many of them. I used to think, too many, before I was converted,
+but now it seems to me best, for it just curtains the beautiful world
+and each time the curtain lifts it seems a little fairer than before
+for the waiting.
+
+"Now I've always loved the hills and the sea and enjoyed a good view,
+as most fishermen do, but that morning I was scuffing along, out of
+patience with a poor catch of the day before and seeing nothing but
+fog. The sea and the hills were out of sight. Suddenly I heard a voice
+say:
+
+"'Why don't you look at yourself, Jim?'
+
+"I stopped stock still in the middle of the road, like a hand had been
+put upon me and detained me. The voice was no more but the question was
+for me and it had to be answered.
+
+"It would take some time, so I decided to sit down and consider it. I
+could show you the very rock, sometime, if you cared to see it. I had
+never done much thinking 'till that morning. I said to myself:
+
+"'James, you don't know yourself well enough to call yourself by your
+first name. You have peeped into your neighbors' affairs. You've
+criticised other folks but you've never really gotten acquainted with
+yourself.'
+
+"So I stood myself up and asked myself questions in a real, down-right,
+honest desire to see just what I was and what I was doing here. First I
+says:
+
+"'Who are you, Jim?'
+
+"And I figured out that I had the right answer, though I had forgotten
+it and lived in contradiction of it. I was and I am a child of the
+Father.
+
+"Do you know, sir, the knowledge of that will ask a man a good many
+more questions and answer 'em, too.
+
+"'Where are you living, Jim?' I said to myself and the answer came,
+'You are living in His world and it's a good world. He made it for
+you and His other children. He's put fish in all the seas and if it
+ain't one kind it's another. There is enough in His world for all the
+children, and if any on'em starves, it's because some on'em is blind
+or the other children has forgotten they are to share His things. It's
+a fair world, with blue sky and little birds that sing, and little
+flowers that praise Him, too.'
+
+"It's a cheery thought, sir, that we're a livin' in _His_ world. It
+makes it worth while to live right. Then the next question I put myself
+was this:
+
+"'What are you worth?'
+
+"I reckoned up and found I was worth five quintals of salt fish, a half
+a barrel of cod liver oil and twelve lobster pots, most of 'em empty.
+I owned no house and aside from the fish I had $149 in the bank and an
+extra suit of clothes that wouldn't count for much.
+
+"'Is that _all_ you're worth,' I said, and I saw it wasn't enough
+to count me rich. I remembered, I could really think that morning,
+that Job's riches were not in camels and sheep. So I might be rich in
+other things beside codfish and oil, but I grew ashamed of myself that
+morning when I come to see how little I could count up that was worth
+carrying with me for eternity.
+
+"Bob McCartney's friendship, the part I'd given, counted a little; but
+when it come to counting faith and hope and truth, it didn't show up
+very well. I was poor and I had come to know it and that was the best
+part of it. There was hope then for me and a chance I might become rich.
+
+"'Where are you going?' again the Voice asked me a big question. I meet
+folks who have forgotten, just as I had done. But it helps to keep a
+fellow on the right track to remember where the road ends.
+
+"'What are you doing here?' was the next question and I put myself to
+answer it there on the rock that morning I was converted.
+
+"Fishing, I answered first, but what for, and is that all, came the
+questions. Now I take it fishing or farming, writing or preaching, it
+don't make much difference, so long as we're each just where He wants
+us to be and are doing just what He wants us to do. And every man has
+got to find out if he is where the Father wants him to be.
+
+"It didn't take me long to find out that I might be where He wanted
+me to be, but I knew I wasn't doing all He wanted me to do and I was
+adoin' a good many things He didn't want me to do.
+
+"Then I made some resolutions. Some folks don't believe in 'em, I know,
+but they always seemed to me to be good crutches, till a man could
+manage to get on without them and learn to walk straight. I resolved to
+be the best fisherman ever put out to sea, to clean my fish thorough,
+to salt 'em well and sell 'em honest weight.
+
+"Then I resolved to know more of His world since He made it for me and
+the other children. Then, I remembered that since He had sent His Son
+to show the way, I'd better listen to Him and go His way.
+
+"The next day I went over to Parson Curtis' and said to him:
+
+"'Yesterday was my day o' grace, and I was converted at half past nine.
+I'm not saved, but I'm on the way to salvation and I'd like to be
+broughten just as near to His Son as I can be. I'm just a learnin', but
+no child ever wanted to learn more than I do now.'
+
+"So when it come Sunday, he took me into the fellowship of Jesus and
+I've been learnin' ever since."
+
+I think I have given you almost his words. You see they were short,
+real words, and the only fear I have is that in repeating them I may
+have lost the quiet, deep-seated earnestness that was in his voice. He
+spoke that night from his heart. We were on Water Street now and it was
+time for us to part.
+
+"Thank you," I said, and I spoke as sincerely as he had spoken, "and if
+you don't mind I would like to know your name. It is James, what?"
+
+He reached out a big hand and took a firm grip of mine and said: "I'm
+Jim. Harbor Jim they call me." And then I remembered that I had been
+looking for him.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+AN ENGAGEMENT AS PLANNED
+
+
+"Come," came a voice from within and I opened the door and stepped into
+Harbor Jim's cozy home. Its warmth and cheer were in sharp contrast to
+the evening without. It was raining hard and everything was saturated
+with water. Out of the chill and wet, I stepped across the threshold
+into warmth and dryness.
+
+I thought at once of the Cotter's Saturday night. In the centre of
+the room at a little table, close to a kerosene lamp, was Harbor Jim
+reading from the Bible, and sharing the rather uncertain light with
+him was his wife with a pile of stockings to be mended, in her lap.
+Beyond them, a small fire-place with rough stone dogs. A spruce fire
+crackled like pop corn and did its best to dissipate anything of
+disconsolateness that might have crept in from the night's cold rain.
+At the right of the fire-place, on a roll of comforters, lay a little
+girl of perhaps two years, breathing gently in her sleep.
+
+Harbor Jim did not rise to greet me but with a motion of his hand
+expressed his desire that I should remove my wet coat and take the
+empty chair. He paused long enough for me to be comfortably seated and
+resumed his reading. He was in the midst of the Ninety-First Psalm, and
+he read slowly on, as one none too familiar with print and anxious that
+no word or meaning be lost.
+
+"He shall cover thee with His wings, and under His feathers shalt thou
+trust. You understand it, Effie," he said, turning to his wife. "It's
+the picture you see every day when the mother hen tucks the little ones
+under her wings.
+
+"You, sir, will remember," he turned now to me, "that our Master used
+the same thought of the cuddling power of love, when He stood on Olivet
+and looked down on the sin-blind Jerusalem. I would have gathered you
+as a hen doth her chicks under her wing.
+
+"His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. This sentence puzzled me
+for a good while, chiefly because I didn't know what a buckler was.
+For a long time I couldn't find any Lander who did know. Finally I got
+an Englishman to look it up in a book he had and he told me it was
+something that went all around the body. Then I seed it plain. The Lord
+was to protect us at the one danger point, with the shield; but He
+doesn't stop there, He protects us at all points with the buckler."
+
+He did not pause again in the reading of the Psalm until he came to the
+word angels, and then he spoke rather forcibly of his belief in angels.
+
+"Yes, I believe in angels, travelling angels. Why shouldn't He let 'em
+travel? He let's us go about, then surely He must let them journey
+considerable more. Naturally they want to be where they are needed most
+and I reckon this world needs 'em. When we get the listenin' habit,
+we'll all hear 'em, and when we get to the trustin' habit, we'll obey
+'em when they bring us messages. I reckon they've helped me a good
+deal. Sometimes they guide me to a big haul of fish, but more often
+they bring me to a passage of Scripture, that's like a draft of cool
+water on a thirsty day. I don't want you to think I'm looney, sir, but
+I fancy they walk with me sometimes and most often when no humans are
+with me."
+
+At the last verse he paused and then read these words twice:
+
+"With long life will I satisfy thee. This promise has troubled me a
+good deal. It don't seem to be coming true. Good little kids die;
+and tough, scaly old rascals live on poking fun at the righteous. I
+have been wondering what the Hebrews meant, for a good many of their
+prophets have said the same thing.
+
+"Mebbe it's one of the delayed promises. But I imagine it is coming
+true oftener than we know. There is some connection between holiness
+and happiness and between contented days and lengthened days. It is
+natural to expect the man who obeys the law to find the benefit here
+and now in this life. Well, if the Lord had each one of us alone
+working out the promises, it would be very easy for Him and for us, but
+He's seen fit to let us live together and we interfere with one another
+considerable; but He thinks it best because we've got to get well
+acquainted with each other before we are really able to know Him. As we
+get so we can understand the laws for the many as well as the laws for
+the each, I guess we'll most of us live long, but now the main thing is
+to live well."
+
+"But does it seem quite fair, Jim?" his wife questioned him, naturally,
+as though they were alone together.
+
+"I've thought about that a good while, Effie," he replied. "If I
+had only one day to fish and only caught something on one hook in
+twenty-eight, it would be a sorry day for me and you 'uns; but since
+I've many days, it doesn't matter which day I get the fish, so long as
+I get 'em. Now, I take it, it doesn't make much difference whether the
+bounty and the blessing He's intended for each of us comes one day or
+another, so long as it never fails to come. If this earth day was all
+I couldn't believe in Him as I do, but when I remember that there are
+days that have no ending, why it seems all right to have some getting a
+little more this day and others a little more that day. It's all in the
+life time of the soul. How long we stay in this room of Hisn' and how
+much He gives us don't matter much in the long years o' eternity. Do
+you begin to see how it is, Effie?"
+
+Then Jim closed his Bible and was silent. Without the rain came down
+and beat its loud tattoo upon the roof. The spruce log ceased to
+crackle and the little kerosene light seemed to relax its effort now
+that it was no longer necessary to read the print. I had learned in the
+few weeks that I had known Jim, that silence even more than speech hath
+her rewards. After a quarter of an hour of quiet, in which we could
+hear in the occasional let up of the rain the tick-tock of the little
+clock on the shelf, I ventured a question:
+
+"How long have you been married, Jim?"
+
+"Fourteen years," he answered, "and it was no mistake that we made when
+we built this home. There's been rain, but the sun came out the quicker
+because of the together-spirit we had. Would you be interested, sir, in
+hearing how we started out?"
+
+My face answered him and he began to tell me such parts of his own love
+story as it pleased him to tell.
+
+"I was not married until after I was converted, that was a good thing!
+There is a good many reasons why a man should be converted before he is
+married. If there is anything in this life, more'n another in which the
+hand of God should be felt it's marriage.
+
+"I'd had friends among the girls before I was converted, but I'd never
+thought of settling down, until after that morning. Then I come to see
+that a man needed a home on shore as well as a boat on the sea; that a
+man would be likely to catch more fish if he had some one waiting on
+shore and that fish never tasted so well when eaten alone.
+
+"I got to readin' the book of Genesis one night. I never read the
+Bible much till after I was converted, and then it became a new book
+to me and I began diggin' in it for treasure and I'm by no manner a
+means thru diggin' and findin' treasure. I come across the command in
+Genesis: To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. I halted
+there that night for a spell o' thinkin' and I came to the conclusion
+that I ought to do my part and leave some one else to take my place
+and fish when I lay down the hooks. The next thing was to find the
+right one. Now a Bible readin' man is a prayin' man. And I shut the
+book and I prayed, for if there is anywhere a man needs guidance it is
+in finding the right one and keepin' offen the rocks o' trouble and
+despair in such matters.
+
+"The next morning I went fishing the same as usual. I've noted that the
+Lord never hurries an answer to a man who prays and then stands round
+idle waitin' for his answer. Seems the Lord loves to surprise a man
+with his answer while he's in the midst of work.
+
+"So the weeks went by till one late afternoon I was walking along the
+flakes and I see a young woman splitting cod in the front yard of a
+house, and the western light rested on her hair and it shimmered and
+she looked up as I come by and we both smiled. Sir, then, I knew, just
+as plain as a straight, taut line that she was the one and I had my
+answer from the Lord, but I had still to get her answer. Some times you
+have to wait for a woman's answer same as you do for the Lord's.
+
+"The next afternoon, about the same time, I come by her house, and
+just as I expected she was there splitting cod, and that afternoon we
+talked. I'd inquired and found her name was Effie Streeter. Now what I
+said and the walks we had together wouldn't interest you, and anyhow
+they belonged to us. But perhaps you might like to hear a little of our
+engagement day. It come out just as I planned only a little better.
