The Man from Glengarry: A Tale of the OttawaConnor, Ralph
History
The Man from Glengarry: A Tale of the Ottawa
Connor, Ralph
Canada -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; Christian fiction; Glengarry (Ont.) -- Fiction
The shantymen came back home to find the revival still going on. Not a
home but had felt its mighty power, and not a man, woman, or even child
but had come more or less under its influence. Indeed, so universal
was that power that Yankee was heard to say, “The boys wouldn't go in
swimmin' without their New Testaments”--not but that Yankee was in very
fullest sympathy with the movement. He was regular in his attendance
upon the meetings all through spring and summer, but his whole previous
history made it difficult for him to fully appreciate the intensity and
depth of the religious feeling that was everywhere throbbing through the
community.
“Don't see what the excitement's for,” he said to Macdonald Bhain one
night after meeting. “Seems to me the Almighty just wants a feller to do
the right thing by his neighbor and not be too independent, but go 'long
kind o' humble like and keep clean. Somethin' wrong with me, perhaps,
but I don't seem to be able to work up no excitement about it. I'd like
to, but somehow it ain't in me.”
When Macdonald Bhain reported this difficulty of Yankee's to Mrs.
Murray, she only said: “'What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'” And with
this Macdonald Bhain was content, and when he told Yankee, the latter
came as near to excitement as he ever allowed himself. He chewed
vigorously for a few moments, then, slapping his thigh, he exclaimed:
“By jings! That's great. She's all right, ain't she? We ain't all built
the same way, but I'm blamed if I don't like her model.”
But the shantymen noticed that the revival had swept into the church,
during the winter months, a great company of the young people of the
congregation; and of these, a band of some ten or twelve young men, with
Don among them, were attending daily a special class carried on in the
vestry of the church for those who desired to enter training for the
ministry.
Mrs. Murray urged Ranald to join this class, for, even though he had no
intention of becoming a minister, still the study would be good for him,
and would help him in his after career. She remembered how Ranald had
told her that he had no intention of being a farmer or lumberman. And
Ranald gladly listened to her, and threw himself into his study, using
his spare hours to such good purpose throughout the summer that he
easily kept pace with the class in English, and distanced them in his
favorite subject, mathematics.
But all these months Mrs. Murray felt that Ranald was carrying with him
a load of unrest, and she waited for the time when he would come to her.
His uncle, Macdonald Bhain, too, shared her anxiety in regard to Ranald.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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