Story-Telling

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Title:     Story-Telling
Author: Francis B. Pearson [More Titles by Pearson]

My boys like to have me tell them stories, and, if the stories are true ones, they like them all the better. So I sometimes become reminiscent when they gather about me and let them lead me along as if I couldn't help myself when they are so interested. In this way I become one of them. I like to whittle a nice pine stick while I talk, for then the talk seems incidental to the whittling and so takes hold of them all the more. In the midst of the talking a boy will sometimes slip into my hand a fresh stick, when I have about exhausted the whittling resources of the other. That's about the finest encore I have ever received. A boy knows how to pay a compliment in a delicate way when the mood for compliments is on him, and if that mood of his is handled with equal delicacy great things may be accomplished.

Well, the other day as I whittled the inevitable pine stick I let them lure from me the story of Sant. Now, Sant was my seatmate in the village school back yonder, and I now know that I loved him whole-heartedly. I didn't know this at the time, for I took him as a matter of course, just as I did my right hand. His name was Sanford, but boys don't call one another by their right names. They soon find affectionate nicknames. I have quite a collection of these nicknames myself, but have only a hazy notion of how or where they were acquired. When some one calls me by one of these names, I can readily locate him in time and place, for I well know that he must belong in a certain group or that name would not come to his lips. These nicknames that we all have are really historical. Well, we called him Sant, and that name conjures up before me one of the most wholesome boys I have ever known. He was brimful of fun. A heartier, more sincere laugh a boy never had, and my affection for him was as natural as my breathing. He knew I liked him, though I never told him so. Had I told him, the charm would have been broken.

In those days spelling was one of the high lights of school work, and we were incited to excellence in this branch of learning by head tickets, which were a promise of still greater honor, in the form of a prize, to the winner. The one who stood at the head of the class at the close of the lesson received a ticket, and the holder of the greatest number of these tickets at the end of the school year bore home in triumph the much-coveted prize in the shape of a book as a visible token of superiority. I wanted that prize, and worked for it. Tickets were accumulating in my little box with exhilarating regularity, and I was nobly upholding the family name when I was stricken with pneumonia, and my victorious career had a rude check. My nearest competitor was Sam, who almost exulted in my illness because of the opportunity it afforded him for a rich harvest of head tickets. In the exuberance of his joy he made some remark to this effect, which Sant overheard. Up to this time Sant had taken no interest in the contests in spelling, but Sam's remark galvanized him into vigorous life, and spelling became his overmastering passion. Indeed, he became the wonder of the school, and in consequence poor Sam's anticipations were not realized. Day after day Sant caught the word that Sam missed, and thus added another ticket to his collection. So it went until I took my place again, and then Sant lapsed back into his indifference, leaving me to look after Sam myself. When I tried to face him down with circumstantial evidence he seemed pained to think that I could ever consider him capable of such designing. The merry twinkle in his eye was the only confession he ever made. Small wonder that I loved Sant. If I were writing a testimonial for myself I should say that it was much to my credit that I loved a boy like that.

As a boy my risibilities were easily excited, and I'm glad that, even yet, I have not entirely overcome that weakness. If I couldn't have a big laugh, now and then, I'd feel that I ought to consult a physician. My boys and girls and I often laugh together, but never at one another. Sant had a deal of fun with my propensity to laugh. When we were conning our geography lesson, he would make puns upon such names as Chattahoochee and Appalachicola, and I would promptly explode. Then, enter the teacher. But I drop the mantle of charity over the next scene, for his school-teaching was altogether personal, and not pedagogical. He didn't know that puns and laughter were the reactions on the part of us boys that caused us to know the facts of the book. But he wanted us to learn those facts in his way, and not in our own. Poor fellow! Requiescat in pace, if he can.

Sant was the first one of our crowd to go to college, and we were all proud of him, and predicted great things for him. We all knew he was brilliant and felt certain that the great ones in the college would soon find it out. And they did; for ever and anon some news would filter through to us that Sant was battening upon Latin, Greek, mathematics, science, and history. Of course, we gave all the credit to our little school, and seemed to forget that the Lord may have had something to do with it. When we proved by Sant's achievements that our school was ne plus ultra, I noticed that the irascible teacher joined heartily in the chorus. I intend to get all the glory I can from the achievements of my pupils, but I do hope that they may not be my sole dependence at the distribution of glory. Yes, Sant graduated, and his name was written high upon the scroll. But he could not deliver his oration, for he was sick, and a friend read it for him. And when he arose to receive his diploma he had to stand on crutches. They took him home in a carriage, and within a week he was dead. The fires of genius had burned brightly for a time and then went out in darkness, because his father and mother were first cousins.

At the conclusion of this story, the boys were silent for a long time, and I knew the story was having its effect. Then there was a slight movement, and one of them put into my hand another pine stick. I whittled in silence for a time, and then told them of a woman I know who is well-known and highly esteemed in more than one State because of her distinctive achievements. One day I saw her going along the street leading by the hand a little four-year-old boy. He was the picture of health, and rollicked along as only such a healthy little chap can. He was eager to see all the things that were displayed in the windows, but to me he and the proud mother were the finest show on the street. She beamed upon him like another Madonna, and it seemed to me that the Master must have been looking at some such glorious child as that when he said; "Suffer the little children to come unto me."

A few weeks later I was riding on the train with that mother, and she was telling me that the little fellow had been ill, and told how anxious she had been through several days and nights because the physicians could not discover the cause of his illness. Then she told how happy she was that he had about recovered, and how bright he seemed when she kissed him good-by that morning. I saw her several times that week and at each meeting she gave me good news of the little boy at home.

Inside of another month that noble little fellow was dead. Apparently he was his own healthy, happy little self, and then was stricken as he had been before. The pastor of the church of which the parents are members told me of the death scene. It occurred at about one o'clock in the morning, and the mother was worn and haggard from anxiety and days of watching. The members of the family, the physician, and the pastor were standing around the bed, but the mother was on her knees close beside the little one, who was writhing in the most awful convulsions. Then the stricken mother looked straight into heaven and made a personal appeal to God to come and relieve the little fellow's sufferings. Again and again she prayed: "Oh, God, do come and take my little boy." And the Angel of Death, in answer to that prayer, came in and touched the baby, and he was still.

The mother of that child may or may not know that the grandfather of that child came into that room that night, though he had been long in his grave, and murdered her baby--murdered him with tainted blood. That grandfather had not lived a clean life, and so broke a mother's heart and forced her in agony to pray for the death of her own child.

When I had finished I walked quietly away, leaving the boys to their own thoughts, and as I walked I breathed the wish that my boys may live such clean, wholesome, upright, temperate lives that no child or grandchild may ever have occasion to reproach them, or point the finger of scorn at them, and that no mother may ever pray for death to come to her baby because of a taint in their blood.

[The end]
Francis B. Pearson's essay: Story-Telling

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