From Ploughshare to Pulpit by Gordon Stables

Ah! now my story draws to a close. I am very sorry because I have quite enjoyed writing it.

The reader may never know how much of my own young life is depicted in these pages. Many a time and often have I laughed as recollections of schoolboy or student pranks have risen up before my mind's eye, but more than once as I wrote a mist bedimmed my sight, and something fell -- it might have been a tear.

Life, dear reader, is all like a dream; but we never realise this until grey hairs appear around our temples, and there are silver threads in the dark brown of our beards.

But come, I must pull myself up with a round turn, as we sailors say. Moping never did any good in this world, that I am aware of; grief is more ageing than time itself. There is nothing so healthful as cheerfulness and good temper. "A merry heart goes all the day. " Let us laugh, then. There isn't the slightest fear of getting too fat. I don't believe in the silly old saying, "Laugh and grow fat. " I've been laughing all my life, when I haven't been whistling or humming a tune, but I'm not fat yet, and what is more, I don't want to be. But a merry heart strengthens every muscle and organ in the body, and prevents chilblains. A ridiculous thing to say, is it? Oh, perhaps, but it is true. That disagreeable winter complaint belongs to the sad and the phlegmatic morose sort of people. But a merry heart means a well-balanced circulation, and so, if you want to be healthy, you've got to cultivate cheerfulness.

All this is digression? Well, I don't care, I shall do what I like in my last chapter.

In course of years, Mrs. M‘Crae and Elsie both got to like the little cottage. It was cosy and homely and snug. They had their regular visitors, too, and never cared to add many to them.

When in harbour, both Captain D'Acre and his mate used to be constant visitors, and the mate never failed to bring his fiddle. Then a regular musical evening was sure to follow, much to Mrs. M‘Crae's delight, for she was passionately fond of melody.

Summer after summer, Sandie continued coaching his pupils, remunerating to both teacher and students, and winter after winter he plodded back and fore to the Divinity Hall. He was a pet student with all the professors, because he was a very promising one. Whatever study he took in hand, he went into thoroughly, and was not content until he had mastered it. That is the sort of man Sandie was.

But the winters and the summers too wore away at last, -- Sandie's divinity studies were over. He had passed every examination with honour, and was now the Rev. Alexander M‘Crae, M. A.

What joy!

All his toils were over -- so he thought; he would soon get a church -- so he believed; and he would take his mother away to his beautiful home in the cool green country, far away from the madding crowd, from the bustle and din, from the grime and the gride of city life. As hope told him this flattering tale, he could not help repeating to himself those charming lines of Horace, beginning

"Beatus ille qui preul negotiis,

Paterna rura bubus exercit suis / Solutus omni fenore,"

which may be paraphrased: "Happy is the man who, far from the busy haunts of life, far from care and worry, ploughs with his own oxen the paternal acres."

But Sandie's life while at the Divinity Hall had not been all bliss unalloyed. There was one drawback to his happiness. Let me explain it, if I can. Sandie, then, was constitutionally shy.

Now shyness is about the worst fault a public orator or preacher can have, though I must not omit to mention that the cleverest men are usually the shyest.

In the privacy of his own study, which was right away up at the top of Kilbuie Cottage, an attic, in fact, Sandie, when all alone, could declaim triumphantly, and many a rousing extempore sermon he here preached. Again, he could preach a sermon anywhere, and with confidence, if he had written it out beforehand, and might have the manuscript on the pulpit desk in front of him. But well he knew that many old people in country parishes had a decided objection to written sermons. They liked their ministers to walk into the pulpit, to take a text, and trust to the Spirit of God to give them language and words.

Now, after all, extempore preaching is merely a matter of habit and experience.

Strangely enough, assistance came to Sandie from quite an unexpected quarter.

It was while he was in his third year, that one Thursday evening he was told by Elsie, who could hardly keep from smiling, that a lady and gentleman wanted to see him on a matter of business.