THE TIMES, NEW BLOOMFIELD, FA., SEl'TEMUElt 23, 1879. 3 Kor Tar Bt.ooMMM.D Timfi. THE PAWNBROKER'S- BIBLE. T WISH," eald a young-man, petu J. lantly, " that I had not a friend In the world I Fathers and mothers and slaters are only a check upon one's movements, and a bar to one's com fort I" "Are those your caudld opinions V" asked a bystander. The young man turned at the voice, and attentively regarded the speaker. lie was surprised that any stranger should have mingled In the conversa tion, and was not disposed to be pleased, or to answer the question. The mien and appearance of the speaker com manded, however, his Involuntary re spect. Perhaps " respect" la not the term. " Interest" would better express tbe sentiment which was felt by the dashing and well, but carelessly, dressed Harry Baker toward the poverty stricken Btranger. The person who hud spoken to him was a foreigner, and, as his accents betrayed him, an English man. If Harry Buker had been dis posed to quarrel with him a9 was evi dently his first impulse he would have been restrained by tbe cadaverous and unhappy look of the Englishman, and his appearance of entire friendlessness and desertion. So he though better of his anger and dismissed it. But instead of answering his question, he said : " We are just going to drink, will you join us?" Tte conversation was in a public house. "Thank you; no, sir," said tbe oth er. " But as you appear disposed to be friendly, I will trespass on your kind ness for a breakfast." There was something in the ready frankness of the man which pleased Harry in spite of himself. He was a young man of impulses, and, turning to his companions, said : " Drink you, fellows I wou't. I'll take some breakfast Instead with this gentleman, if he'll allow me." " I could not think of refusing my host a seat at his own table," said the other, with a smile. "Besides, the the honor of his company Is something J am only too proud of." Harry ordered breakfast. The waiter speedily opened one of the boxes, dusted off the crumbs of the last customer, and the Englishman took his Beat. He was soon joined by Harry, but not until the young man's friends had taken him aside,, and whispered a caution against " thimble rigs," " watch stuffing," and various other practices in small knavery. Harry assured them he could take care of himself, and sat down by his new friend, while his companions retired in unconcealed disgust. " You see, sir," said the Englishman, "one of the Inconveniences of having no friends, no vouchers for our charac acter, and nobody to endorse you. I anjn that predicament exactly, and do not wonder at the suspicions of your companions." " Did you overhear them V" " O, there was no need of overhear ing to know the subject of their conver sation, and the tenor of it, too. Desti tution is quick-witted. I. am perfectly sensible of what feelings my presence inspires. But I am neither surprised nor angry. It is a natural and unavoid able consequence." " You are a mystery." " O, no ; there are plenty such. I am just discharged, convalescent, from the hospital at the alms-house, and, like thousands of others who come from that place, have neither home nor occupa tion. I have both to seek, and under sad discouragements, too. My best efforts may only result in getting back to my old quarters, for my present appearance does not carry a letter of recommendation." " Go to the St. George's Society." "And ask alms V No, no; I am in strong hopes to do better; and if it comes to that, I may as well take my fare with the multitude at Blockley. There I have no need to make interest, or to expose myself by declaring my connexions. I hope to find employ, ment, and am ready to attempt any thing honest. Meanwhile, I must eat, and you must pardon the freedom with which I addressed you this mornlng.and my strange request. There was some thing so sadly wrong in your exclama tionso like my own former perverse ness and I have so completely proved its folly, that I could not forbear speak ing. Never desire to cast off the guardianship of your friends, young man, whatever you do." Breakfast was now served. The man ner in which men feed is the best test of their breeding, and Harry Baker was convinced that he was entertaining a gentleman. He burned ;with curiosity to know more of him, but could not presume upon any questioning of a beggar so dignified. The Englishman, for a wonder, was not reserved, and vol unteered so much information as fur nished us the following sketch of bis adventures. lit had come to America with tbe name sentiment practically guiding his steps, as Harry Baker had uttered in bis hearing. And this feeling Is far from being uncommon among young men. The desires and wishes of youth are so world-wide, and they are so ready to fly off in pursuit of the first whim, that theeremptory checks which their young ambition so often receives from the authority of parents, and the gentle but firm dissuasives which they moot in the affection of sisters, becomes a sad burden. Arthur Melton for so the young Englishman called himself had been educated to a profession , that of medi cine. But he was restive uuder the Blow progress which the conservative customs of the old world Impose upon a " rising young man." He wished to bound at once to a high position ; and finding it impossible, was irked by the sage advice of his father, and rebelled.' He changed his residence repeatedly, at each change , making his prospects worse, which increasod tbe difference between himself and frlendB ; until at last be determined to free himself entire ly from their interference, and expended his last funds in procuring a passage across the Atlantic His hopes were high and sanguine as to what he could effect when once beyond tbe reach of Interruption from ill-judged kindness ; and he landed in New York with a gloomy pleasure that there were none among the thousands of that city who might presume to offer him advice, or to control his conduct. But 'he soon discovered that there are greater evils in the world thau- the partiality of one's family, and more troublesome obstacles to encounter than the control of father and mother. While his little stock of ready money lasted, he enjoyed tbe selfish pleasure of the " welcome of an inn," and delighted in the mercenary politeness and sub servience of those who knew no other rule than to follow his directions so long as he could pay them for so doing. His small capital, however, was soon ex hausted. And then ho found that there are eyes more prying and Jealous than a mother's or a sister's. The first indica tions of a narrow purse were the occa sions of wise looks from those who had abridged its -circumference; and Arthur Melton was enraged to discover that certain " agreeable fellows" cooled down to zero in their friendship, when he at tempted to obtain a "trifling loan." The need of money was something en tirely new to him. He had anticipated in the new worki such a demand for his medical skill, as would leave him neither want nor leisure; but he was met with the disagreeable fact that the professions are overstocked here as well as elsewhere. He could find abundance of gratuitous practice, but this neither paid his board nor his office rent, and he was compelled to give up both board and office, by the pertinacious manner in which demands were pressed upon him. He had no home to fall back upon ; he felt tbe oppressive solitude of a man entirely alone amid thousands. What could lie do V What but emigrate again V" A wise man in his predicament would have remained in New York. But even in his short stay there he had made some acquaintances to whom he did not like to betray his poverty as if they had not already suspected it. So he came to Philadelphia. He came with the determination graduate of Oxford though he was to accept any employ ment that he could find, however hum ble. He tried several advertisements in the " want" columns of the newspapers. He would be teacher of languages, clerk, book-keeper, anything; but to none of these public applications did he receive a syllable of answer. No letters came to " X," " Q," to " Oxford," or " M. D." He applied personally to every drug store which he passed to obtain employ ment; but alasl tbe " wretched con ventionalisms" of an "old, worn-out world" were In his way in the new. Nobody had employment for a man who could give no references. His val uables had been pawned or disposed of one by one, till he was left at last with out money, or the means of procuring any, and was compelled to leave the house where he lodged, cheap as it was, and find accommodations still cheaper. A slight blush passed over his face as he acknowledged that the first remunera tive pursuit to which he brought bis talents was to the wiejding of a broom in the street-scavengers' corps. In this occupation sickness interrupted him. They write that such reverses are common in California and Australia. ' We need not go to the ends of the earth to find the depressions and make-shifts of poverty and obscurity, however. Arthur Melton's was not an uncommon case in our large Atlantlo cities. Misery, which makes men acquainted with strange bedfellows, makes us familiar with strange employments. Here was a man of good parts and address, with out, it would seem, any glaring vices, re duced to a condition to which he would have thought it impossible to descend. " What will you do V" inquired Har ry, as he finished bis story. " Return to Liverpool." " But you have no funds." " Very little will suffice me, and cer tainly I can find some mode of earning it." "Permit me to advance it to you," said Harry. "I beg your pardon no. I have breakfasted at your expense, and though I am very much obliged for the brief opportunity that it has given me to for. get that I am an outcast, still it has cost you only the same courtesy that you are reody to extend to any ac quaintance who can readily breakfast without your assistance. Consider me one of those, gentlemen, and do not tempt me to put myself in the attitude of a canting beggar." " Shall I never see you again V" " I don't know. Look hard at the broom corps when you meet them, but if you Bee me, don't erpeak! Character is something to a street-sweeper', and, If I am suspected of being a broken down gentleman, there is no knowing that I may not lose my situation 1" ' " But, my dear sir," said Harry, with much earnestness, " you do not intend that this, our first, shall be our last meeting 1" . " Here," Bald Melton, pointing to tbe advertising columns of a dally paper, which had just attracted his attention, " if you really wish to serve me, as no doubt you do, attend to day this sale of ' forfeited collaterals.' In your Qua ker city that Is another phrase for un redeemed pledges at a pawnbroker's. There is among those goods, perhaps, a Bible which my Bister gave me. Her name and mine are erased ; but you will find in the book, if it be mine, those familiar lines, commencing 'Within this sncrpd volume lies The mystery ut mysteries.' If you see a amall Oxford Bible with that mark, buy and preserve it. Give me your address, and when I can, I will call for it. If I never call, keep it as a memorial of this meeting. Good morn ing, sir, and think of me as a friend who will never forget the kindness which, trifling as it may seem to you, has given me new hope; since I find that I have not yet forgotten how to meet a gentleman." The stranger was gone. Harry sat a few moments thoughtfully. He then went to the pawnbroker,, and without waiting for the book the stranger bo much valued to be put up to form the