A GENTLEMAN, holding his little girl’s hand, was walking up and down the platform of a rail-way station, waiting for the arrival of a train, when a commotion near the station door attracted general attention, the occasion of which was soon evidenced by the entrance of a prisoner heavily manacled, and in charge of several officers. He was, in fact, a notorious criminal, who had just been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. The little girl looked at him at first with wonder and horror, which soon, however, yielded to tender pity, when, loosing herself from her father’s hand, she approached the prisoner, and lifting up her eyes to his face, spoke a few words to him in a low tone. But he looked so fiercely upon her, that she ran back to her father. She was soon, however, again at his side, and this time the prisoner was observed to drop his eyes as he listened to her, and a slight tremor passed over his hard face. Her father then called her, and she slowly retired, still looking upon the poor man with an eye of pity.
The train arrived soon after, when the prisoner quietly took his seat, and on the journey gave no trouble to the officers who had the care of him. Upon their arrival at the prison, he conducted himself well, and continued to do so, to the astonishment of all who had known his desperate character. One of the privileges granted to him appears to have been the use of a light in his cell during the evening; and it was observed that he spent his time in reading the Bible. Some months passed, during which his good conduct won the confidence of the prison authorities. At length someone asked him how it was that he had brought with him such a character for willfulness, while he had shown himself to be quiet and well-behaved.
“Well, sir,” said he, “I’ll tell you I did act as bad as I could, after they took me: and I did mean to do some mischief; for I didn’t care what became of me. I should have done it, too, I know I should; but God sent a little girl to speak to me. While I was waiting at the station, before I came here, a little mite of a girl was there with her father, and somehow I could not help looking at her. Presently she let go her father’s hand, and came over to me, and said, ‘Man, I am sorry for you;’ and, would you believe it? there were tears in her eyes! Something seemed to give way inside then; but I was proud, and wouldn’t show it. So I just scowled on her. The poor little dear looked scared, and ran off to her father; but in a minute she was back again, and she came right up to me, and said, ‘Man, Jesus Christ is sorry for you.’ O, sir! that clean broke my heart. Nobody had spoke to me like that since my dear old mother died, year and years ago. I had hard work to keep the tears back, and all the way down here I was thinking of mother, and the many things she used to teach me, when I was no bigger than that baby; for I had a good bringing-up, though more’s the shame to me. Well, the whole of it is, sir, I made up my mind to seek the God of whom my mother so often told me: and O, sir,” he exclaimed while the tears ran down his face, “He’s saved me—He’s saved me.”
The man, if yet living, is no doubt still a prisoner, and the little girl is perhaps growing up, the delight of some happy home, not knowing that her childish words were used of God to bring a sinful soul to the knowledge of Himself. But if their two mothers had not instructed their children in the Truth of God, the one could not have made, nor would the other have understood, the allusion to the sweet story of the love of God in Christ.
ML 05/03/1903