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Updated: May 10, 2025
The morning witnessed my departure from New Jedboro, and from the window of the train I watched its fast-retreating hills, so often trodden by me since with the swinging stride of joy, or clambered with the heavy step of care. There is neither time nor space to set down in detail all that followed. Let it suffice to say that while they were musing the fire burned, and the good folk of St.
Five new elders had been elected, three of them their father's successors, for this was a common custom in New Jedboro, and apostolic succession in disguise was in high favour amongst us. Another was a man of seventy or more, for every ordination must recognize the stalwarts whose days of activity were past but whose time for honour was at hand. The remaining elder-elect was Angus Strachan.
Perhaps he was thinking of an hour like unto this when, so many long years before, he too had reached New Jedboro by night, friendless and poor, also craving work, beginning that steady climb which had brought him to the dizzy heights of wealth and influence.
To remain in New Jedboro, and to remove to Charleston, seemed equally distasteful. I had given the Southern church no assurance of my purpose, because purpose I had none. Yet the stern necessity of choice was upon me, this most sombre enfranchisement of manhood, that we are compelled to choose, willing or unwilling.
Then all that crowd of men exploded in a burst of derisive laughter which set the seal of triumph on Angus's argument. After the uproar had subsided, an intrepid Scotsman, only a few months in New Jedboro, volunteered to address the meeting. "I canna jist answer the argyments o' Mr. Strachan, but I maun pit forrit my idea that oor wives and bairns haena the luxuries o' them as owns the works.
New Jedboro was winter-wrapped when I left it, and, taking steamer from New York, I disembarked at Charleston into almost intoxicating sweetness. Their dear South land was aflame with early summer, and my idea of Paradise was revised. How could these Southern hearts be otherwise than warm and fragrant!
Strict care was kept before the door of the now deserted house, for panic hath its home in the heart of that dread disease, though not so dreadful as we think. Some of the misguided folk of New Jedboro fumigated themselves at every mention of Angus' name, sleeping meantime side by side with some consumptive form, knowing not that death slept between them.
Geordie was the best-known character in New Jedboro, as well known as the town pump, the one famed for its outgiving, the other for its intaking powers, but both alike for liquid prowess.
Onward rushed the hours, and onward rolled the train in its desperate struggle with them, till the setting sun, victorious over both, reminded me that I would be in New Jedboro before the dusk deepened into dark.
The balm for secret sorrow is in the bosom of another burden, unselfishly assumed; and the Cyrenian of every age hath this for his hire, that, while he bends beneath another's cross, he is disburdened of his own. I found my old precentor weak, and failing fast, but "verra composed," as we say in New Jedboro. He welcomed me with a gentle smile.
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