CHAPTER III.

IF you please, now, go back with me to the early summer in which the first spasm of interest in regard to the library took hold of the young people. The new superintendent, unwittingly, perhaps, set the ball to rolling, by remarking that the library had been closed and locked by vote of the executive committee of the school, until such time as there were found to be any books worth giving out. Then, among those who had looked at each other and shaken their heads in disapproval of such a state of things, were the young ladies in Mrs. Jones's class,—ten of them. They occupied the corner down by the door, between the door and the east window; a corner that was cold in winter and warm in summer; a corner that other classes shunned. Perhaps that will give you a hint in regard to Mrs. Jones's class. They were young ladies belonging to a certain clique. None of them wealthy, none of them even well-to-do, in the sense which you probably mean by that term. They represented comfortable homes, where the fathers worked hard, daily, for daily needs, where the mothers took their share of daily burdens, where the daughters did what they could to help lighten the burdens of both.

For instance, one was a sewing girl, and went every day among the fine houses on the fashionable streets to do plain sewing. Another was a milliner's apprentice, and in the busy season worked over bonnets from seven o'clock of a Monday morning often until twelve o'clock of a Saturday night. The fact was, she knew some of the Penn Avenue Sabbath-school teachers who had their bonnets sent home in the gray dawn of the Sabbath morning, because they must have them for that day's worship. Another managed the entire culinary and kitchen department for a large family, in order that the mother might sit all day, and sew (on the many garments which were brought to her, to cut and fit, and repair and make). Still another was clerk in a fancy store, and knew much about the pretty things that less busy girls than she were fond of making. Two were teachers in the graded school and spent their Saturdays in helping with the family ironing, to relieve an over-burdened mother. Workers they were, every one; not a drone in the hive. By common consent they were almost entirely counted out of the "fancy department," as they had named the young ladies' society. They had not time for fancy work, neither did they move in the same circle with the fancy workers. Oh, they attended the same church, and were on friendly enough terms with the young people, at least with those whom they knew sufficiently to exchange bows when they met on the street; they met nowhere else save in church. I am sure you know all about those subtle, oftentimes mysterious, yet plainly defined, society distinctions. They are to be found in every village, however small, as well as in our largest cities.

This corner class looked at each other and shook their heads with the rest, but they did one thing more. Sarah Potter said, "Girls, let us do something. Mrs. Jones, let us have a Sabbath-school library."

"Well," said Mrs. Jones, briskly, heartily, "I'm agreed. Let us, by all means." Then they laughed a little. Mrs. Jones was a tailoress, and worked hard all day, and every day, and was devoted to her ten young ladies.

But Sarah Potter had more to say: "Oh, now I mean it. It is high time something was done. Let us meet to-morrow evening at Jennie's and talk it over."

Now Jennie was one of the ten, and all meetings to discuss ways and means were always held at her house. In fact it was the settled place of meeting for anything connected with this class. It had been two years since Jennie had met with them elsewhere than in her own room. Yet the class was always counted as numbering ten. One glance at her pale, bright face would have told you the story. She never left her room, nor her bed, and looked forward now to but one way of leaving that spot, which would be when they carried her out into the world once more, in her coffin! Yet Jennie was the strong bond of union in that class. "She is the class soul!" affirmed Mrs. Jones in her strong and somewhat quaint language, and the one to whom she spoke understood, and did not controvert it.

Workers are very apt to move promptly in whatever line they take up. The next evening the ten met in Jennie's room. She was eager to receive them, ready to further their plans to the best of her powers. But had they any plans? "Sarah began it," they said, "she must tell us what she wants."

"I want a new library; and I say, let's get one, somehow."

"Very well, I'll be secretary and put that down. So much decided. 'A library somehow.'" Hannah Wood wrote the sentence in large letters, the others gleeful meanwhile. "Now, Sarah, proceed. We are all ready for the plans."

"I haven't any plans; only that the thing must be done. It has been talked long enough. Yes, I have plans. Look at the Woman's Board; see how much money they are raising with ten cents a month. Why couldn't we draw up pledges for ten cents a month and get signers? There are ten of us to work; ten cents a month from everybody that we can wheedle into giving it. A regular decimal performance."

