FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   >>  
yes--I believe it must be so, although I had not expected to see it so soon. But I will go with you, and we can talk by the way." The two men quickly caught up with the other people, and all went forward together along the road. The doctor had little to tell of his experience, for it had been a plain, hard life, uneventfully spent for others, and the story of the village was very simple. John Weightman's adventures and triumphs would have made a far richer, more imposing history, full of contacts with the great events and personages of the time. But somehow or other he did not care to speak much about it, walking on that wide heavenly moorland, under that tranquil, sunless arch of blue, in that free air of perfect peace, where the light was diffused without a shadow, as if the spirit of life in all things were luminous. There was only one person except the doctor in that little company whom John Weightman had known before--an old book-keeper who had spent his life over a desk, carefully keeping accounts--a rusty, dull little man, patient and narrow, whose wife had been in the insane asylum for twenty years and whose only child was a crippled daughter, for whose comfort and happiness he had toiled and sacrificed himself without stint. It was a surprise to find him here, as care-free and joyful as the rest. The lives of others in the company were revealed in brief glimpses as they talked together--a mother, early widowed, who had kept her little flock of children together and laboured through hard and heavy years to bring them up in purity and knowledge--a Sister of Charity who had devoted herself to the nursing of poor folk who were being eaten to death by cancer--a schoolmaster whose heart and life had been poured into his quiet work of training boys for a clean and thoughtful manhood--a medical missionary who had given up a brilliant career in science to take the charge of a hospital in darkest Africa--a beautiful woman with silver hair who had resigned her dreams of love and marriage to care for an invalid father, and after his death had made her life a long, steady search for ways of doing kindnesses to others--a poet who had walked among the crowded tenements of the great city, bringing cheer and comfort not only by his songs, but by his wise and patient works of practical aid--a paralysed woman who had lain for thirty years upon her bed, helpless but not hopeless, succeeding by a miracle of courage in her si
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   >>  



Top keywords:
comfort
 

doctor

 

patient

 

Weightman

 

company

 
Charity
 
Sister
 

nursing

 
cancer
 

schoolmaster


devoted

 

poured

 
revealed
 

glimpses

 
joyful
 

surprise

 
talked
 
purity
 

laboured

 

children


mother

 

widowed

 

knowledge

 

darkest

 

tenements

 

bringing

 

crowded

 

kindnesses

 

walked

 

practical


succeeding

 
hopeless
 

miracle

 

courage

 

helpless

 
paralysed
 

thirty

 
search
 

steady

 
brilliant

career
 

science

 
charge
 
missionary
 

medical

 

training

 
thoughtful
 

manhood

 
hospital
 

invalid