The year Clinton was thirteen, the boys planned to have a corn roast, one August night. "We will get the corn in old Carter"s lot," said Harry Meyers. "He has just acres of it, and can spare a bushel or so as well as not. I suppose you will go with us, Clint?"
Clinton hesitated. "No," said he. "I guess not; and I should think if you want to roast corn, you could get it out of your own gardens. But if Mr.
Carter"s corn is better than any other, why can you not ask him----"
"O, come, now," retorted Harry, "do not let it worry you! Half the fun of roasting corn is in--in taking it. And don"t you come, Clinton--don"t. We would not have you for the world. You are too nice, Mr. Coughin."
Clinton"s cheeks flushed red, but he turned away without a word. When Mr.
Carter quizzed Billy Matthews, and found out all about it, Clinton was made very happy by the old man"s words: "It is not every chap that will take the stand you took. You ought to be thankful that you have the strength to say No."
In the fall, when Clinton was fifteen, his health began to fail noticeably, and Dr. Bemis advised a little wine "to build him up."
"Mother," said the boy, after thinking it over, "I am not going to touch any wine. I can get well without it, I know I can. I do not want liquor,"
he continued. ""Wine is a mocker," you know. Did you not tell me once that Zike Hastings, over in East Bloomfield, became a drunkard by drinking wine when he was sick?"
"Yes, Clinton, I believe I told you so."
"Well, then, I do not want any wine. I have seen Zike Hastings too many times."
In December Aunt Jennie and Grace made their annual visit. With them came Uncle Jonathan, who took a great liking to Clinton.
"My boy," said he one day, placing a big hand on the lad"s shoulder, "early in the new year Aunt Jennie and I start for the Pacific Coast. Should you like to go with us?"
"Well, I rather guess I should!" gasped the surprised boy, clasping his hands joyfully. "Very well, then, you shall go," returned Uncle Jonathan, "and your mother, too."
Clinton began to feel better before they were outside of Pennsylvania. When they had crossed the Mississippi and reached the prairies, his eyes were sparkling with excitement. The mountains fairly put new life in him. Uncle Jonathan watched him with pleasure. "Tell me," he said one day, when they were winding in and out among the Rockies, "what has given you so much strength of character?"
"Why, it was this way," said Clinton, bringing his eyes in from a chasm some hundreds of feet below: "one day when I was beginning to recover from that attack of pneumonia, I saw a lot of the boys romping along, and I felt pretty bad because I could not romp and play, too; then I thought that if I could not be strong that way, I could have the strength to do right; so I began to try, and----"
"Succeeded admirably," said Uncle Jonathan, approvingly. "And, really, my boy, I see no reason why you should not shout and play to your heart"s content in a few months."
And Uncle Jonathan"s words proved true; for Clinton, in a sun-kissed California valley, grew well and strong in a few months. But through all his life he will have cause to be glad that he learned the value of the strength that is gained by resisting temptation, controlling one"s spirit, and obeying the Lord"s commands.
BENJAMIN KEECH.
THE DOCTOR"S COW
"I am afraid she is done for," said the veterinary surgeon as he came out of the barn with Dr. Layton, after working for an hour over Brindle, who had broken into the feed bins, and devoured bran and middlings until she could eat no more. "But keep up the treatment faithfully, and if she lives through the night, she will stand some show of getting well."
The doctor walked down the driveway with the surgeon, and stood for a few minutes at the gate under the maple-trees that lined the sidewalk, talking earnestly. Then he went back into the house by the kitchen door. His wife met him, with the oft-repeated words, "I told you so; I said that boy would turn out of no earthly account."
"But he has turned out of some account," contradicted the doctor mildly.
"In spite of this carelessness, he has been a great help to me during the last month. It was boyish ignorance more than mere carelessness that brought about this disaster. To be sure, I have cautioned him not to leave the door of the feed-room unfastened. But he had no idea how a cow would make a glutton of herself if she had a chance at the bins. You cannot expect a boy who was reared in a city tenement to learn all about the country, and the habits and weaknesses of cattle, in one short month. No, I shall not send him adrift again--not even if poor Brindle dies."
"You mean to say you are going to keep him just the same, John Layton?"
cried the doctor"s wife. "Well, if you are not the meekest man! Moses was not anything to you! He did lose his temper once."
The doctor smiled, and said quietly: "Yes, and missed entering the promised land on account of it. Perhaps I should have done the same thing in his place; but I am sure that Moses, if he were in my place today, would feel just as I do about discharging Harry. It is pretty safe to a.s.sume that he, even if he did lose his temper at the continual grumbling of the croakers who were sighing for the flesh-pots of Egypt, never ordered a young Israelite boy whose father and mother had been bitten by the fiery serpents and died in the wilderness, to clear out of camp for not putting a halter on one of the cows."
"John Layton, you are talking Scripture!" remonstrated the perturbed housewife, looking up reprovingly as she sadly skimmed the cream from the very last pan of milk poor Brindle would ever give her.
"I certainly am, and I am going to act Scripture, too," declared the doctor, with the air of gentle firmness that always ended any controversy between him and his excellent, though somewhat exacting, wife. "Harry is a good boy, and he had a good mother, too, he says, but he has had a hard life, ill-treated by a father who was bitten by the fiery serpent of drink.