subject of unfeeling jokes, redeemed and carried it away with him. The quota tion to which Melton hud referred was there; and it looked as if the page had been blistered witn tears. Henry care fully placed the book away; for it seemed to him almost a profanation that any indifferent eye should see the me morial of his unknown friend. Months passed away, and Harry had nearly forgotteu the stranger. For a few weeks he had looked curiously at the street-sweepers, and scanned care fully every decayed or seedy gentleman whom he passed. But he did not en counter the stranger. For a while, the Influence of his Btory checked young Baker in his follies ; but bis dissolute companions had regained their influence over him, and his friends verily believed that he was on the fast path to ruin. As he was one evening about turning aside to enter one of the places of evil ren dezvous, where the scorner's seat is es tablished, he felt a hand laid upon his arm. lis followed the signal to a lamp and there stood Arthur Melton. The Englishman was restored in health, and if he was sad in countenance, it was more for his friend than himself. They stood a moment in silence. "Excuse a friend's liberty," said Melton, "but I fear that you have found a mode of forgetting father Bud mother and true friends, without cross ing tbe sea." An angry answer sprang to Baker's lips, but the other had already gone. He followed the footsteps for an Instant, but Melton was lost in the crowd. Once diverted from his purpose, Baker's steps turned homeward, for he felt rebuked and ashamed in spite of himself. " I am so glad you are here," said his Bister, coming out of the parlor, and following him to his room. "We have, quite unexpectedly, visitors this eve ning, and you are just in time to enter tain them." At any other time, we are sorry to say, Harry Baker would have ungra ciously refused ; he hated " women gatherings," as he called them. But he was not unwilling this evening to hav hls thoughts diverted, and passively sub mitted, while his Bister, as only a sister can, made him presentable. Her ready hands found bis coat and cravat ; and though there was the slightest suspi cion of Havana in his hair, that is too common a nuisance among American gentlemen to be heeded. He found in his parlor two friends of bis sister whom he had met, and a lady whom he had never before Been. Nor had he ever beard of her the graceless fellow 1 though, as the guest of his sister's friends, she had been for some weeks on familiar terms with his fami ly. It is most wonderful how some young men of depraved associations will manage to ignore completely the better clroleB Into which their sister's might lead them. But Harry was pleased In spite of him self. The stranger Was not beautiful, but she was accomplished. The piano, under skilful her touch, was a new lnslru ment; and in conversation, she put blm upon his recollections. The topics to Nvhloh the discnurse turned were bo much above the slip-shod small talk of too many young people, and she was evidently the life and soul of the party, that Harry would have been glad to listen only that she would not suffer any one to be silent. With well bred grace, Bhe drew out all; and, as Bhe talked, the young man was still further entranced 'by the tones of her voice, and a something in her manner, which made him half think that he had met and known her before, though he could not conceive when or where. The beautiful volumes, often more ele gant than useful,whlch ornament drawing-room tables, naturally passed under review. The stranger lady admired all that she saw, but declared that there was one parlor-book which she prized above all others. " To say nothing of its value as a book," she said, "there is nothing more stately in its beauty, or more acceptable as a memorial,, than a perfectly plain, but elegantly printed Bible." "I have such an one," said Harry. " Where ?" asked his sisters. " Did you get it for me " " Or for me 1"' asked another " For neither ; it was a present but not exactly a present, though 'it is a keepsake. I am to retain it till called for.". The two sisters pressed him with questions. He was not sorry to have this convenient opportunity of relating what had been freshly brought to his mind. He said nothing of it before, for it would have led to awkward suspi cions about his bachelor life that some times abominable life, of which moth ers and Bisters suspect much, and know too little. " Come, Harry, we must know who gave you the Bible. V " Mordecal, the Jew, said Harry, smiling. " Come now, that won't do," said his sisters. " The Hebrews are not Bible distributors." " Well, if I must, I must," said Har ry. "' Thereby hangs a tale I'" And he proceeded to relate, with such care ful omissions as a young man at such family confessions know how to make, the story of his first interview with Arthur Melton, of his purchase of the book, and of bis treasuring it away. He was guardedly silent about that eve ning's meeting with the mysterious stranger. While he talked, if the sisters and their friends had not been very intent upon listening, they might have seen the trembling of the prints which the Btranger lady affected to be turning over ; her back was turned to them, but not a word did she lose. And when he closed, all made some comment except her. She did not trust her Hps with a word in relation to what be had been saying. But, as she turned from tbe table,' her face betrayed the exceeding interest which she took in the narrative. Conversation flagged, and the ladies rose to depart. " You must show us this young noble man In disguise," said they all, except one, " when he calls for his book." "I can't promise; he is all mystery. He may be another Bourbon lying perdue, or an undiscovered descendant of the Stuarts," tbe