Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the PlainsEwing, Juliana Horatia
Philosophy
Jan of the Windmill: A Story of the Plains
Ewing, Juliana Horatia
Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Country life -- England -- Juvenile fiction
He had no knowledge of localities. He ran “on and on,” as people do in
fairy tales. Sometimes he rested on a doorstep, sometimes he hid in a
shutter box or under an archway. He had learned to avoid the police, and
he moved quickly from one dark corner to another with a hunted look in
his black eyes. Late in the night he found a heap of straw near a
warehouse, on which he lay down and fell asleep. At eight o’clock the
next morning he was awakened by the clanging of a bell, and he jumped up
in time to avoid a porter who was coming to the warehouse, and ran “on
and on.”
It was a bright morning, and the sun was shining; but Jan’s feet were
sore, and his bones ached from cold and weariness. Yesterday the
struggle to escape the Cheap Jack had kept him up, but now he could only
feel his utter loneliness and misery. There was not a friendly sound in
all the noises of the great city,—the street cries of food he could not
buy, the quarrelling, the laughter with which he had no concern, the
tramp of strange feet, the roar of traffic and prosperity in which he had
no part.
He was so lonely, so desolate, that when a sound came to him which was
familiar and pleasant, and full of old and good and happy associations,
it seemed to bring his sad life to a climax, to give just one strain too
much to his powers of endurance. Like the white lights he put to his
black sketches, it seemed to bring the darkness of his life into relief,
and he felt as if he could bear no more, and would like to sit down and
die. The sound came through the porch of a church. It was the singing
of a hymn,—one of Charles Wesley’s hymns, of which Master Swift was so
fond.
The sooty iron gates were open, and so was the door. Jan crept in to
peep, and he caught sight of a stained window full of pale faces, which
seemed to beckon him, and he went into the church and no one molested
him.
There is a very popular bit of what I venture to think a partly false
philosophy which comes up again and again in magazines and story books in
the shape of satirical contrasts between the words of the General
Confession, or the Litany, and the particular materials in which the
worshippers, the intercessors, and the confessing sinners happen to be
clothed. But, since broadcloth has never yet been made stout enough to
keep temptation from the soul, and silk has proved no protection against
sorrow, I confess that I never could see any thing more incongruous in
the confessions and petitions of handsomely dressed people than of ragged
ones. That any sinner can be “miserable” in satin, seems impossible, or
at least offensive, to some minds; perhaps to those who know least of the
reckless, callous light-heartedness of the most ragged reprobates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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