+
+"I was pretty sure then and it has been confirmed to me many times
+since that a woman likes to have her joys come as surprises. Now if
+I'd a proposed to her on the ordinary walk on an ordinary evening, she
+might have accepted but it wouldn't have come with the happiness that
+comes when you're not expecting, then it's like light out of dark cloud
+or flowers that come quick after a long winter's snow.
+
+"One night I stopped in at her house and told her I had to go on
+business over beyond Brigus and would like to have her go with me on
+the train the next morning. It would be a short trip and we would be
+back at night, on the train.
+
+"A fellow doesn't have much choice of trains here, but some seasons you
+can go somewhere and get back the same day, but not every season.
+
+"It was the middle of July, but as I started for the station, thinks I,
+it might be colder up at Brigus and I took along my great coat, so she
+would be sure to be warm. We made the ride up, without event. It is a
+lovely ride to Brigus, as you know, sir.
+
+"I don't remember much that we said on the way, do you, Effie?" and he
+turned to her acquiescing smile. "But I had the place all selected and
+I never expect to forget that day, either here or in Kingdom Come.
+
+"Under the shadow of a spruce we sat down and before us were acres and
+acres of sheep laurel. The winter before had been cold and that summer
+the laurel was redder than ever I have seen it, before or since. Away
+beyond was Conception Bay with its hills and the wonderful blue water.
+I don't know, sir, what scenes there are over seas, but I doubt if
+there's a lovelier view anywhere in the world than that.
+
+"I had rehearsed pretty well what I was going to say and I have never
+forgotten it to this day, and I am glad I haven't. Some forget what
+they say before marriage and it brings a black shadow after marriage.
+
+"It was so very beautiful, that we set a spell, a holdin' hands and
+lookin' with our souls as well as our eyes.
+
+"'Effie,' I said, 'I've brought you here to say a great word and I felt
+it ought to be said in the fairest place in the world. This is the
+loveliest place I know and if I knew a fairer one I'd have taken you
+there. The word I am going to say is the one God said when it was dark
+and He decided to make it light. It's the word He said when the world
+was tired and He decided to send His Son and it's the one word the Son
+spoke that has been changing the world since. That word is, Love!' Then
+I felt my own unworthiness and I stammered and I lost something out o'
+my speech and I've never found it, but I added,--'I'm only a fisherman
+but what I want to give you is as much as I can of the very same love.'
+
+"Sir, that was all I had to say and she understood. Right after that a
+strange thing happened. It had been clouding up and it began to snow.
+Yes, we have once in a while a snow storm in summer, and we did that
+year. Then I took the great coat I had brought and wrapped her tenderly
+up in it and I said: Love has a good many duties, but I guess one on'em
+is to keep you warm.
+
+"The snow came down and it covered the earth, but it didn't cover the
+blossoms and there was a world of white with pink beauty scattered on
+it, all the spruce and firs standing and looking and worshipping, if
+trees worship. And I said: I guess it's the Lord's way of saying, He's
+glad it's all settled. Now, if He had sent the rain we might a doubted,
+but He's sent the snow so's we wouldn't doubt and we never have.
+
+"Now our trains sometimes take an uncommon long time, and you folks
+from the States laugh at our railroads, but do you know I never went a
+journey where the train made such a fast time as that night. We were in
+St. John's afore we knew it."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+SOME MIRACLES
+
+
+"You orter been here a short while ago," Jim chuckled, as he addressed
+his friend Bob McCartney, who entered soon after Mr. Jewett had left.
+"We had a queer one here who believed you and I and the rest o' the
+sinners were out o' sight of the Lord. Told us the Lord didn't know
+nothing except the good and this world was just shadows and delusions."
+
+"Well," said Bob, "there's a few real things left and last night Harry
+Marchant got up agin one of 'em. Towards night I met him on the Bowring
+Road. He motioned to me afore I got to him to keep my side o' the road.
+He acted just as though he had leprosy. When he got within hearing he
+shouted:
+
+"'Bob, you never did me a bad turn and I'm not agoin' to do you one.
+You keep your side of the road and don't ever speak to me when I go
+by. I was comin' along a spell back and I met some skunks, not one,
+but a mother and father and two children. They was walkin' separate
+and I tried to dodge, but I couldn't dodge four ways at the same time.
+I'm goin' home now to bury my clothes, scour my skin and try to forget
+myself.' Now, Harry Marchant didn't meet no shadow and he was bathed in
+the very oil o' gloom."
+
+We all laughed, but Jim was the first to sober up. "See here, boys, we
+mustn't poke fun at the queer one. Some folks probably get a blessing
+without thinking straight. Mebbe he's on the way to a great faith.
+There's more'n one way across the sea and we all got to go thru the
+same narrows to get into the Harbor.
+
+"There's this much to be said in favor of the fellow, he's beginning to
+read his Bible. Seems strange though that outen the same book men draw
+so many different things. Then, it was written by many a different one
+and it's intended for all. Perhaps when we get too far astray He'll
+send us another Son and a new Book.
+
+"Though I don't believe in his notion of getting rid of a real world
+with real things in it, an' pushin' God out of this world, I do believe
+in miracles. Now some folks come to a miracle in the Bible and they
+sit down in front of it like the Marys at the tomb and they never are
+able to roll it away or pass it. Just beyond that miracle is a great
+truth, there always is, and these folks never get beyond wondering and
+doubting about how it happened to be there.
+
+"Take the story of the miracle that happened to Jonah. I don't pretend
+to say whether he ever had a berth in a real whale or not. It may be
+the boat was called a whale and he took passage on her against orders.
+But either way it's a beautiful truth we find, after we get over
+worrying about the whale. The point, I take it, is, the man was trying
+to run away from his duty and the story tells how he fared and how he
+came back and was established as a prophet. A good many folks seem to
+be still worrying about the whale and forgetting all about the truth.
+I'm not sayin' it didn't happen. It could a happened and stranger
+things have happened, I am only saying that whatever you believe about
+the whale the truth is there to help just the same.
+
+"I don't like the way a good many folks talk about miracles, anyhow.
+They look at 'em once or twice and then they say that it couldn't
+a happened. Why it doesn't follow because the Lord couldn't work a
+miracle on them He couldn't on somebody else. It may only prove they
+was too hardened in their sins and their doubts to be worked on, at
+least, for the present. Then it may be the thing has happened, right
+before their eyes only when it comes to great things and spiritual
+facts they are more'n half blind.
+
+"Raisin' from the dead I suppose would be considered the biggest
+miracle of all, and perhaps it's about the hardest to believe. But at
+some time or other, I have never been able to tell when, and I don't
+knows any one else can either, the Lord God puts a soul into every
+child of His. It is something that a father or a mother cannot put in
+of themselves, and it is something that can't be destroyed. A good many
+have tried to destroy their souls; but it's my belief they haven't
+succeeded, not any one of all that have tried. Now, if He is the only
+one that can put a soul into this earth house, He's the one that knows
+best when to take it out, and it might be very easy, on an important
+occasion, for Him to slip the soul back in again for a few days. He
+did that in the case of His Divine Son and the Son did it on several
+occasions, when He thought the soul ought to keep in its earth house a
+while longer."
+
+"Did you ever hear anything about reincarnation, Jim?" I inquired.
+
+"Big word, isn't it," said Jim, immediately giving full attention to my
+subject. "No, I don't know as ever I did. What is it, a doctrine or a
+medicine?"
+
+"It's the belief, Jim, that souls return to the earth again in new
+bodies. Some believe that only in animals and lower forms does this
+happen and others that even when souls have been on this earth, they
+return again to complete their experiences. I was thinking that your
+idea of the ease with which God might slip in or out a soul might
+make it easy for you to believe in this rather strange doctrine of
+reincarnation. What do you think of it?"
+
+"Sounds fairly sensible to me, on first thought. I don't remember
+anything in the Book about it, though I don't pretend to say I know
+all that's in that Book. It might explain some things that's hard to
+explain now with our present eye-sight. There's old lady Farrar, that
+I was a'telling you about, who cured herself of weakness and was about
+twenty years younger at eighty-five than eighty. She never had any real
+luck or any great blessings until she cured herself. She was one of the
+unfortunate kind, most always ailin' and when you went to see her she
+had some new misfortune to tell you about. She lost every one of her
+children and two husbands besides. Folks said it wasn't any great loss,
+so far as the husbands were concerned, but then they were hers and she
+took on considerable. Yet she has always been a decent woman, kept the
+commandments far as her neighbors could judge; paid her bills, when she
+could; went to church and said her prayers; and she had only a triflin'
+amount of good fortune. She had to wash and scrub for the neighbors to
+make ends meet and the splicin' was often poor.
+
+"Just compare her life with the lives of other women folks whose
+husbands usually had a good catch and got good prices, whose children
+never died and who prospered thru the years and even handled the
+commands in a slippery fashion. It is hard to think justice has been
+done in both cases or perhaps in either case. But if this miracle of
+slipping a soul back into a body and sending it to school again is
+true, that you are telling me about, why it clears up a lot of the
+problems. Mrs. Farrar didn't pass the examinations the first or second
+time she was here and she was sent back to study more and she is
+getting about what she ought to have in His judgment.
+
+"I think, however, that reincarnation idea that you mention, I would
+need to think a good deal about before I cared to tie too fast to it.
+I presume I'll end up in putting it into quite a big package of goods
+I am saving for shipping across the stream when I take passage. I've
+marked them 'For His Judgment' and when I get over there, I'll sort 'em
+and see if they're worth saving, and if I'm still doubtful about any on
+'em I'll just get Him to pass judgment on them. That's seems to be a
+sensible thing to do.
+
+"But we was talking about miracles here and now. To me the greatest
+miracles Christ worked were not in curing diseases, but in curing sins.
+I have always thought it a miracle that He could take Peter with his
+stubbornness and his habit of speaking up too quick and make him strong
+enough, sound enough, to be a real corner stone in His new church. I
+callate Peter was pretty well along in years when the Master called him
+and old folks ain't as easy to work on as those that are young and more
+pliable. I count it a miracle that He made over Peter so well.
+
+"I have always been a good deal interested to find out what became
+of Judas Iscariot who betrayed Him. He wasn't a fisherman like Peter
+and he was harder still to work on. I know some of the ministers have
+got rid of him, by tossing him over board and letting him drown in
+perdition. But the Lord God that went after the sheep would a some day
+heared the moaning of Judas and a-gone to his rescue, seems though. If
+the Lord could work a miracle on Peter couldn't He some time, some how
+do it on Judas? He must a had some beginning points on him some wheres."
+
+"I tell you the Lord has plenty a chances to work miracles if He
+wishes, right round here. There's Rascal Moore. He ain't been converted
+yet."
+
+"_Rascal_ Moore, did you say, Jim?" I interrupted.
+
+"Well that wasn't the name his mother gave him, but she didn't know he
+would take all his father's bad points and add a few more evil ways.
+She named him, Pascal. But Rascal fits him better and everybody knows
+him by that name, and I have to think twice to remember he ever had
+another name.
+
+"Rascal has done more to hurt the salt-fish business than any fisherman
+I know. He manages to get hold of the most ornery, two-cent fish there
+are in the sea. These fish have a hankering for Rascal, I guess, and
+they scoot straight for his nets. When he gets 'em, he never cleans
+well and he always hurries the curing, and he is none too particular
+about either counting or weighing. He'll sell a little cheaper or lie
+a little stronger and get rid of 'em, usually to an exporter and they
+go perhaps to Naples and they're so poor, the folks who buy them never
+want any more Newfoundland cod-fish. The government ought not to wait
+for the Lord to punish Rascal, they should get after him right away.
+
+"Rascal has other sins to account for. Everybody feels, though they
+don't hardly dare say so, that he killed his wife, and he's so mean
+he's never married since. If there's been a piece of deviltry carried
+out anywheres within fifty miles of St. John's that he hasn't had a
+part in, I have yet to learn o' the fact.
+
+"I say to convert Rascal Moore would be a real miracle. And it will
+be done and I would be glad to see it done on short order. I know it
+can be done, for I have seen other folks as mean, ornery and selfish
+as Rascal come meekly to the judgment seat, I have seen 'em rise outen
+their old selves and become new and clean as a sunshiny morning after
+the air has been washed in a fog. I have seen so much done by the Lord
+on His own account and working thru the hands of His servants that I
+never doubt that Rascal Moore will be made right.
