As I stepped from the platform of the railway station, a hand was laid upon my arm and a voice said, “Norman! is this you?”
I turned and looked at the speaker. It was an old classmate, Richard, with whom I had agreed to pass a few weeks, and whom I had not seen for years before. After we had pushed our way through the noisy crowd, and were seated in his carriage, I looked at him again and exclaimed,
“Richard! hew you have altered! how different now from the wild youth of old!”
“Yes, Norman, there have been many changes with me since we parted, but the greatest has been here,” said he, smiling, and gently touching his breast.
“Humph!” was my ejaculation, which elicited no reply.
That evening, as he, his wife, and myself were walking in the conservatory, and I was admiring some jasmines, he said to me, “Norman, I have yet a little treasure to show you, and although it is small, it is great—greater than all these—almost the greatest one I have. Can you guess?”
When we went back to the drawing room he showed her to me—his beautiful little girl, his only child, his little Bessie. I was not fond of children, at least I thought so, but strangely did that little maiden win her way to my heart—my old bachelor heart.
That evening, sweet in memory to me, we became firm friends. She loved me because, when she asked papa, he said he did. She sat with me a while, and I told her an old fairy story, which strangely came to my remembrance.
The next day we all went for a drive, and a delightful one we had. Little Bessie was bright and beautiful as the day, but sometimes there was a strange thoughtfulness of expression upon her face which troubled me as being beyond her years. As I was talking with her father I said something jeeringly about the Lord Jesus, Richard said not a word in reply, but motioned me to look at little Bessie. She was gazing into my face with a look of mingled horror and surprise, an expression such as I never saw before or since, and which I shall never forget. She gazed so for a moment. No one spoke.
Never had anything before been able to make me feel that religion was above my scoffing remarks; and as I gazed at that little face, so earnestly endeavoring to read mine, and saw the little maid burst into uncontrollable tears, I felt a certain shame that in the presence of one so pure, I should have spoken what perhaps she had never heard before. Then she looked at me in a sort of pitying way, and said, “I thought you loved my Jesus! O how could you say that of Him?”
During the rest of the drive she lay upon her father’s bosom in perfect silence.
The next day I was alone in my room, thinking of all that had occurred, and a strange and unaccountable feeling of seriousness was creeping over me, a sort of longing to be like her, when suddenly the little maid was at my side. I started as I saw her, and met the tender gaze of love and pity which she bent upon me. Her little hand was laid upon my arm, and for a moment both were silent. Then the silence was broken by the words, “Won’t you love my Jesus?” and she was gone.
I could not ridicule that lovely spirit, and yet some demon within me tempted my soul to do so. The next morning, and the next, and the next, the little maiden came in the same way, said the same words, and disappeared. I never answered her, and at no other time did she allude to the subject, but she never failed to come at that morning hour.
One morning I said to her, almost unconsciously,
“Tell me how, Bessie!”
She looked at me a moment, and the next was seated on my knee. And the words that flowed—those simple, childish words in which she told the story of Christ’s love, never, never shall I forget them. My eyes were far from dry when she went away, and there was less of sorrow on her face than usual.
O! let this little one speak to you, as she did to Norman, and woo you to the Saviour. Let her pleading words, “Won’t you love my Jesus?—He loves you,” find judgement in your heart, and lead you to the One who longs to save you, and cleanse you from your sins by His most precious blood.
ML 04/14/1946