last hopes of the Jacobites. I can't promise." But Harry did secretly promise two things that evening. The first was to call upon the stranger lady tbe next morning and the second was to say nothing of his appointment, and to bring the Bible in bis pocket. And we may as well add that he scarcely slept through the night. He dreamed of the Bible, and that it changed lo a man, with the features of his unknown friend,and that those features changed again, and that the lady who wore them repeated the whole of tbe poetical quotation on the fly-leaf. We need hardly Bay that he awoke in the morning un refreshed, and very much puzzled. He kept bis ap pointment. The result of the confer ence was an advertisement In the papers appealing to " A. M.," who left Liver pool in tbe Columbia, in July 18, to call at a place designated, and hear some thing in which he was deeply con cerned. What a world of hopes, fears, joys and sorrows are hldde from the unini tiated in tbe "want columns" of a dully paper! It is a world of wants, and its selfish inhabitants rushing past and over each other, for their own ends, glare coldly on their brethren in per plexity and suffering! The reader divines the rest. But Har ry Baker's sisters never knew from him the sequel of tbe story of the Pawn broker's Bible. Nor did they ever see the book in question. Nor do they be lieve to this day that Harry's story was anything more than a tale, not true but well imagined, Invented by him to keep that clever English girl from pushing him hard on divinity ,as she bad already done on belles-lettres and the classics. In a few days she announced that she was hourly expecting her brother from New York. And he did come from New York, too, for thither his sister dis patched him to 'save (entre noun) other articles which he had pledged from a " Bale of collaterals," or, as they say in plain, outspoken New York, a "pawn broker's sale." It was vanity, but it was pardonable In tbe young man, that he did take pains to show his old friends in New York that he was still alive and in better case than ever. Indue time the "brother" arrived in Philadelphia. If Harry's sisters could have been sur prised at any of his movements, they might have been at the sudden intima cy which sprung up between the two young men, almost Instantly upon their introduction. They had no cause, how ever, to regret it. The "brother," hav ing been proved and established, ac knowledged that a sister is of some real service, though sometimes straight in her ideas of what is proper and im-. proper ; and we are glad to say, that Harry Baker has become a convert to. the same op'.nlon, and that he is none the worse for it, in his morals or his manners, A sister's love bore herover the Atlantic no great task in tliesedaysof steam, it is true, but she would have walked as far over Artie seas had itbeen necessary. She did not come without the proper protection and vouchers for her intro duction among her equals. Providence guided her search, and the Bible, which was the gift of her affection, led her to, the furgtive. . Now, to close, we should make one' wedding, if not two. But we leave that, to the future. Further this deponent salth not, except that the other day, the young men walked up Chestnut Street, the Englishman, suddenly turned his companion down Sixth Street. "I thought you were going to the Academy," expostulated Baker. " Yes ; but we'll go a square or two up Walnut Street. I can't can't abide the dust those fellows make 1" Harry looked up at the advancing brooms, and smiled and so may you. But if you don't wish to stack your fu ture paths with beacons to be avoided, take care where you step always. Never wander to day in the confidence of find ing your way back to-morrow. A Romance of Dimes and Dollars. Wm. S. O'Brien, the California mill ionaire, declared on his death-bed that his only brother had passed from earth In the city of Baltimore as long ago as 1801. Nevertheless, the will . of the bonanza king showed a bequest of $300, 000 to Pauline O'Brien, a beautiful girl whose undefined relations to the rich man, under whose roof she dwelt, had been a matter of gossip In San Francisco. Pauline had been accustomed to speak of the millionaire as Uncle William, and when it became known her share was the same as those received by tbe recognized nieces, the mystery deep, ened. After the death of O'Brien, Pauline in company with an aged woman, who proved to be her mother, took a flying trip to Ealelgh,N. C.Jreturned thence to San Francisco with an old, decrepit man. Arrived again at tbe Golden Gate Pauline locked the old couple in rooms at the Palace Hotel and announcing to the O'Brien heirs that she had found her father, P. II. O'Brien, who had never been worth a dime, claimed for him $1, 000,000. Her lawyer furnished the trus tees of tbe estate within undisputable Qroof that William S. and Patrick H. were brothers. Months passed and the matter had nearly reached the ejpurts when a compromise was effected. Un der the compromise tbe trustees paid over to Pauline and her mother $000,000. This payment was made on last Wed nesday week, but old Patrick never saw bis thousands, he having died on Tues daythe day before the payment. San Fruncixco Post. What a blessing to a household is a merry, cheerful woman, one whose spirits are not affected by wet days and little disappointments, and whose milk of human kindness does not sour in the sunshine of human prosperity. 63" He who is false to present duty breaks a thread la the loom, and will see tbe defect wheu tbe weaving oT a lifetime is unrolled. Choose always the best course of life, aud custom will soou make it the most pleasant. J Always leave home with lovlug words, for they may be the last.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers