The provincial American and other papersNicholson, Meredith
General
The provincial American and other papers
Nicholson, Meredith
American essays -- 20th century
“Hath man no second life?--_Pitch this one high!_
Sits there no judge in Heaven our sins to see?--
_More strictly, then, the inward judge obey!_
Was Christ a man like us? _Ah, let us try
If we, then, too, can be such men as he!_”
Somewhere there is a poem that relates the experience of a certain
humble priest, who climbed the steeple of his church to commune more
nearly with God. And, as he prayed, he heard the Voice answering, and
asked, “Where art thou, Lord?” and the Lord replied, “Down here, among
my people!”
The Tired Business Man
The Tired Business Man
I
SMITH flashed upon me unexpectedly in Berlin. It was nearly a year
ago, just before the summer invasion of tourists, and I was reading
the letters of a belated mail over my coffee, when I was aroused by an
unmistakable American voice demanding water. I turned and beheld, in
a sunny alcove at the end of the restaurant, my old friend Smith who
had dropped his newspaper for the purpose of arraigning a frightened
and obtuse waiter for his inability to grasp the idea that persons
in ordinary health, and reasonably sane, do, at times, use water as
a beverage. It was not merely the alarmed waiter and all his tribe
that Smith execrated: he swept Prussia and the German Empire into the
limbo of lost nations. Mrs. Smith begged him to be calm, offering
the plausible suggestion that the waiter couldn’t understand a word
of English. She appealed to a third member of the breakfast party, a
young lady, whose identity had puzzled me for a moment. It seemed
incredible that this could be the Smiths’ Fanny, whom I had dandled
on my knee in old times,--and yet a second glance convinced me that
the young person was no unlikely realization of the promise of the
Fanny who had ranged our old neighborhood at “home” and appalled us,
even at five, by her direct and pointed utterances. If the child may
be mother to the woman, this was that identical Fanny. I should have
known it from the cool fashion in which she dominated the situation,
addressing the relieved waiter in his own tongue, with the result that
he fled precipitately in search of water--and ice, if any, indeed, were
obtainable--for the refreshment of these eccentric Americans.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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