Now because of his first act of negligence I am not going to send him adrift in the world again."
"Not if it costs you a cow!" remarked the woman.
"No, my dear, not if it costs me two cows," rea.s.serted the doctor. "A cow is less than a boy, and it might cost the world a man if I sent Harry away in a fit of displeasure, disgraced by my discharge so that he could not find another place in town to work for his board, and go to school.
Besides, Brindle will die anyway, and discharging the boy will not save her."
"No, of course not. But it was your taking the boy in, a penniless, unknown fellow, that has cost you a cow," persisted the wife. "I told you at the time you would be sorry for it."
"I have not intimated that I am sorry I took the boy in," remarked the doctor, not perversely, but with steadfast kindness. "If our own little boy had lived, and had done this thing accidentally, would I have been sorry he had ever been born? Or if little Ted had grown to be thirteen, and you and I had died in the wilderness of poverty, leaving him to wander out of the city to seek for a home in G.o.d"s fair country, where his little peaked face could fill out and grow rosy, as Harry"s has, would you think it just to have him sent away because he had made a boyish mistake? Of course you would not, mother. Your heart is in the right place, even if it does get covered up sometimes. And I guess, to come right down to it, you would not send Harry away any more than I would, when the poor boy is almost heart-broken over this unfortunate affair. Now, let us have supper, for I must be off. We cannot neglect sick people for a poor, dying cow. Harry will look after Brindle. He will not eat a bite, I am afraid, so it is no use to call him in now. By and by you would better take a plate of something out to him; but do not say a harsh word to the poor fellow, to make it any harder for him than it is."
The doctor ate his supper hurriedly; for the sick cow had engaged every moment of his spare hours that day, and he had postponed until his evening round of visits a number of calls that were not pressing. When he came out to his buggy, Harry Aldis stood at the horse"s head, at the carriage steps beside the driveway, his chin sunk on his breast, in an att.i.tude of hopeless misery.
"Keep up the treatment, Harry, and make her as easy as possible," said the doctor as he stepped into his buggy.
"Yes, sir; I"ll sit up all night with her, Dr. Layton, if I can only save her," was the choking answer, as the boy carefully spread the lap robe over the doctor"s knees.
"I know you will, Harry; but I am afraid nothing can save the poor creature. About all we can do is to relieve her suffering until morning, giving her a last chance; and if she is no better then, the veterinary surgeon says we would better shoot her, and put her out of her misery."
The boy groaned. "O Dr. Layton, why do you not scold me? I could bear it better if you would say just one cross word," he sobbed. "You have been kinder to me than my own father ever was, and I have tried so hard to be useful to you. Now this dreadful thing has taken place, all because of my carelessness. I wish you would take that buggy whip to me; I deserve it."
The doctor took the whip, and gently dropped its lash across the drooping shoulders bowed on the horse"s neck as the boy hid his face in the silken mane he loved to comb. Indeed, Dandy"s black satin coat had never shone with such a l.u.s.ter from excessive currying as in the month past, since the advent of this new little groom, who slept in the little back bedroom of the doctor"s big white house, and thought it a nook in paradise.
"There"s no use in scolding or thrashing a fellow who is all broken up, anyway, over an accident, as you are," the doctor said, kindly. "Of course, it is a pretty costly accident for me, but I think I know where I can get a heifer--one of Brindle"s own calves, that I sold to a farmer two years ago--that will make as fine a cow as her mother."
"But the money, Dr. Layton! How can I ever earn that to make good your loss?" implored the boy, looking up.
"The money? O, well, some day when you are a rich man, you can pay me for the cow!" laughed the doctor, taking up the reins. "In the meantime, make a good, trustworthy, honest man of yourself, no matter whether you get rich or not, and keep your "thinking cap" on a little better."
"You had better eat some supper," said a voice in the doorway a little later, as Mrs. Layton came noiselessly to the barn, and surprised the boy kneeling on the hay in the horse"s stall adjoining the one where Brindle lay groaning, his face buried in his arms, which were flung out over the manger.
The lad scrambled to his feet in deep confusion.
"O, thank you, Mrs. Layton, but I cannot eat a bite!" he protested. "It is ever so good of you to think of me, but I cannot eat anything."
"You must," said the doctor"s wife, firmly. "Come outside and wash in the trough if you do not want to leave Brindle. You can sit near by and watch her, if you think you must, though it will not do a particle of good, for she is bound to die anyway. What were you doing in there on your knees--praying?"
The woman"s voice softened perceptibly as the question pa.s.sed her lips, and she looked half-pityingly into the pale, haggard young face, thinking of little Ted"s, and wondering how it would have looked at thirteen if he had done this thing.
"Yes," muttered Harry, plunging his hands into the water of the trough, and splashing it over the red flame of a sudden burning blush that kindled in his ash-pale cheeks. "Isn"t it all right to pray for a cow to get well? It "most kills me to see her suffer so."
Mrs. Layton smiled unwillingly; for the value of her pet cow"s products touched her more deeply than a boy"s penitent tears, particularly when that boy was not her own. "There is no use of your staying in there and watching her suffer, you cannot do her any good," she insisted. "Stay out here in the fresh air. Do you hear?"