The Seeker

Table of

an Faces

earching warmth. Blowing out his candle, he seated himself at the table where a shaded lamp cast its glare upon a litter of books and papers. A big, white-breasted gray cat yawned and stretched itsel

Then he came forward to his youth, when he had obeyed the call of the Lord against his father's express command that he follow the family way and bec

re from the sermon. In the little log church at Edom he had felt the spirit burn in him and he had movingly voiced its warnings of that dread place where the flames forever blaze, yet never consume; where cries ever go up for one drop of water to cool the parched tongues of those who sought not God while they lived. He had

of this that a terrified throng ca

Edom called "daft" or "queer," yet held to be harmless-to be rather amusing, indeed, since he could be provoked to deliver curious harangues upon the subject of revealed religion. He remembered now that the man's face had stared at him from far back in the church the night before-a face full of t

barred by his chuckling captor. And here the Reverend Allan Delcher had lain three

maundered through the chinks: "Never got another drop of water for a million years and still more, and him a burning up and a roasti

the paths in the wilderness. Again he would quote passages of scripture, some of the

s captivity had been prompt; but there were those who sat under him who insisted that ever after he had been palpably less insistent upon the feature of divine retribution for what might be called the me

te repugnance for certain doctrines preached by her father. It seemed to the old man a long way to look back; and then a long way to come forward again, past the death of his girl-wife while their child was still tender, down to the amazing iniquity of that child's revolt, in her thirty-first year. Dumbly, dutifully, had she submitted to all his restrictions and severi

l fresh in him, making his mind turn heavily, perhaps a little remorsefully, to the two little boys asleep in the west bedroom.

last letter that had come from her; read it not without grim mutterings and oblique l

rowed at your decision not to see me so long as I stayed by my husband. How many times I ha

de him

tleness to me"-so ran the letter-"and he has always provi

an sniffed in

paid him in hams. Another offered to pay either in money or a beautiful portrait of me in pastel. We needed money, but Cl

rging a crowd to buy the magic grease-eradicator, toothache remedy, meretricious jewelry, what not! firs

te of your feeling against their father. I did what you suggested to stimulate their minds about the Scriptures, but perhaps the lesson they chose to write about was not very edifying. It does not seem a pretty lesson to me, and I did not pick it out. They heard about it at Sabbath-school and had their

n while the gale roared without and shook his window, and while the bust of John Calvin looked down at him from the

eavy, intricate capitals and headed "Elisha and the Wicked Children-b

She Bears come along and et up 42 of them for Elisha was a holy prophet of God and had not ought to of been yelled at. So of course the mothers would Take on very much When they found their 42 Children et up but I think that we had ought to learn from this that these 42 Little ones was not the Elected. It says in our catchism God having out of his mere good

Delcher

written with a lead-pencil, whose mark was now faint and now heavy, as having gone at inte

ea

uld of said o let the kids have their fun with old Elisha so I ask my deer mother who wrot this lesson she said God wrot the holy word so that is how we know God is baldheaded. It was a lot of child

nford, aged

ter, his dark face showing all its intricate net-work o

ter's and like his own? Would he forgive as his own father had forgiven, who had called him back after many years to live out a tranquil old age on the fortune that father's father had founded? He mused long on thi