Originally published in The Leisure Hour (Religious Tract Society) vol.1 #9 (26 Feb 1852).
"Well, sir, I will not pick your pocket by prescribing medicine for you which you do not need; but I suppose I must not leave you without a prescription of some kind. Now as you are in good health, and I suspect that the weakness and fatigue of which you complain arise from want of exertion, I would advise plenty of exercise. You should ride, walk, or run if you will, but not sit still. If you were in yonder drayman's place, you would have no more squeamish days or restless nights. You must not be inactive, or you may really bring on that which at present does not exist—serious disease."
"Do you think a tour on the continent would be the thing, sir? only I always miss English comforts so terribly abroad. No, I have a great mind to take a walking tour through the Highlands, since you recommend exercise. What say you, sir?"
"For what object?"
"For health and amusement, doctor. Is it not just what you have been suggesting?"
"I had not quite finished my prescription when you spoke. I knew your father; and since you have flattered me by saying that you came from town for the purpose of asking my advice, because of your confidence in my judgment, I will use the privilege of a friend as well as of a physician, and tell you plainly that I fear your disorder will not be removed by a trip to Scotland, or a walking tour through the Highlands. I have no immediate fear for your body, but there is a kind of mental paralysis with which you are threatened, against which I conceive it to be my duty to warn you. You have let me into the secret of your malady—a malady usually designated by a word for which we have no adequate translation. It is ennui. But ennui has a cause. You are living without an object—is it not so? You have had enough money spent on your education; but you are making no use of it. Forgive me," glancing at a novel that lay on the table, "I see those breakfast-table companions at more than one house I visit; but novel reading is only one branch of literature, and but an inferior branch."
The young man sighed.
"I believe you are right, doctor, and I scarcely know whether one ought to be very grateful to one's father for leaving one independent of all exertion. I begin to think that there may be a greater evil than that of being obliged to earn one's living. If there were anything to-day, for instance, that I must do—if any being in the universe were dependent on my exertions—I believe I could exert myself; but to tell the truth, doctor, the day's work with me seems scarcely worth the trouble of dressing for. As to this London life, I am sick to death of it. The ball, the concert, and the opera; the great dinner parties, with their much wine and little sense; the more snug tête-a-tête with fellows jovial enough, but who care no more for you than a snap of the fingers, and not so much as for a bottle of port;—all these are very unsatisfactory. There is nothing solid left after they are over. Such life seems like the froth on trifle and syllabub; it tastes sweet, and makes a great show, but it does not satisfy the appetite."
The physician gazed earnestly on the youthful speaker, and sighed in his turn. He knew the human heart better than to suppose that, with all this disgust and world-weariness, the young man's heart was willing to give up the world. He remembered that slaves had been known to hug their chains.
"Come and spend this afternoon with me; or, rather, come in at one o'clock and take luncheon with us. I would then ask for your company when I go my second round of visits. But I must not stay now," said he; and hastily taking leave of his friend, he passed into the hall.
A pale, thin, and slightly deformed girl stood there, whose constant cough had reached the doctor's ears whilst talking to Frank Weston, and although the handle of the door was in his hand, he paused to look at the stooping figure before him. Their eyes met, and she dropped him a low curtsey.
"I suppose I ought to know your face. Indeed, I think I do; yet it can scarcely be the same."
"Yes, sir, I called on you about a twelvemonth since. I have not forgotten your kindness, if you have."
"Really; oh, you used to employ yourself in shirt-making."
"Yes, sir."
"And did you take my advice, and go to service?"
"No, sir, I could not."
"How is your health then?"
"No better, sir; I have that same old cough."
"How is it that you have never been to see me?"
"It would have been uselessly robbing you of your time, since I could not take your advice, sir."
"Call on me before nine to-morrow; come quite early;" and he jumped into his carriage, which rolled quickly away, leaving Frank Weston in a state of wonder, not unmixed with contempt, for the interest that this first-rate physician manifested in a poor shirt-maker. He wondered that he, for whose morning call many a fine lady and rich gentleman were waiting in anxious expectancy, should have wasted time in talking to a poor miserable-looking little shirt-maker. But the shirt-maker had business with Frank; and hearing her speak as he was going up-stairs, he turned towards her, and inquired her errand.
"I am come, sir, to say, that I hope you will excuse my not having finished your shirts, I am the person, sir, that Mrs. Halley, the lady of this house, was good enough to recommend to you, and I came to say I could not finish your work, I hoped to have done so, but have been prevented."
