Part 4 (2/2)

Then said he--oh, what melody was in his voice, how sweet his words!--”None of you but are my friends--you are more--my brothers and sisters. Come and tell me how much you need.” As he spoke, he looked at the woman who stood nearest him, with the dead baby in her arms. Her eyes met his, and she threw back the old, ragged shawl, and showed him her little child. ”Give me,” said she, ”only enough to bury it. I want nothing for myself. I had nothing but my baby to care for.”

The poet bowed his head over the little one, and fast his tears fell on the poor, pale face, and like pearls the tears shone on the soft, white cheek, while he whispered in the ear of the woman, ”Their angels do always behold the face of Our Father.” And he gave her what she needed, and gently covered the baby's face again with the tattered shawl, and the mother went away.

Then a child came up and said--now this was a poor street beggar, remember, a boy whom people called _as bold as a thief_--he came and looked at Tiny, and said gently, as if speaking to an elder brother whom he loved and trusted: ”My father and mother are dead; I have a little brother and sister at home, and they depend on me; I have been trying to get work, but no one believes my story. I would like to take a loaf of bread home to them.”

And Tiny, looking at the boy, seemed to read his heart, and he said, laying his hand on the poor fellow's shoulder, ”Be always as patient, and gentle, and believing as you are now, and you will have bread for them and to spare, without fear.”

Then came an old, old man bending on his staff, and he spoke out sharply, as if he were half starved, and all he said was, ”Bread!” and with that he held out his hand as if all he had to do was to ask, in order to get what he wanted.

For a moment Tiny made him no answer, and some persons who had heard the demand, and saw that Tiny gave him nothing, began to laugh. But at that sound Tiny rebuked them with his look, and put his hand into the purse.

The old man saw all this, and he said, ”I am tired of begging, I am tired of saying, 'for mercy's sake give to me,'--for people don't have mercy--they know nothing about being merciful, and they don't care for mercy's sake. I don't beg of you, Mr Poet. I only ask you as if you were my son, and that's all. Give me bread. I'm starving.”

And Tiny said, ”For my dear father's sake take this--G.o.d forbid that _I_ should ever be deaf when an old man with a wrinkled face and white hair speaks to me.”

Afar off stood a young girl looking at the poet. Tiny saw her, and that she needed something of him, though she did not come and ask, and so he beckoned to her. She came at that, and as she drew nearer he fancied that she had been weeping, and that her grief had kept her back. She had wept so violently that when Tiny spoke to her and said, ”What is it?” she could not answer him. But at length, while he waited so patiently, she made a great effort, and controlled herself and said, ”My mother!”

That was all she said--and Tiny asked no more. He knew that some great grief had fallen on her--that was all he needed to know; he laid his hand in hers, and turned away before she could thank him, but he left with her a word that he had spoken which had power to comfort her long after the money he gave her was all gone--long after the day when her poor mother had no more need for bread. ”When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will lift me up.” That was what he whispered to her as he left her.

And thus he went through that crowd of miserable people, comforting them all. But it was remarkable how much more value the poor folks seemed to put upon his word than they did upon the money he gave them, much as they stood in need of that! I wonder if you ever thought about the wonderful power there is in words?

At length, when the purse was empty, he stood alone in the midst of the circle of rich men who had given him the silver to distribute as he would. Then the man who handed him the purse went up and said to Tiny, ”Poet, come home with me. You are come at last! the city ought to be illuminated--we have stood so long in need of you, expecting you.”

So Tiny, believing what the rich man said, went home with the stranger-- and for a long time he abode in that house.

And rich men feasted Tiny, and taught him to drink wine: and great men praised him, and flattered him till he believed that their praise was precious above all things, and that he could not live without it! Was not that absurd? Nay, children, was not that most terrible, that our dear Tiny should ever have been tempted to believe such wicked trash and falsehood! He, too, who was to sing that sweet and holy New Song to the Lord!

They surrounded him day and night, these rich, gay men, and these great men, and they fed upon the delicious thoughts he gave them, and they kept him in such a whirl of pleasure that he had no time to work for the poor, and hardly any time to think of them--excepting at the dead of night, when he sometimes fancied or dreamed that the old pilgrim owner of the harp had come, or would come quickly, and take it away from him.

At these times poor Tiny would make excellent resolutions, but the next day was sure to see them broken. He seemed no stronger when he attempted to keep them than a poor little bird who is determined that he will be free, and so goes driving against the wires of his cage!

When Tiny spoke with his friend, as he sometimes did, about the plan with which he had come into the world, his friend always made him very polite answers, and good promises--oh, yes, certainly he would do all that _he_ could to help him on in such an excellent cause! But the fact was, he did everything to prevent him. I wonder if anybody else has got any such friend in his heart, or in his house, as our Tiny found in his very first walk through that city street? If I knew of any one that had, I should say, look out for him! Beware of him.

And so Tiny lived, and presently it happened just as you would expect; his conscience troubled him no longer; he only sang such songs on feast days, and holidays, and even in the church, as his companions liked; and he became very well pleased with his employment! That was the very worst of it.

I shall tell you in a very few words what happened next. Tiny suddenly fell ill of a very curious disease, which caused all his rich friends to forsake him, and he almost died of it.

In those days his only helper was a poor young beggar girl--one of those persons whom he had relieved by his songs, and by the money he distributed from the rich man's purse that happy day,--the little girl who had wept so bitterly, and whose only word was, when he questioned her,--”My mother!”

He recovered from his disease in time, but all his old acquaintances had forsaken him; and he must have felt their loss exceedingly, for now he had an attack of a desperate complaint, which I pray you may never have!--called Despair--and Tiny crept away from the sight of all men, into a garret, and thought that he would die there.

A garret at Home is a very different place from a garret in the World; and so our poet thought, when he compared this miserable, dismal place with the little attic far, far away in his own father's cottage, where he was next-door neighbour to the swallows who slept in their little mud cabins under the cottage eaves!

Never in his life was Tiny so lonely. He had come to help the World, said he, talking to himself, and the World cared not half so much about it as it would about the doings of a wonderful ”learned pig,” or the extraordinary spectacle of a man cutting profiles with his toes in black paper!

”Have you been all the while helping the World, and is this all the pay you get?” said the girl, his poor friend, who remembered what he had done for her, when she was in her worst need.

”Yes,” said Tiny; but there was no truth in what he said. He did not intend to speak falsely, however,--which proves the sad pa.s.s he had arrived at; he did not even know when he was deceiving himself! And when Tiny said, that ”yes,” what do you suppose he thought of? Not of all the precious time that he had wasted--not of the Pilgrim's Harp--not of the promises he had made his father--nor of the great hope of the poor which he had no cruelly disappointed--but only of the evil fortune which had fallen on himself! This beggar girl to wait on him, instead of the most beautiful lady in the world for a crown bearer! This garret for a home, instead of a place at the king's table. And more fiercely than ever raged that sickness called Despair.

<script>