+
+"Yes, sir, I believe in miracles and I see them every day. Brown earth
+a-turning into blades and blossoms, in some wonderful way that He
+planned. No less wonderful I see bad men becoming good men; sick men
+becoming well men; and they that have been under the heels of sin and
+slavery standin' up on their own feet. When I can't explain something
+I still feel it is happening under the law and it's another of His
+miracles."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"I ASKED FOR FISH"
+
+
+My business in St. John's had been brought to a conclusion and it was
+time that I crossed to Port-aux-Basques and made my way thru Nova
+Scotia and back into the States. There was only one reason for my
+staying, and that was the chance of seeing a little more of Harbor Jim
+and perhaps learning a little more of his philosophy.
+
+So it happened that again I was in the little fisherman's cottage
+and Mrs. Jim was brewing tea for me, for she never permitted even an
+inquirer to come to her door without his cup of tea. I put a question
+to Jim that fortunately set him to talking about prayer. I had expected
+to draw out a fish story but I found him launching into an account of
+his belief in prayer and his ventures in talking with His Father.
+
+"What was the best catch you ever had, Jim?" I questioned him.
+
+"It was last April and it come in direct answer to prayer," Jim
+answered promptly and without the least embarrassment.
+
+"In answer to prayer?" I said, and the tone of surprise was in my voice.
+
+"Why not," said Jim. "You believe in prayer, I suppose, then why limit
+it. I needed a big catch. I'd had to paint the house and there had
+been many expenses and I had to have a big catch to tide things over.
+You will remember that the Bible takes for granted folks will pray for
+fish, for it says:
+
+"'If ye ask for fish will he give you a stone.'
+
+"No, the man that asks for fish and asks right gets fish and the man
+that asks for bread gets bread. It doesn't matter what you want, prayer
+will fetch it. You remember He said:
+
+"'Ye shall ask _what ye will_ in my name and I will give it you.'
+
+"I don't pretend to set myself up to judge of what the parsons should
+or shouldn't do. I am more or less an ignorant man, so far as schools
+go, though I have read a heap since I was converted, and what's more
+important, I have looked and thought a good deal. And I've looked in
+more'n one direction. Old Mr. Squibbs who used to live out to Heart's
+Delight was an odd stick. His wife died and he took to livin' alone and
+he got kinder warped. He built him a house with only one window and he
+always had only the one view when he looked out. Thinks I, some folks
+are like old Mr. Squibbs, they have only one window and looking out
+o' that window they see only a few things and no wonder they're often
+a little lackin' in the loft. But I've tried to keep all the windows
+of my mind and soul open and to let the light in and to look out on
+all sides. The result o' all this lookin' and a thinkin' is that some
+parsons and some folks, parsons is folks, though they are commonly
+reckoned in a different class, don't understand the nature o' prayer.
+They take it the Lord has got kinder out o' touch with the doings of
+His children, and it's up to them to let the Lord on to the situation.
+I have heared some prayers in churches that sounded like a newspaper
+recounting the happenings. Strikes me they must have a queer notion of
+the Lord, to think He don't know what's happening to His own created
+children.
+
+"There's other prayers appear rather impudent. They tell the Lord just
+what He ought to do. Who are we, poor creatures on the earth, who can't
+see back of us, or before us, but a very little way and then only when
+it's a clear sky, who are we that we should rise up in our conceit and
+tell the Lord what He had better do. It's turning the boat round and
+headin' it the wrong way. We are to ask Him what He wants us to do. We
+are to come to Him not to give knowledge but to get wisdom.
+
+"Parson Curtis called me impudent because I asked the Lord for a mess
+o' fish, and a big mess, too. But I don't agree with the parson on this
+matter. I don't know why we shouldn't ask Him for what we think we
+need, but there's a right and a wrong way of asking. Mind you I didn't
+presume to tell the Lord how to send them or where. I just left it in
+His hands. I prayed something like this:
+
+"'Kind Father, we were talking over blessings last night and I
+mentioned a good many that You had sent us; and then when I'd finished
+sayin' my thanksgivings, I asked that You make it possible for me to
+find a mess o' fish and a good-sized one. Now I know You'll say no, if
+it's best, and I'll not murmur or complain; but if it seems to You to
+be best, You'll know the way to send them and when it's best. It's all
+in Your hands and I'm not dictating to You, Father. But I want You to
+know that we are needing fish and that I'm a-goin' to keep my eyes open
+and my boat trim and my hooks and sinkers right and my nets all mended,
+and I'll be waitin' for the Word.'
+
+"That's just about the way I pray. I am not afraid to come boldly to
+the throne of grace. He would never find fault with my grammar, for
+doesn't He encourage the little folks to talk with Him. Sure, that's
+just what it is talking with Him. When we talk to one another, it's
+conversation; when we talk to ourselves, it's thinking; and when we
+talk to God, it's praying.
+
+"I never yet have told the Lord how to do anything, or how to fetch my
+gifts. For since all things and all powers and all means are in His
+hands, He doesn't need to be told. I most likely wouldn't know the best
+way for transporting His gifts. I have to ask humbly and faithfully and
+then to keep the doors open, so's whoever He sends will find me ready
+and waitin' to receive.
+
+"Then again, I seldom pray for an easy time or a smooth sea. I want to
+be strong and I don't mind wrestling like Jacob with the strange one,
+so long's I come out the winner. I don't mind if the sea is ruffled,
+or the waves mount, or the wind lashes the sails, so long as I know He
+has an eye on me and keeps me. I have found that if He sends me extra
+work, He always sends along extra strength, and the blessed part of it
+is that the strength comes at just about the time the work does.
+
+"I pray sometimes for health for my body, but I am much more likely to
+pray for the health of soul. For I dread sickness of soul, more'en I do
+sickness of my body. It is far harder to get rid of selfishness than to
+get over a stomach-ache. I'd rather see my little Clara sick with the
+measles than to see her developing dishonesty."
+
+"How long does it usually take the Lord to answer your prayers," I
+asked, and not jocularly, but in the hope of finding out what results
+had come to Jim as a result of his sincere prayers.
+
+"How long does it take before it rains, do you know? Can you tell
+when the frost will take my cabbages or the snow heap up my door-way?
+Neither can I tell when the Lord will send what I ask. He knows better
+than I do. He knows the value of delays, and how long to try my
+patience. I wouldn't say He hurried, for the more I come to know of
+Him, the more I find it true that He has taken time to do most things
+He has done. You can get an idea of how He works by looking at this
+earth that He took so long to fix up for us. As I've told you before,
+I think the Lord loves to surprise us children and often He sends a
+blessing when we are least expecting it and the answer comes on a dark,
+stormy day when it's like a ray of sunshine breaking thru a cloud.
+
+"I talk over all my needs with Him, but I don't devote all my praying
+to myself. I've done quite a lot of praying for Rascal Moore, and some
+day the Lord will surprise Rascal and me and he'll be converted. Of
+course I pray for my own wife and my own little girl and I pray for Bob
+McCartney and I also remember Spotty, my dog. If I had a cow, which
+I haven't just now, I'd pray for her. They are God's offspring, and
+they were planned by Him and they need His care to provide fresh green
+and abundant water. It's a responsibility for which we need help, the
+caring for the other children."
+
+"You are wandering away from your fish story," I reminded him. "What
+about that big catch? How did it happen?"
+
+"It was very simple. I went out to the fishing grounds. It would have
+been asking too much of the Lord to have demanded that He send them
+ashore. I went where I'd be likely to find fish. And when I got to the
+grounds, I heared a voice say, 'Let your nets down on the starboard
+side.' And I did as He told me and I had the best catch of the season."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+LIVIN' ALONG
+
+
+Several months had passed without a word from Harbor Jim, when one
+morning going thru a batch of mail, that was given over to business
+matters, I came upon a rather soiled envelope that was post-marked "St.
+John's." I was quite sure that it was from Jim and I pushed aside the
+communications from firms that offered me oil stock and a fortune and
+the letters of others who were suing for favors of one kind and another
+and turned with the relish of a boy to read the message from my friend.
+I am willing that you should read it, but I have made some corrections
+in spelling and a few in grammar, that you may read it about as he
+would have read it aloud, about, I think, as he intended it to read.
+
+"Dear One,
+
+"It's a long time since we've seen you on the flakes. It's a long time
+since we've read the word o' the Lord together beside the evening
+lamp. I'm not thinking of coming to New York to see you. I know I have
+been invited manys the time, but I'm not risking a leg yet in your
+full streets. It's gettin' bad enough in St. John's with all the autos
+a-whisking down Water St. It's a fine thing that we can send a message
+up there to you. It was a kind Father that made it possible for us to
+get acquainted with each other as well as with Him. I often think of
+the Master's ideas on the subject. You remember He told us if we really
+got acquainted with our brothers we should know the Father, and without
+that acquaintance we couldn't really know Him.
+
+"There ain't no great thing happened to tell of. I've just been livin'
+along. Eatin' and sleepin' every day and fishin' most days. But I've
+been prayin' every day and a receivin' of replies day by day. The
+Lord's been with me all the way. Yes, just as much as though I could
+write you of a great, sudden happening. There's a good many folks I
+find who recognize the Lord's doings in the big, flashing things of
+life and forget Him altogether except at them special times. It's
+rare that I sit up with a corpse, which I often do, without hearing a
+confession about the Lord's hand and the Lord's doing in the coming of
+the stroke; but it's most likely that same man who is very conscious
+and pitiful didn't have much thought or dealings with the Lord till his
+sorrows come upon him.
+
+"Now the Lord is in the Valley of the Dark Times and He's on the Bright
+Height of Victory, but He's also along the Common Way, the level road
+that makes up the every day's travel. That's what I used to forget and
+that's what I'm beginning to remember and it makes heap a different in
+your knowledge o' life itself and the joy you get outen it.
+
+"There's countless folks know He never fails in time o' need, but I'm
+one who finds that He never fails at any time and that every day is a
+day o' need.
+
+"It may be I've met the wrong kind o' folks some of the journey, but
+I've found a good many that make a heap a trouble just out o' living.
+They remind me o' Martha who got so fussed up doing common housework
+she couldn't understand the need o' spiritual house-keeping at all.
+Folks don't seem to have time enough to live their lives easily. They
+start off with a hitch and they break down afore they get very far.
+Seems though they thought there want goin' to be another life after
+this one and they'd got to do all eternity's work in this little span
+o' time. Don't seem reasonable and natural to expect a man to do the
+work o' two worlds in one. The Lord don't expect it neither.
+
+"The Lord Jesus had about the biggest task on hand that any man ever
+had. His job was to save the world. He had only three years for His
+ministry and if he had lived as some of the folks hereabouts are livin'
+He would have so consumed Himself with worry and fret that He would a
+died with a fever afore the first year was over. One thing I note as I
+read His story is that He moved majestic like He had time to do what
+needed to be done. I guess it's the things that we could get on with
+out that take the most time and gender the most worry.
+
+"There's always time enough to do what the Lord intended to be done
+in this life, else He wouldn't have assigned it. He wouldn't run His
+universe on a leisurely and comfortable plan, if He expected us to
+wear ourselves out hustling. I take it He counts a thousand years
+are as one day not only for Himself but as well for us children.
+Thinkin' of His plan kinder takes the fever outen your veins, kinder
+makes you understand what His Son meant about the peace that passeth
+understandin'.
+
+"Effie is the same as ever. She's just livin' along, same's I. The
+children are doin' well at school. Bob McCartney was over night afore
+last. His boy has got the rheumatics, but I guess tain't nothin'
+permanent. The government is thinkin' o' takin' over the railroad
+again. Our railroad has had a hard time and it's been found fault with
+a good deal, but it's got an iron constitution and I guess it can stand
+it. As I told you once, it's all the railroad we've got and it's a
+powerful lot bettern no railroad.
+
+"I am thinkin' often these days of little Peter. I can think now
+without swallowin' hard and I'm beginnin' to get comfort instead of
+trouble when I think. I have been thinking about the conditions o'
+life over there. Sometime when your down here I'll talk with you about
+the Heaven Home, but it would take too long to write it out and then
+I don't knows you would be interested. Any how it would come out easy
+with your kind o' questions. I like you, but I do think your about the
+hardest questioner I ever knowed.
+
+"Respectfully yours, that's how letters are signed when a man writes
+you for fish or bait or somethin', but I don't see why it ain't proper
+for a friend, for certain we ought to respect our friends, and the fact
+we can respect 'em makes us the more sure their friends.
+
+"Jim."