"Circulating decimals at that," laughed her sister. "Think how we shall have to circulate through this town to get signers!"

"Jennie, you must be our treasurer; we'll report to you once a month. Mrs. Jones, won't that be nice?"

The subject was fairly opened for discussion, and vigorously was it discussed. Before the evening closed, each of the ten had a copy of the pledge written in a fair round hand. "We, the undersigned, do pledge ourselves to give ten cents each month at the call of a person holding this paper, for the benefit of the Penn Avenue Sabbath-school Library Fund, until such time as we shall ourselves erase our name from this paper."

"And it will be one while before you get a chance to do that," affirmed Sarah Potter, reading the pledge with grave satisfaction. "If ever our church gets into another muddle over a library, I shall be disappointed."

This was the beginning. The girls pocketed their papers, kissed Jennie, and went home. Thereafter, steady, silent work was done with these pledges. The thing created scarcely a ripple on the surface of the church society. The sum asked for was so small; it was so easy to change your mind and erase your name at any time; it was so improbable that those girls would call for so small a sum many months in succession; it was so much easier to comply than to refuse; people laughed and said one to another: "Do you know what those girls in Mrs. Jones's class are trying to do? Poor things, they want books badly. I hope they won't be old and gray before a new library is bought, but I am afraid they will at that rate. Oh, yes, I put down my name! It is a whim that will blow over very soon, and it is just a trifle anyway." Very few members of the fancy department even heard of the plan; they were busy making pincushions for the fair, and did not often meet the other class. But the original scheme widened. The ten met one evening at Jennie's call in her room; she had a plan.

"I've been thinking all the week, girls, and praying over it. Don't you believe we could each give an evening a week to the library?"

"Oh, dear, yes, two of them if there was money in it! I'm becoming interested and mercenary." This from Sarah Potter.

"Well, why don't you each go into business?"

"Why don't we what!" unbounded amazement in tone and manner.

"Go into business," repeated Jennie. Then she laughed. "I've been thinking, and I find there is some one thing that each of you can do, and do well; why not get up an evening class, one evening a week, and give the result to the library fund?"

"Bless your dear heart! What an idea! There isn't a thing in life that I know how to do!"

"Yes, there is. Don't you know, Trudie, that you make better cake for the festivals than any of the fancy cooks? People always say so, and I know two girls this minute who would be delighted to learn. I believe you could have a large class."

"To learn to make cake! What an idea!"

"It is a good one, isn't it, girls? I'll tell you, Trudie; I was praying about our library this very morning, and I asked the Heavenly Father to give me an idea; and just then the Emmons girls came in; they expect company, and they were dreading all the work there would be to look after; Sadie said if it were not for cake she wouldn't mind, but she never had success, and it gave her the blues to think of having to attend to it. Just then it flashed over me this whole plan, and I knew it was an answer to my prayer."

"Oh, Jennie, Jennie! Cake making and praying are too far apart to get mixed in that way. Do you really think God attends to such things?"

Then it was time for Mrs. Jones. "Why, dear, me!" she said. "Don't you know your Bible? 'Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' If he is to be glorified by our work, it is likely he knows a good deal about it."

"You can't glorify God by making cake!"

"Can't? Then I should like to know what business you have spending your time making it. There's the direction."

"If you can turn cake into library books, Trudie, I should say the way was plain." This from Mary Brooks. Then Nettie Brooks: "Come, Trudie, take your cake and move out of the way. This is a splendid notion, but what in the world can I do? I know how to sell fancy goods, and sort colors, and bear all manner of impudence from ladies who tumble them over, but I have no colors to sell."

"O Nettie, I thought of you! Look at your lovely handwriting. Think of that winter when you took lessons to help the writing teacher pay her board, and said you did not know what in the world you learned for. It may be that God had you do it for just this time; and, don't you think, I know three scholars for you. I've had ever so many calls to-day."

"Put her down," said Hannah gravely. "She'll get scholars; Jennie has prayed it all out for her. I know what I can do; I can teach decimal fractions; I've been at it all day, and I think I could teach them to a post. But the question is, where is the post?"

