752 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



Not only this, he had the city directory right 

 before him, and seemed to have learned it 

 so as to have it at his fingers' 1 ends. lie at 

 once spoke as kindly, and with as much in- 

 terest as if he were your S. S. teacher. Be- 

 sides, errand-boys were ready to do his bid- 

 ding. He told me all about the churches, 

 Sunday-schools, Young Men's Christian As- 

 sociation, Women's Christian Temperance 

 Union, etc. When I asked him about A. V. 

 Bishop he told me that Mr. B. was but a 

 few doors away, and that a boy would go 

 with me and see if he was in his place of 

 business. When we found he was not, I 

 was directed to Mr. Bishop's residence. 

 Well, he had moved away. But our friend 

 who is employed by this rich institution to 

 help people— in fact, to " minister" to their 

 wants— did not propose to give up, by any 

 means. lie found out where Mr. Bishop 

 had moved to ; but by the time we got 

 there, no one seemed to be at home, and so 

 we gave it up. Of course my good friend 

 would have assisted me to make Mr. B. a 

 call on Sunday, had I been so inclined. Of 

 course, I did not wish to do so. However, I 

 apologized for making so much trouble, and 

 asked to be shown the building of the Y. M. 

 C. A. I was assured, with a smiling face, 

 that such was their business, and that they 

 were always glad to assist the guests in any 

 thing they wanted. Now, I tell you, friends, 

 there is a moral in all this. This great firm 

 had, without doubt, taken pains to pick out 

 a man whose patience was almost inexhaust- 

 ible, who could answer questions from 

 morning till night, look over directories, 

 listen to any long stories that any of the 

 guests of the house might tell in explaining 

 his wants, and then go to work and help 

 him, in the strict sense of the word. This 

 clerk was not an exception. The waiters 

 all over the establishment seemed to be 

 picked men. A bright colored boy takes 

 your hat when you go in to meals, and when 

 you go out he gives the right hat to the 

 right man every time, and does it with a 

 smiling face. When you remember that 

 there are a hundred or more hats and a hun- 

 dred or more men, you can see that our 

 young friend must be something of agenius. 

 He takes a good look at the hat and then a 

 good look at the man, and I never saw him 

 make a mistake. Perhaps these good 

 friends were all Christians? They certain- 

 ly acted Christianlike ; but I am afraid it 

 was more because they were paid for exhib- 

 iting Christianlike virtues than because 

 they loved God and humanity. Sunday 

 morning I was up between five and six as 

 usual. My good friend had told me, the 

 night before, that there was no place of 

 worship open before half-past nine. At 

 this hour there was a Methodist prayer- 

 meeting in one part of the city ; and wish- 

 ing to attend as many religious services as 

 possible, I proposed to be on hand ; there- 

 fore when I had got my breakfast (there 

 was no trouble at ail in getting breakfast at 

 six o'clock in the Plankinton Hotel) I look- 

 ed around for a Bible in order to study my 

 Sunday-school lesson. Well, our obliging 

 clerk, who knew the directory from begin- 

 ning to end, and who could have furnished 



me any thing to cat or drink that can be 

 found in almost any part of the world, was 

 stumped when I asked him for a Bible. 



" Why, my friend, there are probably Bi- 

 bles in the house somewhere, but I do not 

 know just where to put my hand on them at 

 this hour. I have one at home that my 

 mother gave me, that would be most cheer- 

 fully at your service if I could get it just 

 now. But as it is, 1 do not know what bet- 

 ter we can do than to wait until the Y. M. 

 C. A. is open at half-past ten." 



When I was at Woodman, the storekeeper 

 that was offended at my plain talk, said 

 that, if nobody patronized the saloons, there 

 would not be any. He rather threw it in 

 my teeth. This good friend here said it 

 very kindly, but he rather intimated that 

 few people ever called for Bibles at half- 

 past six on Sunday morning ; but that if they 

 did, the proprietors of the hotel would cer- 

 tainly have had them in abundance. In 

 fact, they make it one of the fine arts to 

 minister to the wants of the great sea of hu- 

 manity that is found in our large cities. I 

 was a sort of eccentric or peculiar individ- 

 ual, or I should not have wanted a Bible— I 

 was going to conclude this sentence by say- 

 ing, " at such an unseasonable hour;'" but 

 my good friend to whom I am dictating was 

 going to put in, when my attention was 

 called to other matters for a moment, "be- 

 fore most men wanted their every-day gar- 

 ments." Now, I would have cheerfully 

 given the price of a good Bible for the use 

 of one for just those two or three hours. 

 My friend at the desk suggested that I could 

 probably get one at the bookstores ; but 1 

 told him that the bookstores that were open 

 on Sunday would not, on general principles, 

 have Bibles to sell. I did not go out on the 

 streets and try it, for you may remember 

 that it is not very many months ago that a 

 good friend gave me quite a smart repri- 

 mand for patronizing people who do sell 

 things on Sunday. While doing every thing 

 I could think of to keep the Sabbath holy, 

 without a Bible, my thoughts ran in the 

 line of our text to-day. May the Lord be 

 praised that 1 have found the word of God 

 "a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my 

 path "! If I could not have a Bible, I con- 

 cluded I would go real early to the Metho- 

 dist prayer-meeting, and so I started off a 

 good deal before the time. My good friend 

 the clerk told me how many blocks it was 

 away, but I did not think very much about 

 " blocks." When I neared the great Trini- 

 ty Methodist church I felt glad to know 

 that such large numbers of people w r ere,like 

 myself, going to the prayer-meeting. From 

 their talk, however, 1 judged they were not 

 just the kind of prayer-meeting people that 

 1 had been in the habit of meeting. 



When 1 first came into Milwaukee I no- 

 ticed some great showbills telling by pic- 

 tures, as well as by great big letters that 

 some girls were going to play a game of 

 base ball. I now noticed that this game of 

 base ball was to come off on Sunday. The 

 girls who w r ere to play were to be rigged 

 out like ballet-dancers; and as we neared 

 Trinity church, the number of pictures in 

 regard to this game of base ball became 