"Well, pray how long do you mean to keep me waiting? This is always the way with your country hands," said he, turning to Mrs. Halley, the landlady, who was looking at Bessie Briant in deep commiseration; "in London I should have had these shirts a week ago."
"I beg your pardon, sir; I have not yet had them a week in hand; the pattern is so full of work, the material is so very fine, and--"
"Well, if you can't do them, send them home to me, and I will find some one who can. It is quite absurd; you had better not have undertaken them. Send them home, done or undone; I cannot wait."
"Sir, two of them are nearly finished; if you will wait till to-morrew night, I will send home those two, if possible, all ready to put on."
"I cannot have any ifs. Will you promise to send them home?"
"I will, sir;" and the girl left the house.
"I wonder," said Mrs. Halley to her daughter, as they went up-stairs together to make Mr. Weston's bed, and "rightside," as she called it, his room—I wonder if Mr. Weston ever looked at the stitches in one of his fine shirts, or ever calculated on the amount of labour that such a shirt must require. Poor girl!"
Poor girl, indeed! she is but one of a large class of slaves, and quite of the better sort too, whose lives are too often sacrificed to the love of bargains, to the curse of cheap dress and ill-requited labour. Those advertisements of cheap shirts should make every woman's heart ache who knows the weary, weary hours that their sisters are doomed to spend over that one article of raiment, to be paid, alas, how ill!
Bessie could have wept on her homeward path, but weeping would have hurt her eyes, and they already felt weak and aching, She must work all day, and she feared all night too, to fulfil her engagement, or she must forfeit her bitterly needed payment. So she went into the house and up into her chamber, where she would be quiet and uninterrupted by her little brothers and sisters, took off her bonnet, and began to work.
"Work, work, work,
In the dull December light;
And work, work, work,
When the weather is warm and bright;
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling,
As if to show their sunny backs,
And twit her with the Spring.
Oh, but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet,
With the sky above her head,
And the grass beneath her feet;
For only one short hour,
To feel as she used to feel,
Before she knew the woes of want,
And the walk that costs a meal."
And oh that Frank Weston could have heard the short quick cough, the weary sigh of fatigue, and could have seen the faintness and the gasping for breath of the poor sempstress over his fine French shirts that day!
Dr. L. was waiting luncheon for him when he arrived, and the meal was hastily despatched.
"We must be quick. I have only an hour and a half for this round."
"But, sir, are they patients? because I am no doctor."
"Precisely on this account I take you. Such scenes as we shall pass through to-day are, alas! no novelties to physicians."
There was no mistaking the expression of Frank Weston's face as they entered a very dirty and low part of the city, near the river side. It was one of extreme and undisguised disgust. They were on foot too, and Frank's step was beginning to falter, when they suddenly stopped at the door of one of the better sort of lodging-houses. The door was open, and the physician and his companion entered unobserved. They stopped at a room on the right-hand side, and entered at once, after having knocked.
It was a large, dreary, scantily-furnished apartment, at the extreme end of which an old woman sat knitting, and a girl reclined in a chair, apparently asleep. She looked as though she might never awake from that sleep, so thin and worn was her sharp contracted face.
"Is there any change?"
"No, sir, I do not see any; she is, maybe, a little weaker, but as I say, poor dear, she may last to the fall. Hush! she is waking."
"Scarcely so long, mother, I think."
Dr. L. gently took her hand, and after asking her a few common questions, inquired if she felt the wine any comfort to her. The girl blushed, and the mother being suddenly taken with an idea that some one knocked, made the best of her way to the door, whilst the girl said hurriedly: "Many thanks to you; but no more wine—I am past hope, you know, sir; and what are a few days to one who is ready for Eternity? Do not send me any more." And she looked earnestly and with deep meaning into the doctor's face.
"You are not past the Bible I hope?" said he, looking round for the volume that usually lay by her side. The girl's bosom heaved, and he said little more. "You would like, perhaps, that some one should come and read to you."
"Yes, oh yes!"
"I will try and have that wish gratified; meantime, remember those words of the dying missionary which I heard you say you loved to think of. 'There is but one thing needful on a sick or on a death bed, and that is to feel one's arms round the cross.'"
She smiled a grateful assent, and they left the room; but Frank Weston said that her anxious, longing expression of face, when speaking about the wine, he should never forget.
