He met me on the street
one day.
"'I hear you are literary,' he said.
"'Well, I think I can write,' I answered modestly.
"Then he said he had a third-half-nephew by marriage, to whom, ground
under the heel of financial incompetency, he had once loaned the
startling sum of fifty dollars,--I say startling, because it startled
me to know a preacher ever had that much ready cash ahead of his
grocery bill. Anyhow, the third-half-nephew, with the fifty dollars as
a nucleus,--I think Providence must have multiplied it a little, for
our fifty dollars never accomplished miracles like that,--but with that
fifty dollars as a starter he did a little plunging for himself, and is
now owner and editor of a great publishing house in Chicago.
"And Mr. Baker, the old minister, kept him going and coming, you might
say, by sending him at frequent intervals, bright and budding lights
with which to illuminate his publications. It seems the
third-half-nephew by marriage, in gratitude for the fifty dollars,
never refused a position to any satellite his uncle chose to recommend.
And Mr. Baker glowed with delight that he had been able, from the
unliterary center of Centerville to send so many candles to shine in
the chandelier of Chicago.
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