+
+"P. S. I saw Bob McCartney last night. He was lookin' well and had his
+behaviour (silk-hat) on. He had been to a party."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE HEAVEN HOME
+
+
+When again the good fortune brought me to Newfoundland and led me out
+to the fisherman's cottage, I did not forget Jim's promise to tell
+me of his observations concerning the future life. We had, thru our
+increasing friendship, come to understand each other. I had learned
+when to keep silent and I knew Jim's moods and when to intrude would
+be the height of ingratitude and when to enter would be the act of an
+accepted friend.
+
+The reading of the Book had been finished for the evening and there was
+yet a half hour before my friend would count it his time to retire.
+"How about the Heaven Home, I think that is what you called it," I
+asked, and Jim, without parleying, was ready to speak freely in answer.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I like the word home, as applied to it. I couldn't
+think of Peter as wantin' to stay in a mansion. In the Comfort Chapter
+in John, I've always read the word 'home' in place of 'mansion.' The
+parsons tell me that there are some mistakes in the translatin' o' the
+Good Book, and I am sure that it's a mistake here. There ain't enough
+comfort in the thought of a mansion for most of us common run o' folks,
+and it was for us that He come and told of this life and the life to
+come.
+
+"I'm sure it's a home. I think it must have in it things that match up
+with what we got here. I don't see how we could feel at home without
+something like tables and chairs. We had a parson one time who knew all
+about it over there, accordin' to his tell. He told us about the crowns
+and harps and the golden streets and the singin' that went on all the
+day long. But I callate no Lander would care for such a life as that,
+and if that's what it's like there's precious few of us 'uns over there.
+
+"Now if it's a home as I think it must be since the Father has planned
+it, there must be homelikeness there. There must be somethin' that
+corresponds to tables and chairs and all the little things that go to
+makin' up a real home, else how could a man be happy over there, who
+had just left a happy home here. I'm not sayin' we shall always need
+them things, but I am a sayin' that in the very next life we must have
+things we are used to for a spell till we get to the point where we
+don't need them, but somethin' else. Sounds sensible to me to think
+that way.
+
+"You remember that after the Lord was dead and Peter was plumb worn out
+and discouraged; there didn't seem to be no hope nowheres; he decided
+to go fishin'. I callate there are times when a man would rather go
+salmon fishing than to do anything else in the world, provided he knows
+what good salmon fishin' is. Now for these fishermen about the only
+thing the Lord can do, if He wants to make 'em happy as He promised to
+do, is to give 'em a chance at fishin'.
+
+"I wouldn't be at all surprised some morning in Heaven to be trailin'
+along the bank o' some good stream fishin' and lookin' up sudden to see
+the Lord there a fishin' too.
+
+"You smile, but why not? Do you think the Father is so foolish as to
+drop us down in a strange place where we don't understand and we don't
+know what to do. Does it appear to you that the Lord would take a
+little fellow like Peter and send him around with a harp. I'll tell you
+what Peter would want to do, he would want to jump rain barrels so as
+he would know how to jump ice pans when he got older.
+
+"What good would it do to take any little fellow outen the primary
+school and put him right into college. It wouldn't do him or the
+college one particle of good. It would be a sheer waste for everybody
+concerned. I think the Father is wiser than that, and it's always
+kinder amused me and somewhat disgusted me that the parsons have
+imagined heaven to be so teetotally different from this life.
+
+"I've seen so much of His wisdom here, I can't come to think that He's
+working blind and foolish over there. Will I know little Peter, sure I
+will, or it wouldn't be heaven. Then his new little body must look like
+the present one, only stronger and it won't hurt it so much when he
+pinches it.
+
+"He'll get into the place that fits for him, not because he's sent,
+but because he just naturally goes where he belongs. And as it is with
+little Peter so it will be with every one. Perhaps by this time he has
+seen the Christ, for the kingdom is always found quicker by a child
+than by a grown man. Children see things that we older folks find it
+hard to see."
+
+"How about Rascal Moore?" I asked.
+
+"Just now he's taken his cat and dog and he's gone to the woods.[2]
+Mebbe there a stick will hit him and knock a little sense into him.
+He's by no means hopeless. I've seen worse ones than he is get sense
+afore they died. But you mean what would become of him if he went just
+as he is. Well, there must be sufferin' for the likes o' him. You
+can't, and I find the Lord Himself don't, seem to make a sinner into a
+saint all of a sudden. He may wake him up sudden and start him, but it
+takes time to get him rounded off. He'll go where he belongs just as
+the others; and if for a while he belongs in an uncomfortable, painful
+place why there's where he'll go. I never could see the sense in trying
+to think that everybody would go right off to one same place and be in
+heaven. There's too much difference in folks; there's the converted and
+the unconverted; there's the sinners and the saints; and though you put
+'em in the same place, it wouldn't be the same place for them. It don't
+seem probable to me either that they can't never change their places
+when they get over there. There's a good deal o' changin' here, so
+there's likely to be over there.
+
+"There are changes in the earth homes, there'll be changes in the
+heaven homes. And it will be well so long as the changes are for the
+better. I can't think that will always be the case, howsomever, for
+it ain't the case here. But gradual I'm expectin' conditions will
+improve and the handicaps are less over there. With the help o' Moses,
+Isaiah and the prophets and saints we ought to get on at a fair pace. A
+tremendous lot o' mothers is over there; they've been a goin' out one
+by one for a terrible long spell, makes me dizzy when I get to thinkin'
+o' some o' these subjects. Mothers don't loaf so long as there's chance
+to help kids, an' I'm callating that they'll do some pretty good work
+along lines o' convertin' over there.
+
+"I expect to hear the baccaloo[3] over there and I'd rather hear a
+baccaloo than a nightingale or a lark for it would seem more like home.
+That's the big thing and the Lord ain't likely to disappoint me or any
+one who is lookin' for a home over there.
+
+"The heaven home is a good sight nearer than most folks think. The
+journey is short and it's only our poor sight and our hearin' that has
+made it so far away. I know Peter's often near me while I'm at work and
+it's a comfortable feeling, not a scarey one to think he's liable to
+be around most any time and I must be on my guard not to let slip any
+string o' words that would be bad for him to hear. It chucks a fellow
+up to feel that he must be on his best for the little fellow sees and
+knows. I want to be such a father as he'll respect. It must be mighty
+oncomfortable for some folks when they get over there, for some folks
+don't do no growing after they lose their loved ones and how in sank
+they expect to be fit company for their folks when they themselves get
+over there is more'n I can tell.
+
+"Because there's homes there don't in no way interfere with it's bein'
+a beautiful place. It don't have to have golden harps to make it worth
+while. There's probably rivers that are prettier than 'ourn, and there
+must be pink calmia, fox-gloves and sweet william, pansies, tea-bushes
+and a good many others that I don't happen to think of. There must be
+places in heaven that look like Deer Lake, Gaff Topsail, Kelligrews and
+Brigus. Mebbe there's places in heaven like New York, too, though from
+what you say it will need some changin' to be kept as a heaven city.
+
+"I don't want you to think that I'm a gump[4] because of these ideas,
+but to me they've been a good deal of comfort and whenever I get to
+doubting at all about things over there I just recall it's a home and I
+settle back content."
+
+[2] Gone to a lumber camp.
+
+[3] A loon.
+
+[4] A very foolish person.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+CHRISTMAS WITH JIM'S FRIENDS
+
+
+There was the calendar right before me on the wall, with figures big
+enough to mentally hit me and hit hard, and I should have remembered
+that the road of the year had turned toward Christmas. But before me
+was an unfinished news article that even a hungry and insistent stomach
+did not seem able to push to a conclusion. Beyond my desk out of the
+window I looked now and then down upon the hurrying throng who were
+making their way across City Hall Park to Brooklyn Bridge. It was the
+hour when you do not know whether to call it day or night. It was
+indescribable in another way,--it was either misting or raining. I
+suppose a Scotchman would have called it mist and an Irishman rain. I
+think that any one looking out that night would have found it hard to
+see in the gray view anything suggestive of Christmas. I turned from
+the wet view to my unfinished work only to be again interrupted.
+
+A Western Union boy burst into my office with a telegram. It was from
+St. John's and I wondered as I tore it open if anything had happened
+to Harbor Jim. It was short and for once the operators had apparently
+followed the author's spelling.
+
+     come fur chrismus cant take no fur an answer no how biggest
+     an best you or yourn hev ever seed come jim
+
+A few days afterward a long letter came enforcing and elaborating the
+invitation. Jim wrote that he was already at work upon a Christmas that
+would eclipse anything New York had ever had. He had taken the idea out
+of a city paper that I had sent him a year before and had developed it
+and he wouldn't care to go forward with it, unless I could be there.
+
+That is how it happened that a few days before Christmas, on the last
+steamer that would get me there in time, I was steaming into St. John's
+Harbor. Our boat was sheathed with ice and as in the morning we came
+thru the Narrows there were knobs of ice floating around us. The hills
+were white and the brown stone now and then stuck thru where the snow
+had lost its footing.
+
+Landing I found the people in furs and the sleighs making merry music
+with their bells. A fellow agreed to drive me out to Jim's for two
+dollars and a half and I went in his sleigh, he called it, but in New
+England it would have more properly have been called a pung.
+
+Jim almost literally wrapped me in his arms and outdid himself in the
+cordiality of his welcome.
+
+"How's fishing, Jim?" I asked when the first greetings were over and I
+had my feet up in front of the stove.
+
+"Fishin', why land o' Goshen, this ain't no time for fishin'. There
+ain't but one thing on my mind an' that is Christmas. Don't you see
+what we are a' doin'?"
+
+A kettle of oil was on the stove and the dipping of half grown candles
+had been recently finished. On the floor were half a hundred full grown
+candles.
+
+Jim could talk only of Christmas. "I've been thinkin'," he said, "that
+if there should ever be a second coming of the Lord or He should send
+another Son to His people He couldn't pick out a better place than
+this. Suppose it was to be another birth. I callate this land has just
+as good a chance as Palestine and hereabouts is as fittin' a place as
+Bethlehem. Look out there at the snow! Makes you think o' a baby's
+blankets, it's so white and clean and pretty. Our nights man't have
+stars as brilliant as that one greater star of the first Christmas
+mornin', but I don't believe they have flyin' lights[5] like 'ourn. I
+hev noticed that the Lord tries to be as impartial as He can and since
+He sent His Son to the East last time, if ever He should send again why
+I think He'd be likely to send Him somewhere hereabouts. You remember
+the Son liked fishin' an' He'd be delighted with Newfoundland."
+
+The door opened and Bob McCartney walked in.
+
+"What's the matter, Bob; what you got your good behavior[6] on fur?"
+asked Jim as his friend entered.
+
+"Ain't the occasion worth it? You sed yourself that it was to be the
+biggest Christmas the Landers ever hed; and I'd like to know if we
+aren't in a way celebratin' now while we're gettin' ready."
+
+"Who's coming to this Christmas, Jim?" I asked, taking my turn at a
+question.
+
+"Well, everybody in this town, quite a mess o' folk from St. John's
+and Quidi Vidi. Some from Brigus, Kelligrews and Heart's Ease. Aunt
+Saray Bailey is a' comin' from Nancy Jobble.[7] It's such a general
+invitation that they ain't no definite countin' no how, but their
+comin'. Everybody that meets anybody hereabouts and nowadays jes' says
+are you a' comin' to Jim's fur Christmas."
+
+Gradually by prying questions I found out what Jim was planning to do.
+He had been extremely interested in the account I had sent him of the
+illuminated tree in Madison Square, and had resolved to have the trees
+on a neighboring hill-top all illuminated where they stood. In place of
+electric lights he was engaged in making tallow candles by hand.
+
+The day before Christmas, Mrs. Jim was up very early and when I came
+down to breakfast she greeted me with this:
+
+"Got to make a biler full o' tea this morning fur the Decoratin'
+Committee will be here shortly."
+
+"Yes," added Jim, "they'll be here shortly and then we'll be a carryin'
+out Christmas. Up your way they fetch it _in_, but we're a goin' to
+carry it out, good and proper, this year."
+
+The first arrival was Bob, who had caught the full contagion of Jim's
+spirit, and the second was Parson Curtis.
+
+"Hello, Pa'son Curtis," said Jim as he ushered in his guest. "Did you
+come to look on or to work?"
+
+"Put me in among the workers, Jim," replied the parson.
+
+"That's right, Pa'son," Jim spoke with heartiness. "I like a pa'son
+that ain't a mite afraid o' work. I callate that our Lord was one o'
+the greatest workers this world ever seed, and it's a good thing fur
+those who are a takin' His place to be up in the front row o' workers.