"There is a sad history belonging to that girl. It is a case in which merely putting your hand into the pocket does no good, nay, it does positive harm. That girl's mother loves drink better than her own child. She has perilled her soul for the gratification of that vicious appetite; and while the means remain she will continue to do so. How is one to help such a case then? Did you not hear her convulsive sigh when I looked round for and mentioned the Bible? That is gone, I doubt not. But do you think that she does not want that Bible?"
"Well, it would be easily replaced. I did not understand," replied Frank.
"To replace it would be very useless, and she is now almost too weak to read. There are other means of doing good, besides through the purse."
They were now at another house. A poor railway labourer lay extended on a low bed; his wife was gone out to get a little shoe-binding, he said, and he was all alone, with the exception of two children. After examining the limb, and speaking cheerfully of its appearance—for the poor man had lately broken his leg, from the fall of some earth upon it—the doctor asked him how they got on. There was no sign of squalid poverty there. The clock still ticked, and a piece or two of good solid furniture adorned the little chamber; the children who sat by the hearth looked clean and tidily clad; but poverty, grinding poverty, was there nevertheless. The accident which had befallen the poor man had taken away all means of support, and even that day—he owned it in a low whisper as the doctor bent over him—some of their best clothes were taken to pledge, and more must go soon. Yet such cases as these are not called cases of extreme distress; and because they looked so respectable, and because the man had been in the receipt of good wages and they had not yet begged, they had hitherto received no relief.
"This is only my second visit," said the doctor, as they were leaving. "He is not a patient of mine, but a young medical friend who attends him is taken ill, and I promised to call yesterday and to-day. I said it was not an extreme case of distress; I had better have said of poverty. I believe that the suffering of poverty in its extreme and squalid stage is less severe and intense than in such a case as the one we have just seen. I will not say that the feelings of such people are naturally finer than the feelings of those who sink deeper in poverty; but I have no doubt whatever that the edge of their feelings is blunted as they are pushed down the rough road of adversity. It is such people as these, however, that I think it behoves us to help in their hour of need. I have only one more call to make."
He led the way down a narrow dirty court, where children were playing in the dirt-heaps that lay before the doors, and amongst whom there was not a healthy or a natural-looking being to be seen. They all looked blanched with impure air and scanty light, dwindled by insufficient and unwholesome food, and running wild in rude, boisterous, and quarrelsome play.
The ascent to the sick chamber was a difficult, almost a perilous one. It was in the roof of one of those high and dilapidated houses which every old city possesses in abundance. There were several beds on the floor of the chamber, but they were all unoccupied, with the exception of one, to which the physician with some difficulty groped his way. It was a dying-bed this time, and it was that of a poor Italian image boy, to whose forlorn case Dr. L.'s attention had been only that morning directed by one of the missionaries of the city. He could speak scarcely any English, and his wants had hitherto only been made known by signs; but on hearing himself addressed in his own tongue by the physician, the dying boy seemed to gather life and strength; and whilst he poured forth his tale of woe in the stranger's ears, he seemed for a while to forget his weakness and pain, for joy and gratitude.
"Can you speak Italian?" the doctor asked of his companion, as they left the room.
"I ought to be able, sir; I have had great pains bestowed on me, and spent two years at Florence."
"Will you then become that boy's friend and instructor?"
"I! I!"
"I thought you wanted employment; I thought you regretted that there was no one actually dependent on you in the world. Now it strikes me that you have both time and ability to go and read to that dying foreigner out of the book of life. Did you ever seriously consider the worth of one soul?"
"I have thought but little of my own, doctor, hitherto."
"Well, who knows, but that if you go and read to him, and accompany the good man in his visits as interpreter, you may be led to think of your own as well as of his. There is only one way, you know. It is the same for the educated man, as for that poor benighted Italian yonder. Come, our time is up—we must hasten home."
" Before I leave you, doctor, just tell me, do you think it is really required of you, with your large practice and many engagements, to become little better than a dispensary doctor, or (forgive me) an itinerant preacher?"
Dr. L. smiled.
"Did you ever read the parable of the talents, sir?"
"Yes, oh yes."
