The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-08-26
Only a Cripple.

Here is an incident, true in every de-
tail, which may serve as text for some
of our readers to preach themselves a
sermon as they Idle away the summer
Sunday morning on the mountains or
by the beach.
Three or four years ago half-drunk-
en- young fellow, driving furiOusly along
a crowded street, ran over little child
and hurt his spine. The boy was the
son of poor cobbler. His bed was a
straw pallet on a garnet floor. When
the injury was pronounced incurable he
was removed from the hospital to this
bed. There was nothing for him to look
forward to but years of misery in the
filth and half darkness of the wretched
garnet. His mother was dead. His
father in the shop below could barely
keep them from starving. The young
fellow who hurt him was sorry, but
what could he do? He was q fast clerk
on small salary. Now and then n
kindly Irishwoman on the lower floor,
as wretched as themselves, would run
up to "heGrten the creature up a bit;'
but that was all. The only view from
the square window was a corner of the
next roof, and the event of the day for
the miserable cripple was to see the
eats climb along it or fight each other.
Foul smells and foul language came up
from the rooms below to him. There
seemed to be no other possible chance
for his life than to die down into still
more brutal ignorance and misery, and
to 90 out like an ill-smelling flame into
the eternal night.
Now, Just at this time a little English
lad, who had come with his father to
visit the Centennial Exposition, while
passing along quiet street of the city
in which the cripple lived, saw some
pale-faced children peering at him out
among trees. Over the gate was the
name, Children's Hospital" The
boys kindly English heart was touched;
he turned and went in, joked and
played awhile with the poor babies, and
when he went back to his hotel wrote
to his mother of the pleasant sunny
rooms with flowers in the windows and
pictures on the walls, and the mOtherly
nurses taking care of the little children.
. have seen nothing which pleased
me better in America" he said. 4
will 90 again and tell you about it when
| come home"
He never went home. The gallant
little lad was taken back dead to his
mother a few weeks later After the
violence of her grief was past, in her
many efforts to show her gratitude to
the people who had nursed and been
kind to her boy, she asked to be al
lowed to endow a memorial bed in the
little hospital which had pleased him
so much, and directed that it should
be filled with the most miserable, needy
case known to the managers. So it
came to pass that our little cripple on
a warm spring day was carried out Of
his garnet, bathed and laid on a pure
white bed i'll a sunny, pleasant room.
The other children in the ward called
to him and made acquaintance; there
were toys, books, pictures for them all.
The good woman who lifted him smiled
at him; he thought his mother must
have looked like that. Outside, the
naples Redeemed in the sun and rustled
in at the windows and the robins chirp-
ed and built their nests. There we're
dainty little meals brought to him.
There was the best skill the city could
command given to effect his cure. Good
women and their hearts full of Christ 5
love came to teach him and tell him of
this unknown Saviour. At his bed head
hangs a little card which he probably
never has read or understood: d" In
memory of Richard --, of Sussex,
England"
Something in this little story hints in a
dim way of the infinite ineXtricable
tangle of human lives and their ineXOr-
able influence on each other. When
the English lad Obeyed the generous
impulse to give moments pleasure to
the little children as he passed, how
could he tell that he lifted this other
life up into the sunshine for all time?
The word that we speak to-day" says
the Arab proverb, "shall it not meet
us again and again at the turning of
the ways to show us how it has cursed
and blessed our fellows? Y. T5'i6-
u1le.