"Mr. Nelson is willing to send his chore boy to an evening class, if one is started; and Mrs. Silverton is willing to send both the Brewster boys."

"I shall teach an evening school; and teach decimal fractions, and circulating decimals at that. Every scholar shall circulate around a new Sabbath-school library before another year. I begin to see floods of daylight."

Do you think this scheme came to naught? Not in a single instance. During the long winter evenings, the cake classes, and the soup classes, and the writing classes, and the dress-cutting classes and the arithmetic classes, were busy and enthusiastic.

"I suppose Jennie prayed them all there," said Sarah Potter, thoughtfully, when after a night of heavy rain they met to compare notes, and found that all could report progress. It grew to be their working motto, "Jennie prayed us through." They worked carefully; if Jennie was praying, the work must match the prayer.

"Girls," she said to them one night, "I've been thinking. Hannah, you dear child, Bud says he begins to understand how to divide; he thought he would never know. He said the carrying business bothered him always, until last night you made it as plain as day. Can't you teach him how to carry himself over bodily into the service of the Lord?"

Said Hannah, with amused voice, but tearful eyes, "O you blessed little fraction! I'll try! I truly will."

"We must all try hard," Jennie said. "It is God's chance for us each. It grows on me. The library will come; I feel sure of that, but so much else will come if we teach for His glory. O girls, it is blessed to work for Him! I cannot do it, and over again, but I am glad to say over and over again, 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' I can only lie and wait, but I pray for the workers."

"Ah," said Hannah, "foolish child! She doesn't see that she is the hub, and we nothing but the spokes in the wheel!"

They went home strengthened. There was more to do than merely to secure a Sabbath-school library; and there was more done.

It was about this time that the fancy department counted over its nineteen dollars and two cents, and wept!

Well, the winter hasted away; spring came and passed, and the workers worked steadily, quietly on. Almost anything that takes a year to do is done quietly. The mere surface talkers always get through talking, early in the year, and conclude that because they are tired of the subject it has, therefore, dropped. Very few people even took time to notice the regularity with which their pledge was presented to them and their ten cents claimed. Those who noticed it said, with a patronizing, and somewhat pitying, smile: "So you are not tired of that little effort of yours yet, eh? It reminds me of the old fable of the bird trying to carry away the sand on the seashore. Well, every little helps, and I am sure every effort is commendable. Our library is certainly a disgrace." This class, having encouraged (?) the workers, calmly shouldered the "disgrace," and went on their way thinking no more about it. And the ten-cent pieces accumulated. New names were constantly added. Most of Nettie Brooks's customers in the fancy store signed to please her, she was so accommodating they all liked her.

The high school girls signed because Miss Wood was interested in it, and all the scholars liked Miss Wood. And a whole army of people signed because poor Jennie, lying always on her white bed, was pleased to have them, and it was "very little to do for one so afflicted."

This same Jennie, as the days went by, and the little iron bank in which she kept her money grew full, and must needs be emptied again, had another plan, which involved taking the minister into confidence. So one day, a little before the spring opened, he came and sat by Jennie's couch, and they talked long together. And at the next meeting of the "Decimals," which by tacit consent had come to be considered their pet name, he was present; and there was more talking, and the minister's wife and the minister's mother were received into confidence. Not long thereafter came an express package to the minister's door—books; but nobody thought anything of that, ministers were always buying books. There was a certain upper room in the parsonage, clean and sunny, and destitute of furniture, save shelves and chairs. The shelves had been crowded with newspapers, but one day they gathered themselves into systematic bundles and took their silent way to the attic; they had been superseded. The shelves were dusted and treated to a row of new books in tasteful bindings. Thereafter the "Decimals" spent many leisure moments in the upper room of the parsonage, admiring books. People wondered, occasionally, why "those girls in Mrs. Jones's class were running to the parsonage so much." Mrs. Marshall Powers explained the mystery by saying she supposed the pastor and his wife were trying to get an influence over girls of that class. The pastor heard it and laughed, and said to his wife that the fact was girls of that class were getting a great influence over him; he wished they were multiplied in every church in a tenfold ratio.

And the days passed, and more express packages came; and on one or two occasions certain packages went back again, for the committee on selection was very choice, and very cautious.