"What do you think it means? Don't you believe that it contains a lesson for you, for me, and for every intelligent being who has ever seen or read it? Do you think that God gave you your property, your powers of mind, your natural advantages, your knowledge of Italian for instance, to lay them by in a napkin unused and unapplied2 Of him, to whom much is given, much will be required. I believe it is required of me to use every talent, whether of mind or wealth, or of bodily strength, that I possess, in his service who has bought me with a price.—You will not come home to dine then? but let me see you to-morrow. I leave home at half-past nine; if you will come before that hour, you will just catch me."
Frank Weston went home, musing as he had never mused before. He was deeply affected by the scenes of misery which he had witnessed. The feeling, however, was stronger than mere sympathy. A conviction flashed upon him that he stood an idler in the world; in a world too where, from what he had seen that day, there was no lack of opportunities for doing good, if but the inclination were present. He carried these thoughts with him to his pillow. In the morning he remembered the request which the doctor had made to him that he would act as the interpreter to the Italian image boy; and partly out of respect for the doctor, and partly from a new feeling of duty which was dawning on his mind, he resolved, although at some sacrifice of pride and inclination, to pay a visit to the poor invalid, in company with the missionary whom the doctor had mentioned. He dressed himself in his plainest suit, and before nine o'clock was at the physician's house.
"I am come, sir," he said, with some confusion, on being shown into the doctor's study, "to ask you the name of that missionary—I think you called him—who goes about amongst the poor. I am sure if my knowledge of the poor boy's language can be of any use, I shall have great pleasure in going; but you know, sir, I make no profession of being religious, none whatever; and think I shall be rather out of place there; however, simply as an interpreter I am quite willing to go. I am really ashamed to think how little I have done in any way for the good of my fellow-creatures; but this may be the beginning of better days."
Dr. L., with a smile, put into the young man's hand the address of the missionary, with an explanatory note. "I heartily wish you God speed," he added, "in your new undertaking. Let me see you again when you return."
The Italian was alone when they entered, and he looked at first rather disappointed when he found that the physician was not of the party. As soon, however, as Frank Weston addressed him in his native tongue, the languid eye brightened as yesterday, and his thoughts seemed to come too thick for his rapid utterance.
It was a scene fit for a painter's eye. That dying dark-eyed foreigner on his lowly pallet bed; the humble room; the board of images on the floor, and the sunburnt hat and well-worn wallet hanging on a rusty nail at his head. On one side of the bed knelt the solemn-toned, earnest, and benevolent missionary, his anxiety to teach the lad quickened by consciousness of inability to convey intelligible instruction, and his belief that the boy hung on the verge of eternity. On the other side of the Italian knelt the young votary of the world—the gay, fashionable Frank Weston, holding the poor boys wasted hand, and a copy of the New Testament in the Italian tongue, prepared to translate the simple comments of the teacher into words that the lad could understand.
It was a solemn hour. Here was an ignorant, lonely stranger, dying on a foreign shore, and at the eleventh hour offered the great salvation, and made willing to receive the message of reconciliation. The missionary little thought that he preached repentance to the benighted Italian image boy and to the English gentleman and scholar at the same time, and that when the simple earnest prayer was put up for mercy by that dying lad, it was re-echoed by him who knelt there, clad in fine linen, as well as by the beggar wrapped in rags. It was even so. The tear of penitence trembled in his eye. He felt that hitherto he had lived for himself—for the world. He now breathed the prayer that henceforth he might live for God.
They left for a few hours, and in the afternoon were there again. There was a great change in the boy. His eye was bright still, but it wore the peculiar and glassy look of approaching death; the voice was faint, and the breathing laboured. Hour after hour they watched the young life ebb away, reading at times, and at times repeating in his ear assurances of the Saviour's willingness and ability to save. Again and again he made a sign that the account of the dying thief should be read to him—a narrative well suited to the condition and comprehension of the Italian. For the fourth time Frank Weston repeated it in his ears. There was a pause; they thought he slept; when suddenly the dark eye opened and flashed intelligently, a smile illumined his pale lips, as raising himself on his elbow, he faintly uttered the words of the dying thief, in his own beautiful and expressive language: "Signore, ricordati di me," ("Lord, remember me") and immediately the silver cord was loosed, and the Italian image-boy sank lifeless on Frank Weston's arm.
From that day Frank Weston's life received a new direction. Many years have passed away since then, and no one would now recognise the languid votary of the world, in the active, cheerful, buoyant Christian man. The love of Christ fills his heart; his happy service fills his hand; and the prospect of eternal happiness cheers him on, and gives life a zest to which he was before an utter stranger.