The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1904-10-06
" HELP! HELP"

Cling its joys and its woes, and the
years passed by, and one day Amaziah
wilkins, lean and silent man, came
footsore into Sodom.
At first he was only 4 laborer there
hoeing in the cotton fields by day and
at night porting by the light of pine
knot fire over the puZzling problems
found in spelling books and in readers.
Later he went to school for a session
or two in some faroff place little known
to Sodom, and when he returned his
compatriots found in him a man
mighty in pr'ar." Later still he was
licensed to preach, and when INK
George Bramlett fell on sleep" and
was laid to rest in Pine Peasants
buryinS ground Amaziah was chosen
to fill the vacant pastorate. There
were those, however, who opposed this,
and chief among them was Amos Cum
Minis, Il coal black man shrewd of wit
and thrifty, who long ago had come
from de farms up on de ribber" to
dwell in the land of Sodom. But the
other party triumphed and Amaziah
knew little of the strange tales that
went about as to how Amos Cummins
had seen scars on the new preachers
wrists, scars such as only prison irons
could make, and how a prison guard
passing through Sodom had called him
not wilkins, but some other name. So
with painstaking effort Amaziah went
about his work, for frugal industry had
given him a home and a little farm.
And with his prosperity, now that
position and income were his, love
came into the preachers life, and he
thought with longing of woman
pleasant and comely-Amos Cummins'
daughter, the woman was-who had
wrought next him in the cotton and In
the harvest fields. Surely, now that
spring was come, with its young grass
springing by the bare, gray roadsides,
with its little birds building their nests
and its fields a-throb with life, it was
not good that he should be longer
that which the woman must know He
did not dare tell her that. and so that
thought was put away.
And rejecting the content of his
people, for a time AmaZiah grew con
tent with himself and spoke as one
having authority and as man clearly
chosen of God, but when the June bios
SONS were gone and the July drought
had come, when the sunlight proved
burden and the rains refused to fall,
then the preacher remembered the
manner of man that be was and saw
in the parching earth the hot displeas
ure of his angry Lord.
Then the people began to talk. Sim
pie folk are these, who, like their pas
tor, see in their puny fortunes the pur
posings of God. Surely they were not
crushed without due cause. Who, then,
had sin? This man they knew and
that But the pastor? All, Amos
Cummins had opposed the pastor, and
there had been tales abroad. Why
should the preacher. be so silent? Why
not tell all about himself-where he was
born, where he had been and why he
came hungry to Sodom? And as the
whispers went they grew, and in the
end the preacher stood alone.
Then a meeting day came the last in
the hot July, and with it the last hope
had also come. Rain now would still
bring top crop" to the cotton and
make the bottom" corn. But a week
hence with the uplands already lost,
then, save TO the thirsty cattle and the
dried up, fostering streams, rain would
be but a m0ckery, come too late to
save.
But it was meeting day and the peo-
| pie Jared to church there to make once
more their feeble prayer for rain.
At the church a company was al
: ready gathered, and presently some of