Saint Patrick | Page 2

appropriate to the season. Saint Patrick's Day was
approaching. It was to many a day of temptation, particularly in the
evening. Would it not be a good plan to hold out the helping hand, in
the form of a Saint Patrick's Day festival, with an address, for example,
upon Saint Patrick's life, with Irish songs and Irish readings? Such an
entertainment would draw; it would keep a good many people out of

the saloons. Such was the suggestion.
The proposition excited no little interest. Ladies who had begun to put
on their wraps sat down again. To one of the board, a clergyman, who
had lately been lecturing on "Popery the People's Peril," the proposition
was startling. It looked toward the breaking down of all barriers; it gave
Romanism an outright recognition. Another member, a produce-man,
understood,--in fact he had read in his denominational weekly,--that
Saint Patrick could be demonstrated to have been a Protestant, and he
suggested that that fact might be "brought out." Others viewed the
matter in that humorous light in which this festival day commonly
strikes the American mind.
The motion prevailed. Even the anti-papistic clergyman was comforted,
apparently, at last, for he was heard to whisper jocosely to his left-hand
neighbor: "Saint Patrick's Day in the Morning!"
A committee, with the produce-man at the head, was appointed to
select a speaker, and to provide music and reading. It was suggested
that perhaps Mr. Wakeby and Mrs. Wilson-Smith would volunteer, if
urged,--their previous charities in this direction had made them famous
in the neighborhood. Mr. Wakeby to read from "Handy Andy;" Mrs.
Wilson-Smith to sing "Kathleen Mavourneen,"--there would not be
standing-room!
So finally unanimity prevailed, and with unanimity, enthusiasm.
The committee met, and the details were settled. The chairman quietly
reserved to himself, by implication, the choice of a speaker. He knew
that it would be an audience hard to hold. The occasion demanded a
man of peculiar gifts. Such a man, he said to himself, he knew.

II.
The single meeting-house of L------ stands on the main street, with its
tall spire and its two tiers of gray-blinded windows. Beside it is the
mossy burial-ground, where prim old ladies walk on Sunday afternoons,

with sprigs of sweet-william.
Across the street, and a little way down the road, is the square white
house with a hopper-roof, which an elderly, childless widow, departing
this life some forty years ago, thoughtfully left behind her for a
parsonage. It is a pleasant, home-like house, open to sun and air, and
the pleasantest of all its rooms is the minister's study. It is an upper
front chamber, with windows to the east and the south. There is nothing
in the room of any value; but whether the minister is within, or is away
and is represented only by his palm-leaf dressing-gown, somehow the
spirit of peace seems always to abide there.
There is the ancient desk, which the minister's children, when they
were little, used to call the "omnibus," by reason of a certain vast and
capacious drawer, the resort of all homeless things,--nails, wafers, the
bed-key, curtain-fixtures, carpet-tacks, and dried rhubarb. Perhaps it
was to this drawer that the minister's daughter lately referred, when she
said that the true motto was, "One place for everything, and everything
in that one place."
Over the chimney-piece hangs a great missionary map, showing the
stations of the different societies, with a key at one side. This blue
square in Persia denotes a missionary post of the American Board of
Commissioners; that red cross in India is an outpost of a Presbyterian
missionary society; this green diamond in Arrapatam marks a station of
the Free Church Missionary Union. As one looks the map over, he
seems to behold the whole missionary force at work. He sees, in
imagination, Mr. Elmer Small, from Augusta, Maine, preaching
predestination to a company of Karens, in a house of reeds, and the Rev.
Geo. T. Wood, from Massachusetts, teaching Paley in Roberts College
at Constantinople.
Thus the whole Christian world lies open before you.
Pinned up on one of the doors is the Pauline Chart. Have you never
seen the Pauline Chart? It was prepared in colored inks, by Mr. Parker,
a theological student with a turn for penmanship, and lithographed, and
was sold by him to eke out the avails of what are inaptly termed

"supplies." You would find it exceedingly convenient. It shows in a
tabulated form, for ready reference, the incidents of Saint Paul's career,
arranged chronologically. Thus you can find at a glance the visit to
Berea, the stoning at Lystra, or the tumult at Ephesus. Its usefulness is
obvious. Over the desk is a map of the Holy Land, with mountain
elevations.
The walls of the room are for the most part hidden by