As I stepped onto the platform of the Cleveland railway station many years ago, a hand was laid upon my arm, and a voice said, “Norman! is it you?” I turned and looked at the speaker. It was an old classmate, Richard, with whom I had been invited to spend a few weeks, and whom I had not seen for some years. After we had pushed our way through the noisy crowd and were on our way to his home, I looked at him again and again and exclaimed, “Richard! how you have changed! 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 reply, which brought forth no reply.
That evening as he, his wife, and I were walking in the conservory 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 I was not, 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 her 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 out for a drive, and a delightful one we had. Little Bessie was as 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 did not reply, but motioned me to look at little Bessie. In look at little Bessie. She was gazing at 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 I did not then know the difference between religion and knowing Christ as Saviour. As I glanced 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 her presence, 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 righteousness was creeping over me, a sort of longing to be like her. Suddenly the little maid was at my side. I was startled as I saw her, and met the tender gaze of love and pity in her face. Her little hand was laid upon my arm, and for a moment we were both silent. Then the silence was broken by the words, “Won’t you love my Jesus?” and she was gone.
ML 02/15/1953