THE
breakfast hour at the settlement was the one hour in the day
when the whole family found a little breathing space to
fellowship together. It was an hour of relaxation. There was
a great deal of good-natured repartee and much real wit and
enjoyable fun at this hour. The Bishop told his best
stories. Dr. Bruce was at his best in anecdote. This company
of disciples was healthily humorous in spite of the
atmosphere of sorrow that constantly surrounded them. In
fact, the Bishop often said the faculty of humor was as
God-given as any other and in his own case it was the only
safety valve he had for the tremendous pressure put upon
him.
This
particular morning he was reading extracts from a morning
paper for the benefit of the others. Suddenly he paused and
his face instantly grew stern and sad. The rest looked up
and a hush fell over the table.
"Shot
and killed while taking a lump of coal from a car! His
family was freezing and he had had no work for six months.
Six children and a wife all packed into a cabin with three
rooms, on the West Side. One child wrapped in rags in a
closet!"
These were
headlines that he read slowly. He then went on and read the
detailed account of the shooting and the visit of the
reporter to the tenement where the family lived. He
finished, and there was silence around the table. The humor
of the hour was swept out of existence by this bit of human
tragedy. The great city roared about the Settlement. The
awful current of human life was flowing in a great stream
past the Settlement House, and those who had work were
hurrying to it in a vast throng. But thousands were going
down in the midst of that current, clutching at last hopes,
dying literally in a land of plenty because the boon of
physical toil was denied them.
There were
various comments on the part of the residents. One of the
new- comers, a young man preparing for the ministry, said:
"Why don't the man apply to one of the charity
organizations for help? Or to the city? It certainly is not
true that even at its worst this city full of Christian
people would knowingly allow any one to go without food or
fuel."
"No, I
don't believe it would," replied Dr. Bruce. "But
we don't know the history of this man's case. He may have
asked for help so often before that, finally, in a moment of
desperation he determined to help himself. I have known such
cases this winter."
"That
is not the terrible fact in this case," said the
Bishop. "The awful thing about it is the fact that the
man had not had any work for six months."
"Why
don't such people go out into the country?" asked the
divinity student.
Some one at
the table who had made a special study of the opportunities
for work in the country answered the question. According to
the investigator the places that were possible for work in
the country were exceedingly few for steady employment, and
in almost every case they were offered only to men without
families. Suppose a man's wife or children were ill. How
would he move or get into the country? How could he pay even
the meager sum necessary to move his few goods? There were a
thousand reasons probably why this particular man did not go
elsewhere.
"Meanwhile
there are the wife and children," said Mrs. Bruce.
"How awful! Where is the place, did you say?"
"Why,
it is only three blocks from here. This is the 'Penrose
district.' I believe Penrose himself owns half of the houses
in that block. They are among the worst houses in this part
of the city. And Penrose is a church member."
"Yes,
he belongs to the Nazareth Avenue Church," replied Dr.
Bruce in a low voice.
The Bishop
rose from the table the very figure of divine wrath. He had
opened his lips to say what seldom came from him in the way
of denunciation, when the bell rang and one of the residents
went to the door.
"Tell
Dr. Bruce and the Bishop I want to see them. Penrose is the
name--Clarence Penrose. Dr. Bruce knows me."
The family
at the breakfast table heard every word. The Bishop
exchanged a significant look with Dr. Bruce and the two men
instantly left the table and went out into the hall.
"Come
in here, Penrose," said Dr. Bruce, and they ushered the
visitor into the reception room, closed the door and were
alone.
Clarence
Penrose was one of the most elegant looking men in Chicago.
He came from an aristocratic family of great wealth and
social distinction. He was exceedingly wealthy and had large
property holdings in different parts of the city. He had
been a member of Dr. Bruce's church many years. He faced the
two ministers with a look of agitation on his face that
showed plainly the mark of some unusual experience. He was
very pale and his lips trembled as he spoke. When had
Clarence Penrose ever before yielded to such a strange
emotion?
"This
affair of the shooting! You understand? You have read it?
The family lived in one of my houses. It is a terrible
event. But that is not the primary cause of my visit."
