And one may be sure that the man, be he Christian or
Pagan, who does believe in this under Order and Love, and tries to see
and clear his way down to it, through every day's circumstance, will
have come very near to the real soul of good and humanity,--to the
Christ,--before the time comes for him to rest, and stand in his lot, at
the end of the days.
But to our story. It was in Philadelphia the old machinist lived; he had
been born and had grown old there; but there are only one or two days in
his life you would care to hear about: August days, in the summer of
'59, the culmination and end of all the years gone before for him. You
know what a quiet place Philadelphia is? One might fancy that the first
old Quaker, sitting down among its low, flattish hills, had left a spell
of thoughtful reticence behind him. The hills never dare to rise into
abrupt earnestness; the two broad, bright-faced rivers that hold it in
lapse with a calm consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even
the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in
the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the
drilled monotony of its streets.
Pages:
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124