“‘Now, Mrs Clark!’ I said, ’you don’t mean to tell me that it’s your turn to be cheered up?’

“‘No!’ she said, ‘not now!  I’ve got it done already!’

“‘Well, now!’ I said, ’it’s so unusual to see you with those red eyes that you make me quite curious.  That is, if it’s nothing that’ll hurt you to tell,’ I said.

“‘No!’ she said, ‘it’ll not hurt me.  I’m a silly old woman,’ she said.  She didn’t speak for a minute, and then she went on: 

“’You know it’s my birthday to-day, Mr Charter.  I’m sixty this very Friday.  Well, you know, I always say to myself, “Short commons on Friday,” I says, “because 1s. 6d. won’t last for ever.”  But somehow, with its being my birthday I suppose, and me being sixty, I got it into my head that the Lord would perhaps remember me.  I’ve gone on loving Him for over forty years, and it did seem hard that on my birthday and me sixty, He should have left me with only a crust of bread to my tea.  However, I sat down to eat my crust, but when I began to say a blessing over it, I just began to cry like a silly child.  Well, what do you think!  I’d just taken the first bite, when a child, whose mother I know, came running in and put a little newspaper parcel on the table.  “Mrs Clark,” she says, “my mother was out working to-day, and the lady gave her a big pot of dripping, so she sent a bit round for your tea!” She run straight away, and when that child had gone, I cried a good bit more, and then I laughed and laughed, and says over and over again to myself, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."’”

The evangelist looked at his watch, and took a drink of water.  One or two men shifted their attitude from one side to the other, and all waited as children do for an absorbing story.  A momentary look of satisfaction came over the face of the evangelist, and he began again with zest.

“I’m afraid the next tale I’ve got to tell you will take a good deal of time.” ("We’re here to listen,” interrupted the minister.)

“Thank you! but you don’t know me when I begin to talk!  I can hardly tell this tale in a public meeting, it comes so near home.  It’s about a friend of mine, we’ll call him Joe, and whenever I think about him there always comes into my mind the verse we put up over him, ’Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me,’ for Joe hadn’t an easy lot.  I’ll tell you what his trade was, though it may make you laugh to hear he was a sweep!  Now, I don’t know what there is about a sweep that makes little rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but that’s the curious fact.  As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in the street, there’s a crowd of little rascals round him at once.  I’ve seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ’’Weep, ‘weep!’ behind him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about where he lived.  ’Eh! never mind ’em, Mr Charter,’ he used to say.  ’It pleases the children, and it doesn’t hurt me.’  That was the sort of man he was, you see, humble and content.