He stammered and looked anxiously into the faces of the two
men. The Bishop still looked stern. He could not help
feeling that this elegant man of leisure could have done a
great deal to alleviate the horrors in his tenements,
possibly have prevented this tragedy if he had sacrificed
some of his personal ease and luxury to better the
conditions of the people in his district.
Penrose
turned toward Dr. Bruce. "Doctor!" he exclaimed,
and there was almost a child's terror in his voice. "I
came to say that I have had an experience so unusual that
nothing but the supernatural can explain it. You remember I
was one of those who took the pledge to do as Jesus would
do. I thought at the time, poor fool that I was, that I had
all along been doing the Christian thing. I gave liberally
out of my abundance to the church and charity. I never gave
myself to cost me any suffering. I have been living in a
perfect hell of contradictions ever since I took that
pledge. My little girl, Diana you remember, also took the
pledge with me. She has been asking me a great many
questions lately about the poor people and where they live.
I was obliged to answer her. One of her questions last night
touched my sore! 'Do you own any houses where these poor
people live? Are they nice and warm like ours?' You know how
a child will ask questions like these. I went to bed
tormented with what I now know to be the divine arrows of
conscience. I could not sleep. I seemed to see the judgment
day. I was placed before the Judge. I was asked to give an
account of my deeds done in the body. 'How many sinful souls
had I visited in prison? What had I done with my
stewardship? How about those tenements where people froze in
winter and stifled in summer? Did I give any thought to them
except to receive the rentals from them? Where did my
suffering come in? Would Jesus have done as I had done and
was doing? Had I broken my pledge? How had I used the money
and the culture and the social influence I possessed? Had I
used it to bless humanity, to relieve the suffering, to
bring joy to the distressed and hope to the desponding? I
had received much. How much had I given?'
"All
this came to me in a waking vision as distinctly as I see
you two men and myself now. I was unable to see the end of
the vision. I had a confused picture in my mind of the
suffering Christ pointing a condemning finger at me, and the
rest was shut out by mist and darkness. I have not slept for
twenty-four hours. The first thing I saw this morning was
the account of the shooting at the coal yards. I read the
account with a feeling of horror I have not been able to
shake off. I am a guilty creature before God."
Penrose
paused suddenly. The two men looked at him solemnly. What
power of the Holy Spirit moved the soul of this hitherto
self-satisfied, elegant, cultured man who belonged to the
social life that was accustomed to go its way placidly,
unmindful of the great sorrows of a great city and
practically ignorant of what it means to suffer for Jesus'
sake? Into that room came a breath such as before swept over
Henry Maxwell's church and through Nazareth avenue. The
Bishop laid his hand on the shoulder of Penrose and said:
"My brother, God has been very near to you. Let us
thank Him."
"Yes!
yes!" sobbed Penrose. He sat down on a chair and
covered his face. The Bishop prayed. Then Penrose quietly
said: "Will you go with me to that house?"
For answer
the two men put on their overcoats and went with him to the
home of the dead man's family.
That was
the beginning of a new and strange life for Clarence
Penrose. From the moment he stepped into that wretched hovel
of a home and faced for the first time in his life a despair
and suffering such as he had read of but did not know by
personal contact, he dated a new life. It would be another
long story to tell how, in obedience to his pledge he began
to do with his tenement property as he knew Jesus would do.
What would Jesus do with tenement property if He owned it in
Chicago or any other great city of the world? Any man who
can imagine any true answers to this question can easily
tell what Clarence Penrose began to do.
Now before
that winter reached its bitter climax many things occurred
in the city which concerned the lives of all the characters
in this history of the disciples who promised to walk in His
steps.
It chanced
by one of those coincidences that seem to occur
preternaturally that one afternoon just as Felicia came out
of the Settlement with a basket of food which she was going
to leave as a sample with a baker in the Penrose district,
Stephen Clyde opened the door of the carpenter shop in the
basement and came out in time to meet her as she reached the
sidewalk.
"Let
me carry your basket, please," he said.
"Why
do you say 'please'?" asked Felicia, handing over the
basket while they walked along.
"I
would like to say something else," replied Stephen,
glancing at her shyly and yet with a boldness that
frightened him, for he had been loving Felicia more every
day since he first saw her and especially since she stepped
into the shop that day with the Bishop, and for weeks now
they had been thrown in each other's company.
