The Parkerstown Delegate Read Online Free PDF

verse: “Suffer little children to come unto me?”
    Franklin, too, had consented to read a verse if he were allowed to come, and not being very familiar with the Bible himself, Harley had selected it for him.
    That was the beginning of the Parkerstown Christian Endeavor Society. It is not needful that you should know what was read or said at that meeting. There was nothing original or remarkable in it. You might think it very commonplace, but to those who were gathered there it seemed not so. They had caught the spirit of Christian Endeavor, and even Franklin felt that there was a power there, greater than any other which he knew. He promised to come again if they would let him, and even volunteered to become a temporary member of the lookout committee until some more worthy members should come in. He would that week agree to bring in at least two to the next meeting. Lois’s heart began to swell with the thought of a real society right there in Parkerstown, albeit she had scarcely gotten over her panic at the rapid development of her small scheme. It was something to be thought about and prayed over, this, actually planning to speak and pray before people like Franklin Winters, every week. She was not sure she would be able to do it, though she recognized that a power higher than her own had helped her that afternoon; but would He always help? Surely He had promised, but—she must get away by herself and think it over. Happy for Lois that she had learned lately to think such things over upon her knees. The Lord presides over decisions made there, and so it was with a less fearful heart that she came to the next meeting, having herself prevailed upon three young girls to come with her.
    Harley had been made president. First, because they thought it would please him, but he proved such a good president, with so many wise and original little plans for the growth of the society, that they came to feel after all that they could not have chosen more wisely. For Harley read all he could get hold of, and he knew all about the great Christian Endeavor Society; he knew all its principles and the wisest ways of working; he knew more about it than all the rest of Parkerstown put together. Moreover, he had time to think and plan and, best of all, to pray, and to grow, in this thinking and planning and praying, daily like Jesus Christ. They all saw the change in his life, even patient as it had been heretofore. There was a wondrous beauty growing in that face that spoke of an inward peace, and a sweet wisdom that had touched the child-heart and caused it to open like a flower.
    It came about very gradually, the addition to the society. First, Franklin brought two boys, farm hands from a neighbor’s house, and then little Sallie coaxed her older sister, and then all grew interested and the meetings became larger until it was hard to find chairs enough in the square white house by the roadside, and until Harley’s little bedroom off the sitting-room became too small to contain all the members.
    “Father,” said Harley one evening, when he had been lying quite still for a long time with his eyes closed, so that they all began to step softly and talk in low tones, thinking him asleep, “I wish you would take me into the big south room to-morrow. I haven’t been in there in two years, I guess, and I want to see it. I have a plan. Perhaps you won’t like it, and if you don’t I will not coax; but, father, I should like to go in there and see it.”
    ”You shall go, my son,” said the father, who could not deny Harley anything in these days. “What is your plan, my boy?”
    “Well, father, if you and mother don’t like it, I won’t make any fuss, but it’s something I think would be very nice. Do you think mother cares very much about that south room? I know it’s the parlor, and there’s all the best things in there, but she doesn’t use it much only on Christmas days, and not much then nowadays. It seems too bad to have it