+Here's a bag o' candles and here's a coil o' wire. You can take 'em up
+the hill and begin hitchin' 'em to the tallest tree. You can begin on
+the low branches an' when the younger fellows get here we'll let 'em
+shinney up to the taller branches."
+
+By eight o'clock, fifty men and boys were at work, many of them
+bringing their own donation of candles, and each time that Jim saw more
+candles coming he beamed, for it meant more trees could be included in
+the scheme.
+
+With banter, jest and story the work of attaching the candles went
+on thru the morning and at noon we went back to Jim's for dinner. We
+all knew what to expect and we were not disappointed, when with keen
+appetites, we crowded the little house and waited our turn for a hot
+plate of brewse. It's Newfoundland's distinctive dish and salt fish and
+pork never tasted better than that noon after our climbing up in the
+trees.
+
+Walking back to finish our work in the afternoon I said to Jim:
+
+"It strikes me it is a little unfortunate that the hill we are
+decorating has no tall spruce on top. The trees are well arranged on
+the slopes but the top of the hill itself hasn't a tree on it!"
+
+"That's what pleases me about it. That's why I selected it, because it
+leaves room for the Candles of the Lord," answered Jim. "There on the
+top is where the Light o' the World will shine out tonight. When we get
+the rest of the work done we'll place it."
+
+An hour later Jim came dragging a sled with a huge candle, four feet
+high, at least, and it was carefully erected in the centre of the open
+place on the hill. At three o'clock the work was finished and Jim
+addressed the workers:
+
+"Thank you all. We'll knock off for a spell. Those that lives near can
+go home. Those that lives too far will find plenty at my house. Be back
+every one of you an hour before sunset. The sun won't wait for any o'
+ye and if you don't get here the lightin' will go on jes' the same, but
+I wants you all to be here, sure."
+
+They began to arrive before the appointed time, but I waited within
+until it began to grow dark, then I stepped to the door and watched the
+multitude coming up from the valley. I remember once I went out with
+the crowds and climbed Mt. Rubidoux in California on an Easter morning.
+A little in advance of the larger contingent I stood and watched them
+coming up out of the darkness of the roads below into the growing light
+of the mountain top and the new day. I thought of that experience again
+as I watched them coming along the road to climb the hill and keep
+Christmas Eve with Jim. Only in this instance the picture was reversed
+and I saw them coming out of the light into the gathering darkness of
+the night.
+
+There were many from St. John's who had come out for the lark of it.
+Men that worked along Water St. and Dock St. Girls from the stores came
+in little groups full of tickles and nudging one another as things
+happened to meet their fancy. Women in black were in the crowd who had
+been before along a sorrowful way and turned to make this journey that
+they might find light. Some of them plainly showed by their demeanor
+that they were conscious of the fact that Christ was the best part of
+Christmas.
+
+Boys were in the throng, many of them swaggering along with sticks,
+copying the manner of English soldiers who feel their importance when
+on furlough. Little girls tripped along, some of them singing a little
+Christmas song that begins
+
+     "I saw three ships come sailing in,
+     On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day."
+
+The chatter of the many voices did not altogether drown their childish
+voices and they rose like bird notes above the rushing winds of a
+forest.
+
+It was slippery walking and now and then some one would fall, but a
+hand would be reached out to them and they would again go on with a
+laugh. Everywhere was the glitter. That is what the Newfoundlanders
+call the spectacle of a snow and icegirt earth. During the day many of
+our hands had been nearly frozen because of the ice on the trees and
+they were festooned and sheathed with ice where their branches were a
+little out of the wind and it had not stripped them of snow during the
+recent storm. It was a white, shining world, softened by a waning light.
+
+Now the fellows who had been appointed had been at work some time with
+torches and as we looked up tree after tree put on a garland of jewels
+and stood forth resplendent for the feast. Parson Curtis had lit the
+first torch from the Candle of the Lord, as Jim called the big candle
+on the hill-top, and each torch had been lit from his.
+
+Murmurs ran thru the crowd as the scene grew more beautiful with the
+lighting of more trees and the deepening of the night shadows. It was
+now quite dusky, but the snow kept the light so that we could see the
+workers finishing the lighting.
+
+When all was ready, standing beside the Candle of the Lord, Jim spoke:
+
+"Brothers in Christ, we all are that tonight. I am glad you have come
+to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pa'son Curtis will
+lead us in prayer."
+
+Jim knelt in the snow and the great company followed his example. The
+prayer was short and Jim was ready to announce the singing of the first
+of the Christmas hymns, when some one I didn't know made his way thru
+the crowd, and waiving all formalities, touched Jim on the arm and
+spoke hurriedly:
+
+"Rascal Moore's took sick. He's got a ketch in his glutch[8] and the
+Missus wants you to come over right now to sit up with him. She can't
+manage him no how and she's sent for you."
+
+I was standing beside Jim, watching now his face and now the lights.
+I looked squarely at him now and thought of the weeks of preparation
+that he had gone thru and how like some rare flower that blossoms only
+in the night it had unfolded petal by petal before his delighted eyes.
+I thought, too, of Rascal Moore, who had so long been living up to his
+name. It seemed unfair indeed to ask him to go now on this Christmas
+Eve that he had planned for and was making so successful. Let any one
+else go if they would, but surely not Jim.
+
+"Tell 'em I'm on my way," was all he said to the messenger, and he
+moved along as he spoke.
+
+Turning to me he said, what made me feel that he was still human, and
+without these words I think I must have doubted it. "It would have been
+a little easier if it had a' been Bob instead of Rascal."
+
+The program began, though Jim was leaving and had turned his back on it
+all. Will Cunningham, whose tenor voice often led in the little church,
+started the Christmas hymn "Holy Night, Peaceful Night," and the crowd
+sang. The female voices seemed in preponderance and I fancied the
+men all thru the crowd were doing what the few around me were doing,
+heaping choice epithets upon Rascal Moore.
+
+Jim was yet to see more of his Christmas trees. He may have forgotten
+it, but his friends remembered that Rascal Moore's place was just about
+at the foot of the hill and some one started taking off the candles
+from the trees that were a little beyond and decorating those that were
+in the direct line toward the Moore house. There were so many hundreds
+the work was speedily performed. The candles were re-lit and by seven
+o'clock there was a row of lighted trees extending straight down the
+hill to the Moore house and at the top of the hill the big candle could
+now be distinctly seen against the black back-ground of the night.
+
+It may be the angels are a little nearer on Christmas Eve and they
+decided to add to the wonderful beauty of that night for which Jim
+had worked and prayed. For now the northern lights came, adding great
+plumes of light, flashing across the sky in a glory burst of light.
+
+"It's the dead men playing. Come to earth, they have, for Christmas
+Eve," explained Bob.
+
+When all was ready some one knocked at the Moore door and brought Jim
+to the porch and he stood bare-headed looking up the wonderful avenue
+of light to the top of the hill. Then he lifted his eyes from the earth
+lights and the black crowd to the sky.
+
+"The heavens declare the glory of God," Jim spoke quietly, but many
+could hear his words. "Mebbe little Peter is here tonight playing in
+the heavens and joinin' us in our songs. The Lord of Joy has come
+again!"
+
+"What did you leave us for, Jim?" some one in the crowd shouted.
+
+The hundreds stood waiting for Jim's answer. It was a hush of
+expectancy, such as fitted that holy night.
+
+Jim answered slowly, measuring his words:
+
+"I heard my Father calling and I went to answer Him!"
+
+[5] Northern Lights.
+
+[6] A silk hat.
+
+[7] Lance du Diable.
+
+[8] A sore throat.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+HONEY-MOONING ON THE FLAKES
+
+
+Jim lapsed into silence and his wife, laying down her mending, poked
+the fire and soon had tea brewing. The Landers are tea drinkers like
+the English.
+
+"It's a beautiful story, sir, and we often live it over again," Mrs.
+Jim said as she poured the tea. I noted the flow-blue china and,
+answering my query, she said:
+
+"It was my grandfather's. He brought it from England sixty years ago.
+Of course we're awful careful of it, but we use it, for Jim says the
+only way to have plenty is to use what you have. We always keep a pot
+handy and there's always a ready chair, for many a time a neighbor
+drops in and we wouldn't want to let them go on without a cup o'
+tea,--a cup o' kindness, Jim calls it."
+
+"Now, I've read books," continued Jim, "and they always end just where
+they really should begin. When in the book story they decide to get
+married, then they stop short. If I should ever write a story, which I
+ain't likely to do, with my little learnin', I'd not stop there, but
+I'd let that end only the first chapter and I'd let the story go on
+with its joy and sorrow and its hope and its fear and the problems big
+and little; the blessings so rare that follow along even as they do in
+real life.
+
+"If I'm not tiring you, I'd be glad to give you another half chapter
+afore we all quit and turn in for the night."
+
+Jim put down his empty tea cup with a smack of appreciation at his
+wife's proper brewing and deliberately cut off a fresh slice of tobacco
+and crushed it into the bowl of his pipe, and I knew that for at least
+a half hour, the story would go on, the story that was so real to him
+and now so fascinating to me.
+
+"Bein' both of us very sure, and the Lord havin' given the sign o' His
+good pleasure, there beyond Brigus, we didn't wait long afore we were
+hitched up.
+
+"We begun right here in this house and we started right in here the
+first night and we went to work on the flakes the next morning. We
+didn't go off no where's for a honey-mooning.
+
+"I reckon there's no place a real woman would rather go at that time
+than to the new home where her life is agoin' to be lived, and that
+vacationing then ain't best for either. In any case we never thought a
+travelling, for you see the cod was running well and 'twas the height
+of the season and we had to fill the flakes, while we could.
+
+"A man and a woman who gets married has to get acquainted and adjusted
+one to the other and there's no better place for learnin' to conform
+than right where they are agoin' to live and raise their children.
+
+"Course a couple can just pretend for a spell there ain't any work
+to be done, but there is, and I reckon the sooner they face it, the
+better for all concerned. If you're agoin' to cut bait, there's no use
+standin' round dreadin' it.
+
+"When I was a boy we used to have in our house a religious book with
+pictures of saints in it and every blessed one on' 'em had a ring
+around their head, halos, I think they call 'em; now I callate that a
+home ought to have some kind of a halo over it and it's easier to get
+it fastened on just right when your startin' married life and if you
+don't get it on then, like's not you'll never have a real home but just
+a house for feeding and sleeping.
+
+"We got the halo fixed on, eh, Effie," and the fisherman's eyes
+confirmed his words.
+
+"So, next morning we put on our fishin' clothes and went out on the
+flakes. We'd clean fish for a spell and then we'd split and spread
+for a spell. Now I know from the standin' point o' city folks fishin'
+clothes ain't very scrumptious to look at and they are kinder soused
+with smell, but our clothes didn't interfere none with our honeymoon.
+
+"Her dress was kinder faded blue, but I always liked blue. It's
+heaven's color and often the sea borrows it, and that morning it made
+her cheeks more wonderful pink than I'd seen 'em before.
+
+"There was a kind of down-right, deep-seated satisfaction to both of us
+in feeling we was at work; both of us a doin' what needed to be done
+and a sharin' of the burdens or the joys which ever you wants to call
+'em. For I have found that some folks get their joys and burdens mixed
+up and don't seem to know one from 'tother till it's too late and they
+wake up with a start when they can't change 'em.
+
+"Sharin', I said, and that's a word we set out to understand when we
+commenced an' with us it's always been a big word ever since.
+
+"After breakfast that first morning we went to the flakes, I took
+out my wallet and said to her: 'There's no sense of my carryin' this
+round when you are more likely to need it than I. I'll leave it here
+behind the clock and when you need money, it's yours and bein' yours
+you don't have to give any account of it 'cept to your own conscience.
+More properly speakin' it's 'ourn, for now we're married there ain't no
+longer yourn or mine, but 'ourn.'
+
+"I callate that if a man can trust a woman to bring up his children,
+trust her with his house and his reputation and his disposition, he
+ain't no cause to fear to trust her with his wallet.
+
+"Bob McCartney always says a woman ought to have an allowance, but I
+tell him too much book-keeping is bad for a married couple and then
+how's a man able to judge the amount of an allowance anyhow. I guess
+most women earn more'n an allowance, and a sharin' always seems bigger
+than an allowance.
+
+"I've heared folks liked honey-moons 'cause they got away from pryin'
+eyes, but I want you to know that our honeymoon want never once
+interrupted. The neighbors see we had work to do and they had theirs
+and we both of us did it. The children of the neighbors was often round
+with us then, but they made us think of 'ourn that was to come, in the
+favor of the Lord. And if when I helped her along from plank to plank,
+I held her hand a little longer than absolutely necessary, who was to
+care.
