A Letter

The anteroom of the post office in a little Ohio town was crowded. The train had arrived from the west, but it went as soon as it came, for it did not stop. A scream of the whistle, the rumble of the wheels, and the mighty monster dashed through the peaceful town at fifty miles an hour. But the inhabitants were not so interested in the train, for they had seen it pass in just this fashion year after year. But from the baggage coach there came each evening a bag of mail, and this was the cause of the gathering at the post office. While the postmaster and his assistant were opening and distributing the mail behind the closed window in the post office, the restless townspeople occupied themselves in social chat discussing the local happenings of the day, or in reading the notices on the bulletin board.

Everybody was at the post office at this hour. School children, happy at the close of an irksome day of school, shouted boisterously at each other in the street. Laboring men, with empty dinner pails in hand, sat restfully on the curbstone just outside the post office door, and talked of the happenings of the day. The village blacksmith wiped the honest sweat from his brow, closed the shop door, and came down to the post office, where he was met by his flaxen-haired girl of three summers. She clasped her pink arms about the smith’s grimy neck and told him Mama was looking for a letter from Grandma, who had gone to California for her health, and that she had come down to see how many kisses Grandma had sent her. The town doctor, with a dignified air, leaned against the side of the post office door and read the Chicago paper that a previous mail had brought to him. The schoolmaster had finished grading some test papers and had come down to the post office just in time to be the third party to an interesting fist fight in which two sixth grade boys were engaged with great zest in the street. Two out-of-town strangers, who were guests at the hotel just across the way, came over and, seating themselves on a bench in front of the post office, engaged in conversation.

Finally the task behind the window was done. The mail was sorted and placed alphabetically in the proper boxes. The postmaster flipped up the window, and there was a mighty rush and a scramble—for who is not eager to get a letter? Some received several letters and papers; some only one letter; some only a paper; some only a catalog. Some were disappointed altogether, judging from facial expressions; some received glad messages, some sad messages, some indifferent.

When the crowd was dispersed, the two strangers who had been seated on the bench appeared at the window and called for their mail. The postmaster handed to one of them a letter addressed, Evangelist Blank. The address was written in almost an unreadable hand. The evangelist opened the letter. It ran thus:

Dobbinsville, ——, Aug. 29 ——

My dear Evangelist brother:

i am saved and sanctified praise God 0 how i rejoice in this wonderful salvashun i was a member of Mt. Olivet church fer 27 yrs. but i never knowed what it was to be saved from sin this summer i was herdin cattle down in the hills about 30 mi. from here and a most wonderful thing happened. To preachers came along and told me that Christ could save and sanctify me i fought them at first but God would not let me rest until i gave him my heart, then he sanctified me holy o how i rejoice my wife and oldest son is also saved now but say bruther how the people of my own church persecute me they say I am crazy and that a man cant be saved from sin in this life o if i had only found this salvashun when i was a young man but now i am middle aged but by god’s grace i aim to do all i can to save my neighbors. i see in the holiness paper that you are a evangelist and that you go about preachin this wonderful salvashun so i want to now if you will come down here and preach to the people we can’t get Mt. Olivet church but we can build a brush arber. i am sending you $20. this part of the money i urned herdin cattle for deacon gramps i promised the Lord when he saved me that i would give him part of this money so here it is so i hope you can cum your brother saved sanctified and happy

Jake Benton