People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1894 — An Easter Offering. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

An Easter Offering.

ÜBIE BARCLAY sat in her room stitching i busily, and at I the same time building air-cas ties, the innocent air-castles of a girl of

eighteen, who is just waking to the consciousness of a heart to be won and given. She would have blushed with indignation and wounded feeling, had anyone told her she was actually in love, and there would have been no falsehood in her denial. Yet, since

Rev. James Castleton had come to Rosedale and taken the church under his care, life had seemed brighter to Susie. Rev. James Castleton was a quiet, rather reserved man of thirty-five, not handsome, not especially gifted with eloquence. But in his soft gray eyes, in the curves of his gravely set mouth lay an expression of goodness, of unostentatious piety, that made his simple language more effective than the most elaborate oratory. Old women brought their sorrows to Mr. Castleton, and went away comforted, blessing him for an unaffected sympathy that doubled the value of his counsels. Children clustered about him wherever he called, and looked eagerly for his coming into the Sunday school. The young people liked him and trusted him, wondering a little sometimes that one so grave and quiet could so thoroughly understand the troubles and temptations of youth. He had shown an interest in Susie Barclay for many reasons She was an orphan and had lost both parents and a sister within a fortnight, victims of a malignant fever raging in Rosedale, lour years before. She was poor, having taken a position as pupil teacher in a seminary, and been household drudge as well, to earn an education. At the time Mr. Castleton came to Rosedale, Susie was teaching music, was organist at St Mark’s, and in leisure time at home earned many an odd dollar by embroidery. And it was upon embroidery she was busy on the week preceding Easter— Mr. Castleton’s first Easter in Rosedale. As organist Susie was compelled to take part in all the services at St Mark’s, butbesides this regular attendance, she was a devout sincere mem-

ber of the church, and gave her time, little as she could spare it, to the work Id the missionary society, sewing circles and festivals of the year. And the work upon which she was sewing so steadily Susie called, in her heart, her Easter offering. Mrs. Stacey, the richest woman in Rosedale, often employed Susie’s busy fingers, and it only made the gentle girl smile scornfully when she heard Bessie Stacey praised for the exquisite embroidery ber own active fingers wrought. Mrs. Stacey intended to make an Easter offering, at St. Mark’s, of a new set of church-linen, and she had engaged Susie to hem-stitch and embroider it, promising her ten dollars for work she well knew would cost her three times that sum in any city store. And Susie had already appropriated that sum, in her mind. She would buy a large cross of white flowers, such as she had seen in her visits to the city, and present it to St .Mark's. Not one penny of those ten dollars would she use for her own expenses; and if Bessie Stacey let it be understood that she had embroidered the linen her mother presented, why, Susie could give her cross, and so balance matters. For, somewhere in the depths of her heart so far down she had never called it to the surface, Susie knew that there was rivalry between Bessie Stacey and herself. She knew that Mr. Castleton was frequently at Mrs. Stacey’s, to luncheon, to dinner, to arrange various church matters in which Mrs. Stacey suddenly wakened to an interest she had never felt when good old Mr. Murray presided in the pulpit. And Bessie wore the most becoming dresses right under the minister’s eyes, while Susie's modest dresses were hidden behind the curtains of the organloft

As she worked in the passion-flowers encircling her cross, Susie thought of the order she would send to her Aunt Mary in the city for the cross she meant to buy. She had steadily put away the temptation to buy a new spring hat or one new dress, resolving to make over her gray poplin once more and have her old hat cleaned and pressed. And, really, one must be eighteen, with a very limited, hard-earned wardrobe and a strong desire to appear attractive in the eyes of one person, to appreciate the sacrifice Susie wks making. Ten dollars, with her economical habits, skill in sewing, would go so far toward girlish adornment! But it was to be her Easter offering; and if there lurked a thought of Mr. Castleton’s words of raise or his grave eyes looking approvingly upon her tasteful gift, was she so very much to blame? She had finished her work before sunset and took it home. Mrs. Stacey was in the sitting-room where Bessie was opening the parcel containing a new silk suit for Easter Sunday, and Susie

was called upon to admire the color, the style, the general effect “It is dark for spring,” Bessie said, fretfully. “You know very well you cannot bear light colors,” said her mother. “Your eyes and hair are all you can desire; your teeth are good, your features regular and your figure is simply perfect; but your complexion is thick and sallow, and always will be until you stop eating so much rich food. Now, here is Susie, without one really good feature in her face, with an insignificant figure, eyes of no color in particular, a sort of bluish-gray, but with a complexion like a miniature painting. She can wear blue and softly tinted fabrics, but you cannot” She might have added that Susie’s hair was the color of corn-silk and one mass of golden waves and soft ringlets; that Susie’s mouth was like a baby’s in its tender curves and sweet expression; that Susie’s eyes were full of intelligence and gentle, womanly sweetness; but she forgot to mention these points, and Susie was crushed, as she intended her to be, in spite of her complexion. But Mrs. Stacey took out her pocketbook and from it a ten dollar gold piece. “You can buy a new hat,” she said, in a patronizing way indescribably irritating. “No,” Susie said, quietly: “this is to be my Easter offering.” “Oh! And speaking of Easter, would you mind, on your way home, taking this linen to Mrs. Byrne’s to wash and iron. Tell her I must have it on Friday at the very latest!” It was growing dark, and Susie remembered that bo far from being “on