+
+"There's been no decided change in the years; we've been honey-mooning
+along just about the same. Course with the children she had more to do
+in doors, but she's always managed, if there was an extra run o' fish
+to come to the flakes and help me over the rush; and if one o' the kids
+was sick or anything extra come, why I've always toted the load for
+her."
+
+During the last few sentences Jim was watching the clock intently and
+as he spoke the last sentence, he crossed the little room and began
+winding the clock. I looked up and there, sticking out from behind the
+clock, was a worn, brown wallet. Evidently he was still living up to
+his habit of sharing.
+
+"It's time all decent folks was in bed," he said. "We done want to ape
+the city folks."
+
+So bidding them good night I went out into the night. The rain had
+ceased and there were fast hurrying clouds breaking up and I could see
+the moon high over the spruces. I felt my way along the road back to
+St. John's.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+JIM AND HIS BOOK
+
+
+"They that seek the Lord understand _all_ things." Jim spoke with his
+usual deliberation. Again, I had found my way to the little house,
+where now I felt welcome. It was "lightin' an' readin'" time as Jim
+called it.
+
+"They that seek the Lord, understand _all_ things," repeated Jim. I'm
+finding it true more and more. It is true that the Lord giveth to a man
+what is good in His sight, wisdom and knowledge and joy.
+
+"We began sharin' the book, just as we began sharin' the wallet. I
+callated that since the Lord by wisdom founded the earth we'd have to
+found our earth home the same way.
+
+"I'm not educated with figgering knowledge. I never got much school
+wisdom, for I never went much, and what I did get was mostly from the
+fellow that set on the bench with me instead of from the teacher. The
+teacher was so busy with fifty odd pupils, varying from four to twenty
+years in age, that he didn't have much time for any one. He had to skip
+from the multiplication table to algebra and often he skipped some of
+the pupils, and I was apt to be the one he overlooked.
+
+"I know my limitations. A city chap told me about them once and I
+thanked him." Jim chuckled at the remembrance.
+
+"'Look ahere,' the city chap said to me, 'do you know you've lost
+all the G's out of your vocabulary. Your words don't look nor sound
+natural. You better start in putting them on. And there is no such word
+as ain't. Remember that or you can't talk in polite society.'
+
+"I presume he knew, for he talked as though he was on good terms with a
+dictionary; and when he went fishing and caught the hook in his hand he
+said words that weren't in the dictionary, and that came near breaking
+the first commandment. I've got some of those G's put back on, but not
+all. Two things is helping me on the job, the reading of the Good Book
+and the children.
+
+"Book learnin's a fine thing. I'm stumblin' along thru a book or two
+myself, but I callate the prophets didn't refer to book knowledge when
+they wrote of wisdom, but rather heart and soul wisdom. The promise
+I recollect was this: 'For wisdom shall enter into thine _heart_ and
+knowledge shall be pleasant unto thy _soul_.'
+
+Then he reached for his Bible, but before he opened it he said:
+
+"This is the most valuable thing in this house. I've been in houses in
+St. John's fussed up with furniture and things, so many you felt you
+would disturb 'em by setting down, but this book wasn't no where to be
+seen and once I asked a woman to let me look at the Book, and she said
+she'd have to keep me waitin' till she found it, but she was quite sure
+she had it. Guess its wisdom never got very far into her soul.
+
+"It's a satisfyin' book. Readin' of it is like quenching your thirst at
+a hill spring. In the days afore I was converted as a young fellow with
+the rest, I used to sail over to the French Island of St. Pierre and
+smuggle in a few gallons of rum. But it never quenched my thirst. It
+would leave me afterward, all-fired thirsty. But open this book and you
+find fountains of cool water.
+
+"I've tried in the years to halt at the springs as Moses and his people
+did when they crossed the desert and come to a spring. There's many a
+river of the water o' life flowing sweet and fair as we journey thru
+the good book, but to me the promises are the springs and wife and I
+have lingered longest at the springs. We've marked them and there's a
+good many of them and we haven't found them all yet. She has helped me
+mark 'em. A fisherman's hands get a bit calloused and clumpsy and she
+does most of the markin', but I do my share of the discoverin'. It's
+always a happy night, when we find a new spring and rejoice in a new
+promise, but it's a glad night when we quench our thirst at any one
+of the never-failing springs. Their all of 'em fresh an' sparklin';
+there's nary a one of His that are salt or bitter.
+
+"Effie keeps a pencil handy there with her sewing things and when I
+find a new promise, I hand over the book to her and she underlines it.
+Then the favorite springs we mark in the margin, so we'll find 'em easy
+as we journey."
+
+He opened the book, _his_ book it was in more ways than one. It was
+very much worn; its leaves were thumbed and now and then as he turned
+the pages a fish scale dropped out.
+
+"Here are the Great Mountain Springs. The Master indicated them with
+a big, Blessed, so we wouldn't miss them, perhaps the clearest one
+is this, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, but
+they've all got sparkling water; their all promises that quench the
+soul's thirst.
+
+"You will find some of these same markers in the Old Testament, though
+few folks seem to search there for the Blesseds. Here are some of the
+springs that are marked for our use.
+
+"'Blessed are they that wait for Him!'
+
+"'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.'
+
+"'Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach unto
+Thee, that he may dwell in Thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the
+goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple.'
+
+"'Blessed is he that considereth the poor.'
+
+"'Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee, in whose heart are the
+highways to Zion.'
+
+"Let me turn the pages slowly and when I come to a favorite spring
+we'll halt a moment," commented Jim as he continues his reading.
+
+"'He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy
+ways.'
+
+"It won't hurt you a mite, if you hev to wait awhile atween the verses.
+Most parsons read the Bible too fast. They go scurryin' thru the
+readin' like as though a shower was comin' an' they had to get in out
+of it post haste."
+
+"'Fear not; I am with thee; be not discouraged; for I am thy God; I
+will strengthen thee, yes, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee
+with the right hand of my righteousness.'
+
+"'With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.'
+
+"That there first part has puzzled me somewhat, for I've known many
+a one to die young. My folks used to say the good died young, cause
+the Lord had need of 'em over there. Struck me as kinder queer. But I
+reckon He meant here just what He said, as He does elsewhere. It's His
+intention to have long life and goodness go together, only some of us
+interferes with His plan, but He lets us interfere 'cause it's best and
+will work out His way in the end."
+
+"'He shall call upon me and I will answer him. I will be with him in
+trouble. I will deliver him and honor him.'
+
+"'Behold I will bring thee health and a cure.'
+
+"'The Lord shall be thine _everlasting light_, and the days of thy
+mourning shall be ended.'
+
+"'There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh
+thy dwelling.'
+
+"Did you think," said Jim, interrupting his reading, "that there were
+so many bright, clear springs for the traveller?"
+
+Then, without waiting for any answer, he continued slowly turning the
+pages, reading me from his marked places.
+
+"'Delight thyself in the Lord and _He_ shall give thee the desires of
+thy heart.'
+
+"'The joy of the Lord shall be your strength.'
+
+"'He that endureth to the end shall be saved.'
+
+"There are signs put up, too, not only to mark springs but to inform
+us," interpolated Jim.
+
+"Now once as we was journeying, it come over me that these springs may
+have been intended for others and not for us and that very night, I
+come upon this sign and it took every bit of doubt out of my heart.
+
+"'For the promise is unto _you and your children_.' How could it be
+plainer than that?"
+
+As he closed the Book I said: "I, too, have a Book but I think
+sometimes I have lost my way as I journeyed and I am going to put up
+sign-boards of my own now, so I'll never lose my way again. There is
+no use to camp in dark valleys when just beyond are the hills and the
+springs. It's unwise to wander thru deserts of generalizations when the
+promises are close at hand."
+
+"Yes," added Jim, "what do we care whether King Agag was hewed to
+pieces or not. We know the words of salvation."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+RAILROADING WITH THE KID
+
+
+If there is anything that I have told you about Harbor Jim that sounds
+feeble or sickly sentimental, I have told you an untruth. Turn back to
+where I said it, and cross it out. It doesn't belong in this story.
+It's rank injustice to Jim.
+
+I have fished with a good many of the Landers. I have been fishing off
+the banks when the weather has kept every man of us praying, who knew
+how to pray, and I have had a chance to judge of these bronzed fellows,
+big of hand and foot and the same of heart, most of them, as they met
+the wind and weather, the fortunes of life on the sea and the shore;
+and I want you to know I never have known and loved a manlier man than
+Jim.
+
+Maybe that was why I was surprised one morning as we were returning to
+camp from a trip up the Humber River after salmon, to see the tears
+rolling down his cheeks and to note that he hastily took his sleeve and
+wiped his face and swallowed hard.
+
+In this land of uncrossed lakes and unfished rivers, there is probably
+not a fairer one than the Humber River and there are reminders of
+Norway both on the lower and upper Humber.
+
+It was with some difficulty that I had persuaded Harbor Jim to leave
+his home for the trip inland to the Humber for salmon fishing. The
+Lander does not take readily to a vacation, indeed, the average Lander
+cannot afford to take one. After several days of argument, Jim gave in,
+with this sentiment:
+
+"I think the Lord must a been a good fisherman, else He wouldn't a
+picked fishermen to follow Him. He wanted to swap stories with 'em now
+and again. The Master knew by the ruffle and the shadow on the lake
+when the fish was schooling and he told Peter where to let down his
+nets. I have an idea He went away sometimes to fish as well as to pray
+and that fishin' with Peter and John, they come to know each other
+better."
+
+After that Jim was as keen as a boy to get ready the lines and the
+flies and to pack our little outfit. We went on the train to Deer Lake,
+crossed the lower end of the lake and went up the river. We fished near
+Steady Brook Falls and away up at Big Falls and the weather was all
+that could be desired. We caught more salmon and trout than we needed
+and we were bringing out all that the law would allow us to transport.
+It had been the best week's fishing I had ever had, and there had
+been some surprises. We had by chance fallen in with an old friend of
+mine from the States and another day we had seen a stag of great size
+following the birds down to a pool.
+
+All had gone so well with us that I was at a loss to account for this
+sudden demonstration of feeling. It was not like Jim. I knew him and
+his way well enough, to know that he would not wish to be questioned,
+so we tramped on in silence over the carry, and it was not for an hour
+afterward that he ventured an explanation.
+
+"There at the carry you may have thought it strange, the way I acted
+up. That little fellow we seed there playing with his father's canoe,
+made me think of little Peter. I've never mentioned him, I seldom do,
+but I think a good deal about him and often I believe he is with me. He
+made the carry and past over to Kingdom Come three years ago.
+
+"Do you know sometimes when I used to watch my little Peter playing,
+and the light and shadows would be around him, I used to think, pardon
+me, he looked like the pictures I've seen of the carpenter's Son, His
+Son. He was our first child, born out of our first wonderful love, but
+he never was a strong child. I don't know why. I never could think
+of him as becomin' a fisherman. He used to like better'n the average
+child, to journey with us thru the land o' the springs during the
+evenings, and I thought mebbe the Lord would call him to be a preacher,
+though I never let on to him, what I was a thinkin'.
+
+"When he was eight, he got kinder spindlin' and at the same time
+he wanted to go to the woods and to see the island. He had another
+hankering, too, that was to ride on the trains. He used to collect
+engine numbers any time he was in St. John's. His mother used to say
+that she believed he'd be an engine driver instead of a preacher.
+
+"At first I didn't pay much attention when he asked to go, but as he
+got thinner and paler, I began to take trips with him on the railroad.
+We had great times together going to places and for a time they seemed
+to chuck him up a bit. We went down to old Placentia one time. Ever
+down there? It's a lovely old place; lies sprawled out on a sandy beach
+with arms reaching round it and the hills sending down beauty on to
+it. We climbed the hill across the gut from the town, Castle Hill, and
+saw the crumbling ruins of the old French Fort and we went across to
+Bradshaw's and saw the Communion set that was presented by King William
+the Fourth.
+
+"Sometimes we would take mother along and go to Top-sails and look
+down the bay as we ate our lunch. Then one time we went over to Belle
+Isle and saw the men working in the iron mines under the sea and Peter
+talked about what he saw for weeks. I was worried a good deal about
+him, but we both felt better on the trips. There was always something
+to see. For miles our railroad gives you Conception Bay with now a
+frame of hills and now one of spruces. Then in the centre of the
+island are great lonesome barrens where the caribou come to feed and
+the little nameless lakes are clustered. Peter had 'em all named, but
+I think he used to change the names sometimes. There were so many his
+little mind forgot the long list.
