Horatio Alger - Helen Ford

It was Sunday morning. To thousands of frames, wearied by exhausting labors, it brought the benediction of rest. To thousands of throbbing brains it brought grateful relaxation. The great business thoroughfares wear a Sunday look. The shops are closed, and no longer hold out, through showily-arranged windows, invitations to enter. The bells in a hundred steeples ring out in many voices the summons to worship.

Helen tapped gently at Martha’s door.

“Where do you attend church?” she inquired.

“I was just going to call for you, Helen,” said the seamstress, “to ask if you and your father wouldn’t like to attend Trinity Church with me.”

Helen hesitated a little.

“That is the great church at the lower end of Broadway, isn’t it?” she inquired.

“Yes.”

“I thought it might be a fashionable church. Father and I have been to one or two of the great churches, where the sexton didn’t seem to care about giving us seats, but finally put us away back where we found it difficult to hear the service.”

“I have had the same experience more than once,” said Martha; “but we shall have no such trouble at Trinity. Though one of the finest churches in the city, it is free to all, and the poor are as welcome as the rich.”

“Then I shall be glad to go, and so will papa. Wait a moment, and I will tell him.”

They were soon in the street, mingling with the well-dressed crowds, wending their way to their respective houses of worship.

“Sunday was always pleasant to me,” said Martha, “even as a child. I remember the plain old meeting-house, where we all sat in square, high-backed pews, listening to the good old minister who is gone now to his rest and his reward. There have been great changes since then,” and she sighed sadly.

A short walk brought them to the church portals. They were early, and obtained excellent seats. The organist was already playing. Helen’s face lit with pleasure, for she had never before heard so fine an instrument or so skilful a player. Exquisitely fitted by nature for receiving musical impressions, she felt her soul uplifted by the grandeur of the music, and her heart penetrated by its sweetness. Now there was a thunderous clang, as if the organist were seeking to evoke from the instrument a fitting tribute to the majesty and power of the Creator. It seemed as if hosts of angels were clashing their cymbals, and singing God’s high praise. Now a delicate rill of silver-voiced melody trickled forth, clear and sweet, interpreting the unfathomable love wherewith God loves his children, even the lowliest.

Helen listened as one entranced, and when the last strain died away, and the organ was still, she turned towards Martha, and whispered, for she could not keep silence, “It lifts me up. It almost seems as if I were in heaven.”

Unconsciously Helen expressed the same feeling which Milton has embodied in fitting lines,—

It is a mistake to suppose that the plainest and cheapest churches are good enough for the poor. Europe is far more democratic in matters of religion than America. In the great continental cathedrals I have more than once felt inexpressibly touched to behold at my side some child of poverty and misfortune bending a reverent gaze upon some imaged saint. I have pictured to myself his probable home in some filthy court or dingy alley, with the light of heaven shut out, dark, forbidding and noisome, and rejoiced to think that it was his privilege to pass from such a scene into the splendors that fitly adorn the house of God. It is something to shed a ray of sunlight upon the life of a poor man—to gratify his taste, mortified by the gloomy surroundings of his daily life, to nourish the little flower of sentiment struggling out of the rubbish that has well-nigh choked out his æsthetic nature, and help him to feel that life has a beautiful side, from which he is not utterly shut out.

So Helen and the poor seamstress, confined through the week in poor and unattractive chambers, felt a quiet satisfaction in the grand architectural proportions and solemn beauty of the great church in which they felt themselves welcome guests. They derived new strength for the plain and humble duties of every day in the thought that one day in seven they could escape into a loftier atmosphere, and feel God’s presence nearer.

Occasionally, as the service proceeded, Helen stole a glance at her father, who sat beside her. His face wore a look of calm enjoyment and intelligent appreciation.

As he sat with his clasped hands resting on his knees, and his eyes fixed upon the preacher, the vanished years returned, and beside him there sat once more the fair young bride, whose pure and saintly image lived a hallowed remembrance in the heart of father and daughter alike.

When the service closed, he did not change his position, till Helen, touching him gently, said, “It is time to go, papa.”

“We will come again next Sunday, Helen,” he said.

“Yes, papa.”

They walked back slowly and thoughtfully to their humble homes, speaking little, but each more happy and peaceful for the hour passed in the great church whose lofty spire seemed ever pointing upwards to that God in whose service it was reared.

The day after his meeting with Helen and her father, the worthy attorney, Mr. Sharp, took his way leisurely to the boarding-house of Mrs. Morton. Although the object of his visit was clearly defined to his own mind, he scarcely knew in what manner he might best attain it. But Mr. Sharp was not a man to be abashed or daunted by small difficulties. Trusting, therefore, to what chance and the inspiration of the moment might suggest, he mounted the steps and rang the bell.

“Mrs. Morton, I presume,” he remarked, with great affability, as that lady opened the door in person.

“You are quite right, sir.”

“I believe,” he remarked with suavity, “that I am correct in the supposition that you take boarders.”

“I wonder what he’s aiming at,” thought Mother Morton, glancing with something of suspicion at the white hat set jauntily on one side of his head. “I hope he won’t apply for board. I am always suspicious of those who are so smooth-tongued.”

“Yes, sir,” she said aloud, “I do take boarders, but I am full now.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Sharp, with a benignant smile, “I am delighted to hear of your prosperity. I was not, however, thinking of making an application for board in my own behalf, though I should undoubtedly esteem it a high privilege to be an inmate of a boarding-house which I am confident is so admirably conducted. Will you have the goodness to tell me whether you have a boarder or lodger named Dupont?”

It is scarcely necessary to explain that this inquiry was employed by Mr. Sharp as a plausible method of accounting for his calling, and to pave the way for something else. He had no particular choice in the name, but thought Dupont would be as uncommon as any.

“Yes,” was the unexpected reply of Mrs. Morton, “we have a lodger of that name. I believe he is in. Will you step in and see him, sir?”

Unprepared for this answer, Mr. Sharp was for the moment undecided how to act. Being sufficiently quick-witted, however, he soon devised a way to extricate himself from his embarrassment.