Author: Upton Sinclair
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5961] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on October 1, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK, Samuel the seeker ***
Charles Franks, Charles Aldarondo, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading
Team.
By Upton Sinclair
“Samuel,” said old Ephraim, “Seek,
and ye shall find.”
He had written these words upon the little picture
of Samuel’s mother, which hung in that corner
of the old attic which served as the boy’s bedroom;
and so Samuel grew up with the knowledge that he, too,
was one of the Seekers. Just what he was to seek,
and just how he was to seek it, were matters of uncertainty—they
were part of the search. Old Ephraim could not
tell him very much about it, for the Seekers had moved
away to the West before he had come to the farm; and
Samuel’s mother had died very young, before
her husband had a chance to learn more than the rudiments
of her faith. So all that Samuel knew was that
the Seekers were men and women of fervor, who had broken
with the churches because they would not believe what
was taught—holding that it was every man’s
duty to read the Word of God for himself and to follow
where it led him.
Thus the boy learned to think of life, not as something
settled, but as a place for adventure. One must
seek and seek; and in the end the way of truth would
be revealed to him. He could see this zeal in
his mother’s face, beautiful and delicate, even
in the crude picture; and Samuel did not know that
the picture was crude, and wove his dreams about it.
Sometimes at twilight old Ephraim would talk about
her, and the tears would steal down his cheeks.
The one year that he had known her had sufficed to
change the course of his life; and he had been a man
past middle life, too, a widower with two children.
He had come into the country as the foreman of a lumber
camp back on the mountain.
Samuel had always thought of his father as an old
man; Ephraim had been hurt by a vicious horse, and
had aged rapidly after that. He had given up
lumbering; it had not taken long to clear out that
part of the mountains. Now the hills were swept
bare, and the population had found a new way of living.