+
+"Then 'twas fun to be on our railroad. It's a road that throws you
+about some; makes an impression on you, and a good hard one, sometimes.
+But it's the only railroad we've got in the Dominion and without it
+our country wouldn't have the farms it has now, nor friends like you,
+coming and going.
+
+"I remember when we took the sleeper, the kid and I. We didn't often do
+that; we couldn't afford it, but this time we were going over to the
+Codroys and I put the little fellow to bed and sat down for a spell of
+thinking, across the aisle from him. Suddenly the train gave a lurch.
+Guess the engineer got kinder hot stoppin' to drive cows off the track
+and we was a hittin' it up as much as thirty miles an hour. What do you
+think? Little Peter come a flyin' down from his berth right into my
+arms and he says, not hurt a bit, only tickled:
+
+"'Pa, a fellow has to be put to bed more'n once to stay put on our
+road.'
+
+"He always called it our road, though he knew its short-comings as well
+as I.
+
+"We only took one winter trip and that was a long one and I blamed
+myself many a time for taking the risk, though I don't know's it hurt
+him any, and I'm sure I always kept him warm and covered. When we got
+to Gaff Topsails, the track ahead was solid, sheer ice and the wind
+swept fierce across it from the south. They strapped the train on the
+track, so's it wouldn't tumble over. Seems funny now, but it wasn't
+then. But we didn't suffer any. They had lots of food-stuff aboard
+and when it give out the train hands went across the snow to the next
+town to get more. It took us fifteen days to get to Petrie's. The
+store-keeper at Petrie's had been up to St. John's to buy goods and he
+was on the train with us, anxious to get home. He was kind to little
+Peter and rode him pig-a-back every day, when it was too bad for him to
+walk about.
+
+"The store-keeper reached Petrie's in thirteen days, two days ahead of
+the train, by walking the last ten miles. His folks was surprised, for
+they didn't expect him until the train got in.
+
+"Still that trip we made better time than the trains sometimes do in
+the winter. One train took twenty-six days to get across the island.
+
+"On these trips, Peter and I would come home with many a story to tell
+mother and little Peter would be wildly excited and there would be big,
+red spots in both his cheeks; and when the excitement of the trip was
+over he would grow weary. He would cough and want to eat less and sleep
+less, but always he was cheerful and a-planning for railroading with
+his Dad."
+
+It came time to camp for the night and Jim stopped the story, as he
+started our fire and I began to put up our tent.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THROUGH THE VALLEY WITH THE LITTLE FELLOW
+
+
+When we had eaten our fill of fried salmon and blue-berry duff, that no
+one could stir up and bake better than Jim, and the camp was tidied for
+the night, Jim went on with his story.
+
+He had come to the hard part of the story, the saddest part of his
+life, and I was glad that it was dark; I knew it would be easier for
+him. I was glad, too, that the camp fire was dying down, for thus I
+would see less of suffering that might be revealed could I see his face
+in the brighter light.
+
+"I had the Grenfell doctor come. I'd sent ahead to have him met at
+the Hospital Ship and a doctor, a great man from the States, on his
+vacation, they said, come over here to our place. He was giving his
+vacation because he loved Grenfell and the fishermen.
+
+"Little Peter answered all of his questions and I was sheer proud of
+him. I could see the Doctor liked the little man. He said to Peter,
+when he had finished examining him:
+
+"'I'll make you better, my little man, if I can. You take all the eggs
+and milk the hens and the cows will let you have and grow so fat your
+mother won't know you.'
+
+"But to me, he said, when he walked down the road a piece with me:
+
+"'You're Harbor Jim, they tell me, a man loved hereabouts for the
+fights you've made to reach the harbor in a night of storm. I am hating
+to tell you, Jim, but it's goin' to be a hard fight this time, the
+hardest fight you ever had. There's a chance; but one lung is all gone
+and the other's bad. I'll do my best, but if you have to go thru the
+valley with the little fellow, I'll only hope you won't forget to live
+up to your reputation.'
+
+"Then he left me all manner of directions, about eggs and milk that was
+to give him ammunition for the fight. Told me to soak him in sunshine
+and so on. And I did just as he told me. I gave him his cod-liver oil,
+when I had to invent fairy stories to get him to swallow it. I wrapped
+him up in blankets and sat him in the sunshine. His mother did as much
+or more'n I did. I used to listen of a night to see if he breathed all
+right. I listened, when ever Effie was asleep, to see if I could tell
+if he breathed as strong as he did the night before.
+
+"Those days my heart was sore all the while, but I couldn't let on for
+fear she'd know just how I felt."
+
+Jim swallowed hard, but he had made up his mind to tell me the story
+of little Peter and he wasn't the man to back down. He had a knife and
+a piece of a birch and he was whittling away. The light would flare up
+a moment and I could see him looking straight ahead into the fire and
+whittling faster.
+
+"Then I had to cover it up from him; for little Peter was sure that he
+was getting better. Seems though the worse he got, the surer he was
+he'd be better tomorrow. When he got so weak I had to carry him across
+the room, he began to talk more about spring and railroading again with
+his dad.
+
+"Sometimes when I'd been off and was comin' home, I dreaded so seeing
+him, thus weak, that I'd rather a-gone thru the Narrows on the darkest
+night God ever made, than to face Peter with a jolly quip. So many
+times then, and so many times since, I have thought, if I only could
+have toted the load for him. If only my hand could a-held it up for
+him. He was so little and frail and I was big and strong. And it was
+the utter, awful helplessness of it that made it so hard to bear. We
+wanted to help so bad and there was so very little that either of us
+could do.
+
+"We didn't have Clara then. She didn't come until afterward, and then
+Peter was all we had. It didn't seem that we could give him up. I
+reasoned with myself and I didn't one night forget the Book. But there
+were nights when we halted at the springs that our mouths were so dry
+and parched that even the Water of Life seemed not to be sufficient to
+quench them.
+
+"We went deeper and deeper into the valley. He grew weaker and weaker.
+Just like a little flower that is fading away. One night he grew worse.
+It was February, and I put on my snow shoes and started for St. John's
+for a doctor. I walked away into the night and I got a doctor and was
+back afore dawn.
+
+"The doctor took his pulse and said:
+
+"'He'll be crossing at the dawn.'
+
+"Little Peter often listened to the Book and he was beginning to love
+it, too; and just before the sun broke that cold, February morning, he
+whispered:
+
+"'God is light; in Him is no darkness at all.'
+
+"Then it was morning, but oh, it was night and the valley for us!
+The doctor left us and we sat alone, her hand in mine. Effie didn't
+say anything; I think if she had I couldn't a bore it. And there was
+no minister present. I was glad of that, too. I guess they all want
+to help, but a good many on'em that I have knowed want to argue and
+to tell you it's all right and you don't want to talk just then and
+arguments don't offer much comfort. The time had come when only one
+could comfort us and we had to find Him. Some do not find Him for days,
+some for weeks, some never find Him again.
+
+"The words that kept saying themselves over to me were these: 'Be still
+and know that I am God.' I was some impatient, some bitter. I know I
+oughtn't to have been, but I was, and I answered the Lord: 'I _am_
+still; see me suffering here; is that all the message?'
+
+"It was a good thing we had something to do. We had to see to the
+little wasted body. We had to arrange for the service. We had to tidy
+up the house. We shared it all, the new sorrow and the pain, just as
+we had shared the wallet and the joys. The minister come way from St.
+John's and I was grateful to him. I don't remember just what he said,
+but I am sure that Peter was worthy all the good he said of him; and I
+know that I needed all the prayer he made.
+
+"But when it was all over and the house was so quiet, it was harder
+still. It didn't do no good to listen for his breathing. There was no
+need to think of eggs or milk for the little fellow's breakfast. He was
+gone!
+
+"I was very tired and I was about to turn in that night after the
+funeral, when Effie said:
+
+"'We need to halt by the springs more than ever.'
+
+"I knew she was right, so with a sad heart I opened the Book. I never
+knowed just how it was, perhaps the Lord himself guided my hands, but
+we come to a little halt at the 14th chapter of John. It was the Spring
+of Comfort and Peace, we so much needed. It was the place where so many
+have camped before in their night of sorrow and gone forth strengthened
+and rejoicing in the morning. We were very thirsty and it was real
+water, the water of life and we drank as we never had drank before. He
+spoke to us and said: 'Let not your heart be troubled!'
+
+"I won't repeat that chapter, but it has never lost its power, to
+refresh and comfort since the day He first uttered the words. If you
+ever have to go again thru the valley yourself; halt there. It will be
+the wisest thing you ever did.
+
+"After that I was able to think clear again. I said to myself. I
+trusted the Father before and He never did me wrong. I can't just
+see, but I can trust and it will grow brighter and so it has, though
+sometimes I don't see quite plain, even yet. I know that He must have
+a place for the little fellow and He must know what Peter needs. He'll
+know how to pick the best teachers and all the experiences he needs. My
+Father is looking out for him. He can do no wrong."
+
+For a little while all was quiet but for the chattering of the river as
+it hurried on down to sea. The wind freshened in the trees. Messages
+were passing above us. Jim brought a bundle of fresh wood and the fire
+leaped into a cheerful blaze. There was not any more that needed to
+be said. We both made an effort to shake off the sadness and fell to
+talking of the weight of the day's salmon catch, as we undressed. We
+carried but one little tent and slept together. Some hour after we had
+gone to bed, I imagined Jim was trying to find out if I was asleep
+without disturbing me. At last he decided that I was awake and said:
+
+"I'm sure it's all right about little Peter. We're out of the valley
+now and are finding again the sunny plain."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE QUEER ONE
+
+
+"Sartin sure! By the big dipper, it's sartin shame!" Bob McCartney
+stood at my door all excitement as he delivered himself of these
+explosives.
+
+Bob is a short man and middle-wide, and he is on the increase. This
+particular morning he stood on my stoop, the very personification of
+heat. He took off his hat and mopped his head and his red face and
+without waiting went on with his message.
+
+"The Missus Jim is took sudden and terrible sick. Doc Withers is
+there and don't know what ails her. Think of anything she could take?
+Anything you know of she could do? Everybody is suggestin'! Neighbors
+comin' an' goin' all the while, tryin' to do something for the Missus
+Jim. Didn't seem to be anything more I could do. You can't try
+everything to onct, so think's I, I'll go and see him. He comes from
+New York an' mebbe he'll have a new idea."
+
+"It might be a good thing to let one or two ideas have a chance," I
+replied. "I've noticed that ideas that get rushed and crowded don't do
+as well."
+
+Bob brightened and pulling on his cap, backed down the stairs. "I'll
+tell 'em to go slow and let the first ideas have a chance."
+
+I wisely concluded that Jim would have all the help and more than he
+needed and I did not call for three days. When I did Mrs. Jim herself
+answered my knock and from just behind Jim shouted:
+
+"She's all right again. Didn't prove so bad as we thought. Something
+got inside of her that didn't belong there and soon's it got out, she
+come along all right."
+
+"Was it the doctor or you, Jim, that cured her?" I asked, as I sat down.
+
+"I've been thinking o' that a good deal, this day," he answered.
+
+"Everything traces back to the Almighty, when you let your thought
+travel far enough, and I'd like to thank Him, first. I prayed a good
+deal and though I don't need no thanks, I believe those prayers helped.
+Then the neighbors helped. They loaned hot water bags and fetched
+pillows, an' done all manner o' things, 'till thinks I, nobody ever
+had such neighbors as us. Then there was Doc Withers. Now some folks
+give all the credit to the docs, but I don't; neither do I take all the
+praise from 'em. Their His servants, too, and I callate dividing up the
+responsibility and the thanks for a cure is a mighty difficult task. I
+know I ain't worthy to do it myself."
+
+A knock, a quick, nervous knock came just then and Jim answered it,
+throwing wide the door, as he always did, with his cheery, "Come right
+in."
+
+A thin, tall man with a long rain-coat and big, black-rimmed glasses
+stepped in. Snatching off his gray Alpine hat, he introduced himself.
