Article May 10, 1919 Issue

Windows and Light

MARY P. BELLINGER

The morning had seemed very long to a certain student of Christian Science. For several days the heat had been intense, even for July, while an accumulation of work had been brought to her desk. A headache had stayed with her for nearly a week despite her efforts to apply her understanding of God's healing law to the problem, and looking at the weary expression on the faces of the clerks busily working near, her thought seemed to go down under the general feeling of strain and weariness. The thermometer had registered over a hundred degrees in the office the previous afternoon, and somehow all the morning she could not keep from dwelling on that fact in thought, and dreading what it might do the coming afternoon. The recollection of the Hebrew children passing unscathed through the burning fiery furnace did not seem to give any consolation.

The noon hour came, and hastening through her lunch, she took the newly arrived copy of the Sentinel, which she had brought with her that morning, and settled down in the hope of finding help in its comforting pages. She had no sooner opened the paper than a young clerk across the aisle came over, seated himself near, and entered into conversation. Mentally denying the disappointment she felt at the interruption, the Scientist talked pleasantly to the boy, when suddenly the conversation turned, and the young fellow said, "I just can't stand that man," referring to the chief clerk, whose desk was near.

Now the student had heard unfavorable remarks made by another clerk about this same man soon after entering that department, and for that reason had taken special occasion to observe him closely. In dealing with the hundreds of men who came to him for their final statements, she had been surprised and glad to find behind the short words and bursque manner a true kindness that had many times gone out of its way to help a stranded man. So she immediately set to work to correct the false impression. She said, "Perhaps his voice sounds cross to you because you do not hear what he really says and see what he does. I sit nearer than you do," and she then went on to relate instances of two kind acts which had come under her observation, and while she talked the young man listened earnestly. Finally he rose and said with a smile, "Well, I like him better now, since you told me that."

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