Outcast Robin : $b or, Your brother and mine : a cry from the great cityMeade, L. T.
General
Outcast Robin : $b or, Your brother and mine : a cry from the great city
Meade, L. T.
Abandoned children -- Juvenile fiction; London (England) -- Juvenile fiction; Poor -- Juvenile fiction
Yes, with Our Father! for by the look seen half an hour later on his
pale and death-like face it was very plain that the Great Succourer,
shocked with man's neglect, was coming Himself to the rescue of His
little one. Christ, who had died for just such neglected, sinful,
sorrowful creatures, was touched with the feeling of his infirmities,
and the child who was nobody's neighbour, was to be saved by God
Himself.
Schools, reformatories, charitable institutions, had all failed to
reach this one little waif and stray. Without any man being directly
to blame, every man had passed him by. God saw that the time had
come when He Himself must save. He Himself must do the work that men
and women had failed to do. God Himself saved the child: this He did
by putting a thought into the head of one of His humblest children.
By this thought, put into the mind of one young girl, God had pity on
us also, saving us from the guilt which must ever have rested on our
souls had Robin died. For had our brother passed away, while we,
with our riches, our comforts, our blessings, sat by and held out no
hand of succour, for ever and ever it would have been to us one of
those things which we had left undone, which we ought to have done:
and this one sin of omission would have cried loudly to Heaven for
vengeance.
God saw this, and had compassion on us as well as Robin, when He put
a thought into a heart that night.
For just at the moment when Robin was looking up to the sky, and
crying in pitiful supplications to One whom he knew not of, a girl
was kneeling in a poorly furnished room, and earnestly praying.
This was the subject of her prayer--
"My Father in Heaven, help me this year to forget my own sorrow in
helping others."
This, clothed in many words, but with intense feeling and earnest
desire, was her prayer.
When she had risen from her knees, and had wiped away some tears, she
went downstairs. She was the daughter of the porter who kept the
gate by which Robin had entered the cemetery.
Smoking a long pipe, and gazing into the blaze of a cheerful fire,
sat the porter himself.
"Come and make yourself warm, Nell; the night is most bitter," he
said to his daughter.
"Are the cemetery gates locked, father?" she asked of him.
"Yes, yes, child; the best part of an hour ago."
"And it is not snowing; the night is fine."
"There is no snow, but the night is enough to freeze any one who
ventured out into it."
To this remark the daughter made no answer. She stood close to the
ruddy flames, and they, leaping up, revealed a mourning dress and sad
face.
"Well, Nell, what are you thinking of?" asked the old porter, not
unkindly.
"To-morrow will be Sunday, father."
"Ay, ay, child, of course. Sunday follows Saturday as sure as fate."
"And it will be a year to-morrow since mother died."
"Yes, my poor child. I have not forgotten."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account