A POOR shoemaker lay stricken down by sore disease, and reduced to the lowest depths of poverty. One who had heard of his sad case went to see him. Although no stranger to the abodes of want and wretchedness, the visitor was not prepared for such a scene as met his eyes, as, in answer to “Come in,” spoken by a failing, broken voice, he pushed open the door, and glanced around the room, bare and comfortless as poverty could make it.
On a low bed at the further end, lay, or rather reclined in an upright posture, the invalid. “You are very ill, my poor friend,” said the visitor, taking his wasted hand, “could you not lie down? surely you are too weak to sit up long?” —and he began to try to arrange the poor bed of the sufferer more comfortably. “No, sir, it is best as it is,” said the sick man, pausing for breath between each painfully uttered word. “I cannot rest,” he continued, clutching the collar of his shirt. “If I try to lie down, something here chokes me.”
The visitor sat down beside the bed and waited, for the effort of speaking had exhausted the poor sufferer, and he remained with his eyes closed, the silence broken only by his labored breathing. At length he spoke again, “I am ill, sir; am dying; a few days, may be but a few hours, and it will all be over.” He paused, then fixing his eyes upon his visitor, added, “I know how it will be, I seem to see it all. I see myself lie here a dead man; I see them come in and place me in my coffin, and carry me out at that door, down the broken stairs, right away to the cemetery; I see them lay me down and heap the sods over me, and leave me there.”
The stranger listened awestruck. The picture was faithfully painted, and it was one that admitted of no toning down. All was terribly real; all might surely happen, no one knew how soon. He turned to the bed; the dying man seemed as one already dead, his little strength was well-nigh spent, but as the visitor looked at him, the large eyes opened, and a smile of rare beauty lit up the worn features.
Presently he spoke again, “But it will not be me. I look again, up, up there,” and slowly raising his hand, he pointed upwards, “I see myself—up there—with Christ—with my Saviour—where He is.”
He could say no more. My reader, was it not enough?
N. N.