her way home,” Mrs. Byrne lived st | the other end of Rosedale, but she was too shy to refuse, and rolled the linen up again. Mrs. Byrne was a hard-working woman with seven children, whose husband, after subjecting her to all the miseries of a drunkard’s wife, had released her by pitching head-first off the bridge below Rosedale into the river. Womanlike, she grieved for I him, as if he had made her life a bed of I roses, and turned to her washtubs for I a living, patiently and industriously. A i very sunbeam of a woman she was. in ! spite of her troubles, and Susie was , amazed to snd her sitting on the door- | step sobbing like a child. She rose to | receive Mrs Stacey’s message, and I promised to do the work, and then, in ' answer to Susie's gentle: “You must be jin trouble. I am afraid,” her grief I broke out in words: “I’ve no right to complain, miss," she said, “for the Lord’s been very good ito us since poor Tim was drownded, but indeed it’s a chance lost I’m fret- ! ting for.’’

“A chance lost?” said Susie, her voice still full of gentle sympathy. “It’s Nora, miss. She’s been delicate, 1 miss, iver since she was born, and the i air here is bad for her intirely. The | docther says her lungs is wake, and it’s | a bad cough she’s got, and we’re too I near the say here in Rosedale. And me j sister, who lives at B , she’s wrote ' she’ll take Nora for her own and I give her schooling and not let her work till she’s stronger. She’s not much of her own, hasn’t Sister Mary; but she’s no ohilder since she put four in the church yard, and she’ll be good to Nora, an’ the child just dyin’ here by inches, for she will help me, and sloppin’ in the washing’s bail for her. She coughs that bad ar night, miss, and the doctor says the oir in B would be the makin' of her.”

“But, surely, you will seiid her," said Susie. "There it is, miss! Marj', she can’t sind money out an’ out, and it costs six dollars to go to B . I was up to Mrs. Stacey’s, to ax the loan of it, and work it out a little at a time on the washin’; but she told me she could not spare it. An’ she rich! I’m thinkin’, miss, perhaps she’d be servin’ the Lord as well as savin’ a girl’s life, you may say, instead of buyin’ all this embroidered linen to show off at St. Mark’s." The words struck Susie like a stab. Was it to serve the Lord or for her own vanity she wanted to give the white cross to St. Mark’s? Saving a human life! The thought almost took her breath. “You can send Nora if you have ten dollars?” she asked. “Yes, miss; but it might as well be a hundred. I can’t get it.” “Yes, for I will give it to you; and you can ask the Lord to bless my Easter offering.” And before the astonished woman could reply, the shining gold piece lay in her hand and Susie was speeding homeward. "The Lord be good to her! The saints bless her bed!” cried Mrs. Byrne. “An’ she t’aching for her own bread and butter an’ trudging about in all weathers to earn a dollar!" “You seem surprised at something, Mrs Byrne,” said a quiet, deep voice at her elbow, and she looked up to see Mr. Castleton standing beside her.. “I came over to see if you could come up to the parsonage and help Mrs. Willis to-morrow. She has some extra work on hand.” “Yes, sir! I’ll come, and be thankjul to you. An’ lam surprised—jest dazed like." And out came the whole story from the grateful woman's lips, ending with: “And it’s workin’ she is as hard as meself in her own way, while Mrs. Stacey, that’s rollin’ in money, couldn’ spare jest the loan of it, for it’s not begging I’d be!” Easter services were over, and Mrs. Stacey had invited Mr. Castleton to dinner. She had told no direct lie, but certainly had given the impression that the lovely embroidery upon the new linen was the work of Bessie’s fingers. As they drove home she asked Mr. Castleton, sweetly: “Don’t think' me impertinent, but which of the offerings was Miss Barclay’s?” “None, that I know of.” “Was there one offering of ten dollars in the collection?” “No—a five-dollar bill was the largest”

“Such hypocrisy!” sneered Bessie. “It was not necessary for Miss Barclay to tell you, mamma, she was going to give ten dollars for an Easter offering, but she need not have told a falsehood about it!”

“Nor did she,” said Mr. Castleton. “Iler Easter offering was ten dollars.” But he made no further explanation; nor did Susie, when summer time brought her a letter, asking her to share his life and labors, know that Mrs. Byrne had told him the story of her charity.—Arma Shields, in N. Y. Ledger.

The Brilliant Jones (who likes an appreciative audience) to his hostess —“Oh, there I It’s no use! I give it up ! Conversation’s impossible when people will talk."—Punch.

MRS. BYRNE SITTING ON THE DOORSTEP.