Esther
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St. John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon, had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure. Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this
"Not so, my son," replied the father. "You cannot, in the brief time
you have been absent, have performed many, if any, deeds of goodness
compared with what you might have done by tarrying longer; and your
gold--you surely cannot have used it all in so brief a period."
"Why, I've brought all the money back you gave me, father. You see,
I got through without its costing me a penny."
"It grieves me more than all, my son, that you should go through
any country and return no equivalent for deeds and kindness given. Rest
awhile, and in a few days return to the land and the people I sent you
among, and come not back again to me till every farthing is wisely
spent."
The youth murmured within himself, but dared not reply. A few days
later he departed, to go over the same ground and do the work he had
neglected for the sake of a speedy return.
At the end of the second year another returned, looking sad and
dispirited.
"Thou hast soon returned, my son," said the father. "Is thy work
done in so brief a period?"
The youth hung his head, and answered slowly, "I was so weary, father.
I saw so much sorrow among those people, I longed to come home where
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St. John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon, had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure. Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this