"What
else?" asked Felicia, innocently falling into the trap.
"Why--"
said Stephen, turning his fair, noble face full toward her
and eyeing her with the look of one who would have the best
of all things in the universe, "I would like to say:
'Let me carry your basket, dear Felicia'."
Felicia
never looked so beautiful in her life. She walked on a
little way without even turning her face toward him. It was
no secret with her own heart that she had given it to
Stephen some time ago. Finally she turned and said shyly,
while her face grew rosy and her eyes tender: "Why
don't you say it, then?"
"May
I?" cried Stephen, and he was so careless for a minute
of the way he held the basket, that Felicia exclaimed:
"Yes!
But oh, don't drop my goodies!"
"Why,
I wouldn't drop anything so precious for all the world, dear
Felicia," said Stephen, who now walked on air for
several blocks, and what was said during that walk is
private correspondence that we have no right to read. Only
it is a matter of history that day that the basket never
reached its destination, and that over in the other
direction, late in the afternoon, the Bishop, walking along
quietly from the Penrose district, in rather a secluded spot
near the outlying part of the Settlement district, heard a
familiar voice say:
"But
tell me, Felicia, when did you begin to love me?"
"I
fell in love with a little pine shaving just above your ear
that day when I saw you in the shop!" said the other
voice with a laugh so clear, so pure, so sweet that it did
one good to hear it.
"Where
are you going with that basket?" he tried to say
sternly.
"We
are taking it to--where are we taking it, Felicia?"
"Dear
Bishop, we are taking it home to begin--"
"To
begin housekeeping with," finished Stephen, coming to
the rescue.
"Are
you?" said the Bishop. "I hope you will invite me
to share. I know what Felicia's cooking is."
"Bishop,
dear Bishop!" said Felicia, and she did not pretend to
hide her happiness; "indeed, you shall be the most
honored guest. Are you glad?"
"Yes,
I am," he replied, interpreting Felicia's words as she
wished. Then he paused a moment and said gently: "God
bless you both!" and went his way with a tear in his
eye and a prayer in his heart, and left them to their joy.
Yes. Shall
not the same divine power of love that belongs to earth be
lived and sung by the disciples of the Man of Sorrows and
the Burden-bearer of sins? Yea, verily! And this man and
woman shall walk hand in hand through this great desert of
human woe in this city, strengthening each other, growing
more loving with the experience of the world's sorrows,
walking in His steps even closer yet because of their love
for each other, bringing added blessing to thousands of
wretched creatures because they are to have a home of their
own to share with the homeless. "For this cause,"
said our Lord Jesus Christ, "shall a man leave his
father and mother and cleave unto his wife." And
Felicia and Stephen, following the Master, love him with a
deeper, truer service and devotion because of the earthly
affection which Heaven itself sanctions with its solemn
blessing.
But it was
a little after the love story of the Settlement became a
part of its glory that Henry Maxwell of Raymond came to
Chicago with Rachel Winslow and Virginia Page and Rollin and
Alexander Powers and President Marsh, and the occasion was a
remarkable gathering at the hall of the Settlement arranged
by the Bishop and Dr. Bruce, who had finally persuaded Mr.
Maxwell and his fellow disciples in Raymond to come on to be
present at this meeting.
There were
invited into the Settlement Hall, meeting for that night men
out of work, wretched creatures who had lost faith in God
and man, anarchists and infidels, free-thinkers and
no-thinkers. The representation of all the city's worst,
most hopeless, most dangerous, depraved elements faced Henry
Maxwell and the other disciples when the meeting began. And
still the Holy Spirit moved over the great, selfish,
pleasure-loving, sin-stained city, and it lay in God's hand,
not knowing all that awaited it. Every man and woman at the
meeting that night had seen the Settlement motto over the
door blazing through the transparency set up by the divinity
student: "What would Jesus do?"
And Henry
Maxwell, as for the first time he stepped under the doorway,
was touched with a deeper emotion than he had felt in a long
time as he thought of the first time that question had come
to him in the piteous appeal of the shabby young man who had
appeared in the First Church of Raymond at the morning
service.