+
+"I'm Clarence O. Jewett, of Boston. Am visiting in Newfoundland,
+spending two and a half days here. Came in on the steamer 'Rosalind'
+from Halifax, yesterday, going back tomorrow. In St. John's I was told
+of Harbor Jim and that his wife was very ill, and I hired a car and
+came out here and I am ready to give your wife a treatment. I have
+been thinking that perhaps the Lord is using me to bring the only,
+real, true religion to Newfoundland. When your wife has seen the light
+and comes to know the truth that sin and everything material is a
+delusion, deception and a snare, she will understand that being perfect
+she cannot really suffer from an illusion. This earth and all things
+upon which we look are but shadows. When your wife is whole again and
+understands the non-reality of matter, she will testify and others may
+hear and heed, until many on this island will come to praise the Lord
+and to remember Clarence O. Jewett, of Boston, who brought the only,
+real, true religion--"
+
+At this moment, Mrs. Jim, who had stepped out at the knock, re-entered
+the room and Jim had his first chance to speak.
+
+"This is the Missus. The news you received is a little late, for she
+has recovered. Since you are a mound-tripper and doin' the country,
+probably we ought not to keep you. The road across is about five
+hundred miles, and if you're goin' to see any more'n St. John's, you'll
+have to hurry afore your ship sails. There was a man down here last
+year who staid two days in St. John's and then wrote a book about
+Newfoundland, but he skipped a few things."
+
+The man was keenly disappointed. He changed his weight from one foot to
+the other, for he had not yet taken the seat that Jim had offered him.
+He took off his glasses and wiped them and then seating himself and
+clearing his throat, resumed.
+
+"The cure is but temporary. Your wife will not be well until she has
+learned that there is but one thing to know and that is the truth and
+the truth about the truth. And though you cannot expect to understand
+it, I will start you on the way toward the one, only, real, true
+religion."
+
+"Am I supposed just to listen?" asked Jim, "or do you think I might
+know enough to ask a question now and then?"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," the queer man replied. "I have an answer for
+every question that is absolutely logical. Take the question of the
+existence of evil; that is the most puzzling question in all the world.
+I have an answer to it that is entirely satisfactory. Nobody can
+contradict it. Evil is matter. Matter does not exist. Therefore evil
+does not exist and since it does not exist, it never could have been
+created. Evil and matter are just wrong statements of mind. Do you see?
+Is it perfectly clear to you?"
+
+Jim gulped, as though he was in swimming and had accidentally swallowed
+some salt water. I had come to have a profound admiration for Jim and
+was coming more and more to appreciate his wholesome philosophy, and
+now I was waiting to see what Jim would do with this man's statements.
+
+"You have doused me beyond my depth, I guess," was the somewhat puzzled
+reply of Jim. "It isn't plain to me. But heave ahead a little and mebbe
+I'll get some idea of what port you're sailin' to. The only thing you
+have said so far that has any familiar sound to me is what you said
+about the one, only, real, true religion. I've heard that several times
+before. Seems though most every kind o' religion and every different
+church feels that it's got the one, only, real, true religion. Strikes
+me, every blessed one on'em has got some of the real religion and also
+some foolishness and smallness and no one on'em has got the pure,
+undiluted article that Jesus Christ brought to the world. I think He
+come the nearest to livin' the real religion. But how'd you discover
+that your's was the only religion?"
+
+The queer man evidently thought the question irrelevant, for he was off
+again.
+
+"It is now proved that all is mental or mind. _Your_ thoughts are
+the opposites of mind. They do not exist. They are even as all other
+things, non-existent, non-real. God is the only reality. There is no
+thing outside of God. You are not separated from Him."
+
+"Then," interrupted Jim, "how about the Prodigal Son? Didn't he get
+separated from his Father?"
+
+"That is speaking in terms of no-mind. You have not yet grasped the
+thought. Nothing can exist but good. God never saw the Prodigal Son
+until he came back, because he never has or can see anything evil."
+
+"Your God may not see or know evil, sickness or suffering or anything
+that makes a man miserable. I say, _your_ God mayn't, but _mine_ does.
+It's his _knowledge_ that makes Him compassionate. If He didn't know
+what was happening to His own children, that He had created and planned
+for, then I'd rather pray to Bob McCartney. Think, sir, what kind of a
+mother would your mother a-been, if she hadn't known when you cried,
+and you hadn't a-been able to climb up and lay in her arms and be
+comforted and forgiven? She wouldn't a-been a mother and God wouldn't
+be a God unless He knew what was a-happening to His own children! Why
+man alive didn't He make the world; aren't they His, the cattle on a
+thousand hills, the lightenin' and the thunder, the sweet grass and the
+flowers and all things in and on and under the earth? If He has gone
+off and forgotten it all and don't know good and evil, if He don't know
+when we're tired and failin' and tryin' again, why what would be the
+use o' prayer or, for that matter, for livin' at all?"
+
+The queer man, at this point, removed his rubbers, but made no comment
+upon Jim's questions. Perhaps his feet were so warm it was hard for him
+to keep his head cool.
+
+"You are utterly deceived," he continued. "You are confusing the real
+and the non-real. You are following after shadows that do not exist at
+all. You do not know the truth. You are bound. You are looking at the
+mist of matter that will disappear as the knowledge of truth develops
+within you. If you will begin to deny the existence of evil, you will
+begin to banish disease and ultimately you will understand that all
+things are but illusions."
+
+"Pears to me," Jim said, as the queer man paused for breath, before
+launching more sentences about the truth. "Pears to me, you're sailin'
+round in a circle, and havin' a hard time dodging the winds o' logic.
+Call the flower, the mountain, and the man, shadows and illusions; if
+you will. I don't object to that, only I want you to agree with me
+that they are beautiful. The only thing I am afeared of is that you'll
+make some folks think this is not _His_ world at all; and I want them
+to know that this is His world and that He planned these things you
+have re-named shadows and illusions. I callate there's danger in your
+statements when you come to follow them out. Then, too, these shadows
+have been actin' about uniform for as long ago as the book o' Genesis
+and afore that, and I don't propose to try to get much farther back,
+for it makes my eyes ache to see back o' that.
+
+"When you tell me this body o' mine is an illusion, it kinder riles me,
+for I believe the Good Father planned this body as much as He planned a
+soul for me. It's a house for my soul as long as I'm in this earth and
+I callate it's to be treated holy while it houses my soul. I know it
+will get kinder old and dingy bye and bye and I'll be quitting it, but
+that ain't no good reason for neglectin' it now.
+
+"Of course if what you say was true and there was no material and it
+was all in thinking, then we wouldn't have to wear clothes, nor eat
+food and you wouldn't have to wear your specs, nor your goloshes,
+because it's a little damp under feet this morning. You may be
+different, Mr. Jewett, with your one, only, real, true religion, but we
+Landers up here all get a little older as days go by; we all like to be
+cheered by food and fuel, and we all feel the difference between winter
+and summer, and we all travel sooner or later to the better land. Seems
+to be His plan."
+
+The queer man was gathering words for new statements; but while he was
+listening to the last of Jim's replies, he was looking intently at his
+hands. If it may be permitted to speak in ordinary fashion of a man of
+his philosophy, his hands were dirty and he had become painfully aware
+of it. Jim noticed his concern and remarked with a certain acerbity of
+tone:
+
+"You don't clean your hands with soap and water, do you?"
+
+The queer man in turn showed some increase of warmth as he replied:
+
+"I certainly do when I need to, that's only common sense."
+
+"Well," mused Jim, this time very slowly, "do you know, I don't believe
+in using too much soap, it's caustic and it's harmful sometimes to the
+skin, but do you know, once in a while I get a bit riled and dirty
+inside o' me and I decide that it's only common sense to clean that
+just as I would my hands."
+
+The queer man sniffed and asked for a Bible. "Have you a Bible?"
+
+He won't get ahead very fast, if he thinks Jim doesn't own a Bible and
+know its contents, I thought; but I kept my thoughts to myself, for
+the man had utterly ignored me, thus far, for Jim was keeping him as
+busy as he cared to be. Before Jim could answer he saw his Bible on the
+little table and it opened easily and he saw at once the markings and
+said:
+
+"Glad you read your Bible, but it needs another book beside it else
+you can't understand it and it's a closed book. You need a key to the
+Scriptures."
+
+"I callate," replied Jim, "that a man ought to be able to read his
+own Bible and interpret it for himself. The Lord has given every man
+a key in his own mind and heart. The fathers that have lived and died
+didn't have your key, but they got comfort out of this Book. Ever since
+the words were uttered they have been helping and some on 'em is so
+simple and beautiful that little fellows can read and be blessed in the
+reading."
+
+The queer man read now from Jim's Bible:
+
+"And Jesus went about preaching the gospel of the kingdom _and healing
+all manner of diseases_."
+
+"Do you believe that? There it is plain, too plain to be contradicted."
+
+"Yes, I believe," answered Jim.
+
+The queer man was surprised and it gave Jim time to add:
+
+"Jesus also said: 'According to your _faith_ be it unto thee. All
+things are possible to Him that _believeth_!
+
+"There's an old Indian lives down the road a piece, who was all tied up
+with rheumatiz. He got back the other day from New Mexico, all cured.
+He'd never heard of you or your key to the Scriptures. He'd been to
+a place called Chimayo. Went to a little clay church down there and
+scraped up some of the clay from the floor and mixed it with water and
+drank it and has come back well. Every year or two somebody goes from
+St. John's away to Quebec and out to a place called St. Ann's, where
+they got a wrist-bone of hers, so they tell, and some of 'em come back
+well again.
+
+"There's an old lady in Quidi Vidi nigh on to eighty-five. She got sick
+when she was eighty, grew feeble and pindling. She took to readin' this
+Book and praying all by herself and she got her strength back and she
+is as chipper as any woman of sixty in the Dominion.
+
+"What was it cured her; what is it that cures lots of folks for a time,
+though we mustn't forget that we all go hence according to His plan.
+He's evidently got a good many rooms in His big house and He doesn't
+intend for us to stay too long in any one.
+
+"Did these folks that drank mud, prayed in front of a wrist-bone, or
+just prayed, believe that they was living in the shadows; did they
+build up an airy, fairy world and re-name things; not a bit of it; they
+was cured just as you and I might be, can be cured. Mr. Jewett, they
+had _faith_!
+
+"I believe it's the measure of faith we have that counts. The Lord
+speaks about our doing things He did and greater also, and we shall
+just as our faith grows. I believe in praying because it makes that
+faith grow; I believe in reading the Book for the same reason. If I
+had faith enough, I could, like Him, remove mountains or walk upon the
+sea; but it don't grieve me because I can't in a moment do the things
+the Divine Son did. Faith always seems to me to be a bigger thing than
+love. I guess faith is love that has learned how to bring things to
+pass.
+
+"Let's not expect too much. Let's remember we and the world have yet
+to do a good deal of growing. I don't measure God's greatness nor His
+goodness by the number of times He cures my stomach-ache. It may be I'm
+pretty careless and a certain amount of pain is about the only handy
+Teacher He can find for me. It may be that in this first room some of
+us will have to be somewhat ailing, but let's not forget He gives us
+grace to bear as well as strength to heal. I only ask to be able to do
+my work and not grunt.
+
+"I callate that if your one, only, real, true religion is devoting its
+chief thought and its most time to simply curing aches and pains, it
+ain't the religion of our Lord for He went about doin' _all kinds of
+good_."
+
+The queer man was fidgeting and from his looks I concluded he was about
+to seek new pastures. Jim, noticing this, continued:
+
+"I appreciate your coming, sir, proves there's good in your religion.
+You've got the missionary zeal and that deserves to be kept. After all
+we ain't so far apart, as it might seem, some ways; but we're starting
+from different points. I believe this is a real world, an intended
+world, with real folks and real facts and that it is a good world,
+His World, and it's a goin' to be better; only not all to onct, by
+re-naming the old and beautiful things He planned and sent."
+
+Mr. Jewett was wise in withdrawing, for Jim was gaining in power and
+facility of expression. Now, as the man edged toward the door, Jim
+extended his hand and said:
+
+"Don't lose your logic, 'cause there's no harm in mixin' logic and
+religion. If religion is any good it'll stand logic. Remember the Lord
+knowed what He was a-doin' and He ain't abandoned His children."
+
+When he was well outside, Mrs. Jim spoke:
+
+"Jim, do you think he has a screw loose in his loft?"
+
+But the queer man was back in a moment, with a less confident air, but
+this time he had but one brief sentence:
+
+"Please, I left my rubbers."
+
+     _Printed in the United States of America._
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+Inconsistencies in the author's use of hyphens has been left unchanged,
+as in the original text. Obvious printer errors have been corrected.
+Otherwise, the author's original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation
+have been left intact.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Harbor Jim of Newfoundland, by 
+Alden Eugene Bartlett
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43934 ***