I was thinking of this and of his tender relationship with children as I had noticed it, and of his service to the late colonel when one day being in the store, I said: 

“Do you stand on the Bible completely, Mr. Burridge?”

“Yes, sir,” he replied, “I do.”

“Believe every word of it to be true?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If your brother has offended you, how many times must you forgive him?”

“Seventy times seven.”

“Do you forgive your brothers?”

“Yes, sir—­if they repent.”

“If they repent?”

“Yes, sir, if they repent.  That’s the interpretation.  In Matthew you will find, ‘If he repent, forgive him.’”

“But if you don’t forgive them, even before they repent,” I said, “aren’t you harboring enmity?”

“No, sir, I’m not treasuring up enmity.  I only refuse to forgive them.”

I looked at the man, a little astonished, but he looked so sincere and earnest that I could not help smiling.

“How do you reconcile that with the command, ‘Love one another?’ You surely can’t love and refuse to forgive them at the same time?”

“I don’t refuse to forgive them,” he repeated.  “If John there,” indicating an old man in a sun-tanned coat who happened to be passing through the store at the time, “should do me a wrong—­I don’t care what it was, how great or how vile—­if he should come to me and say, ‘Burridge, I’m sorry,’” he executed a flashing oratorical move in emphasis, and throwing back his head, exclaimed:  “It’s gone!  It’s gone!  There ain’t any more of it!  All gone!”

I stood there quite dumbfounded by his virility, as the air vibrated with his force and feeling.  So manifestly was his reading of the Bible colored by the grief of his own heart that it was almost painful to tangle him with it.  Goodness and mercy colored all his ideas, except in relation to his one-time followers, those who had formerly been his friends and now left him to himself.

“Do you still visit the poor and the afflicted, as you once did?” I asked him once.

“I’d rather not say anything about that,” he replied sternly.

“But do you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Still make your annual New Year round?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you’ll get your reward for that, whatever you believe.”

“I’ve had my reward,” he said slowly.

“Had it?”

“Yes, sir, had it.  Every hand that’s been lifted to receive the little I had to offer has been my reward.”

He smiled, and then said in seemingly the most untimely way: 

“I remember once going to a lonely woman here on New Year’s Day and taking her a little something—­basket of grapes or fruit of some kind it was.  I was stopping a minute—­never stay long, you know; just run in and say ‘Happy New Year!’ leave what I have and get out—­and so said, ’Good morning, Aunt Mary!’