A Special Providence Read online

  "So when he come back in the car I did like she said. He never seemed to expect me to say anything anyhow, so I just let him go ahead and talk and plan and rejoice, though I felt like an awful hypocrite.

  "Finally we got to Guthrie about six o'clock that evening, and the old gentleman helped me and my bandbox and valise and basket and cans off the nicest kind, and took me to the waiting-room. Then he said he must hurry out and get the preacher that was to make him the happiest man on earth, and for me not to stir till he come back. I told him he better inquire where to find a preacher, and I expect that lady setting over the other side of the room might know something about the preachers down this way. So he went over and asked her, and I felt like a whited sepulcher. Then he started off a-running.

  "Them ten minutes before my train come seemed to me more like ten years. I just set there and shook, I was so afraid the old gentleman would meet up with a preacher on the way, and get back before my train started, or that my train would be late. But finally my train whistled, and the old lady she picked up my valise and bandbox, and I jerked up the basket of fruit-trees and the six cans of peaches, and we made for the train. The folks that was inside the car all had to get out before I could get in, and looked to me like I would certainly go raving, distracted crazy, they were so slow. But at last the very last one come down the steps, and I had just set foot on the lowest step, and the conductor was bracing me from behind--me not being able to catch hold of anything on account of my arms being so full--when I heard a yell that fairly knocked the life out of me, so 's I couldn't move hand or foot, but was just petrified where I was at, and if the conductor hadn't been boosting me like he was I reckon I'd have fell off that step like a bag of meal. I cast one eye down the station platform, and there come the old gentleman, his coat-tails flying, and him yelling every step of the way, and the preacher he had got trying to keep up with him. 'Lord, help!' I says; 'Lord, help!' I knew if the Lord didn't help me I was gone. Then I turned them fruit-trees and them six cans of Indian peaches loose, and grabbed hold of the railing, and got the strength from heaven to climb up the steps of that car and on to the platform of it. The glass cans rolled down, and bu'sted as they fell, and the peaches just went all over the depot platform there, and when the old gentleman come a-tearing along, he never did a thing but slip up on them peaches and fall all over himself. And just then the train it commenced to pull out, and the conductor jumped on with my valise and bandbox, and the last I seen of the old gentleman he was still a-squirming around in them Indian peaches in his wedding-clothes, trying to get on his feet, and still a-yelling. And I just rejoiced and give thanks and shouted, because I knew I had been mightily delivered. And of course I felt awful sorry for the old gentleman; but, like the Bible says, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' And how could anybody expect me to be keeper to a crazy man, anyhow?

  "I've had a many a experience with widowers in my time, and got mighty little respect for 'em anyway, but that was the narrowest escape I ever had, or ever hope to have."

  Lucy S. Furman.