THE CONVERSION OF JIM

The pressure of my own work, during the following days, postponed my intended visit to Harbor Jim's. Then, one afternoon, I started for a walk, not to Jim's, but to Signal Tower by way of the flakes. The path I chose, wound around among the little fishermen's summer homes and past the flakes now heavy with fish curing in the sun; then across the little valley, near the end of the promontory, up back of the hospital to Cabot Tower and down around the reservoir back to the city. St. John's offers many attractive walks. There is the road out to Quidi Vidi, past the little lake where the regattas are held. There is the road to Bowring Park that gives one the quiet of woods there, with many flowers and a little, singing brook; but for one who loves the sea and the fishers, the walk that goes along the flakes must ever be the favorite.

The afternoon of my walk was clear and the deep, blue water of the harbor was in sight most of the way. I had reached Cabot Tower and had been looking across the unhindered sea toward Ireland, the nearest land beyond, and was turning to go down toward the city, that lay comfortably upon the hills in the mellow, warm light of late afternoon, when I noticed a rather tall, bronzed fisherman, standing close by, evidently sharing the view with me.

I turned and looked squarely at him and thought, "John Cabot himself might have been such a one as you are."

I nodded and the fellow returned it and said, removing his hat as he spoke:

"Don't you think we had better uncover before such a view as that?"

I did as he suggested and drawn to the fellow by his winsome smile I decided to go back to the city with him; but there was a certain reserve in his manner, that did not make it quite easy to go with him unbidden. I hesitated and then asked:

"Have you any objection to my walking back to the city with you?"

"Not in the least," he replied, "provided you do not spoil the last of the day with too many words. You see, sir, I need some time to let that scene sink into my soul."

For a New Yorker who had been interviewing Dominion leaders and talking politics in the interests of a newspaper, the command to keep silent was at least a surprise, but no doubt altogether wholesome.

We started toward the city. The hill drops rather rapidly, you may remember, and then winds more leisurely. Forbidden to spoil the afternoon with words, I could at least watch my unknown companion who chose to practice the vow of silence like a Trappist monk.

He was a fisherman. His clothes told me that, but there was to his walk an elasticity, a certain springiness that the fishermen I knew had lacked. He carried his head higher, his back was straighter. He walked as the son of a King might have walked, who had decided for the time to travel incognito and had chosen the garb of a fisherman.

Now and then I would get a little ahead of him for the chance of looking back and up into his face. The very smile with which he had closed my mouth lingered and lit his face, just as light sometimes lingers on clouds at sunset. I fell to wondering how long it would last, just as sometimes I had estimated the length of sunsets.

We came to a house and a little girl, seeing him, came running down and, without a word, slipped her hand into the man's and walked on some three rods and then left him and went back into the house from which she had come. She also smiled and seemed glad to walk and be silent.

The houses increased in number as we came down the hill. Two boys came and, grabbing each a hand of my companion, walked a little way with him. This time he bestowed upon the boys, not words but a marble a piece. The boys utterly ignored me, kept their eyes rivetted upon him and left, giving him a hearty "Thank you!"

When we came to the last dip of the hill that descends into the city, he paused and, keeping his eyes on the western sky, said:

"Hard on you, sir! I didn't intend to be rude, but since I was converted I have to have more time to myself. Seems only fair that a fellow should have a little time now and then to enjoy his own company. Here's a good place to watch the Lord as He blesses the city at the close of the day."

He waved me to a seat beside him and we sat watching. The silence was not as oppressive. I was a little nearer to my companion and the great gray clouds suffused with pink rivetted my attention. As the sunset waned and the cold, gray of night came on, he got up and, starting toward the city, said:

"Thank you for praying with me."

Now I had not been aware of having said anything at all, but I remembered that prayer may be uttered or unexpressed and ventured no reply.

"Words often weigh down as well as lift. A lot of folks are smothered with them." He was breaking the silence which he had stipulated should be maintained until the view had sunk into his soul. "Words have to be well chosen, then they lift their pound. I'm not averse to talking on occasion; only, I find, when I'm talking too much, I'm thinking too little. Then, again, God wants to have His say now and then, and how can He, if we are sputtering all the while? Guess He talks still to some folks in the cool of the evening just as He did in the old garden."

Released from the command to be silent and no longer with the opportunity of seeing my companion clearly, for it was fast growing dark, I felt that I would very much like to know something more of this strange, yet likable, fellow, and the words that he had spoken about his conversion prompted me in turn to break the silence.

"I think I have received more out of this walk and this sunset than any I can remember, but my conversion was evidently not the same as yours. I would like to know about your conversion. Maybe it would open my eyes wider and let me see more as you do."

I spoke now, not curiously, but earnestly, for I wanted to know how he could find so much on the old familiar hill and how I might find what he was finding.

He laughed heartily and his laugh left the situation less tense and made him seem more human.

"Maybe my conversion won't interest you," he said, "then again, it may help you. It was on this very road, I was converted. Only it was in the morning at half past nine. It was a foggy morning. Newfoundland has a good many of them. I used to think, too many, before I was converted, but now it seems to me best, for it just curtains the beautiful world and each time the curtain lifts it seems a little fairer than before for the waiting.

"Now I've always loved the hills and the sea and enjoyed a good view, as most fishermen do, but that morning I was scuffing along, out of patience with a poor catch of the day before and seeing nothing but fog. The sea and the hills were out of sight. Suddenly I heard a voice say:

"'Why don't you look at yourself, Jim?'

"I stopped stock still in the middle of the road, like a hand had been put upon me and detained me. The voice was no more but the question was for me and it had to be answered.

"It would take some time, so I decided to sit down and consider it. I could show you the very rock, sometime, if you cared to see it. I had never done much thinking 'till that morning. I said to myself:

"'James, you don't know yourself well enough to call yourself by your first name. You have peeped into your neighbors' affairs. You've criticised other folks but you've never really gotten acquainted with yourself.'

"So I stood myself up and asked myself questions in a real, down-right, honest desire to see just what I was and what I was doing here. First I says:

"'Who are you, Jim?'

"And I figured out that I had the right answer, though I had forgotten it and lived in contradiction of it. I was and I am a child of the Father.

"Do you know, sir, the knowledge of that will ask a man a good many more questions and answer 'em, too.

"'Where are you living, Jim?' I said to myself and the answer came, 'You are living in His world and it's a good world. He made it for you and His other children. He's put fish in all the seas and if it ain't one kind it's another. There is enough in His world for all the children, and if any on'em starves, it's because some on'em is blind or the other children has forgotten they are to share His things. It's a fair world, with blue sky and little birds that sing, and little flowers that praise Him, too.'

"It's a cheery thought, sir, that we're a livin' in His world. It makes it worth while to live right. Then the next question I put myself was this:

"'What are you worth?'

"I reckoned up and found I was worth five quintals of salt fish, a half a barrel of cod liver oil and twelve lobster pots, most of 'em empty. I owned no house and aside from the fish I had $149 in the bank and an extra suit of clothes that wouldn't count for much.

"'Is that all you're worth,' I said, and I saw it wasn't enough to count me rich. I remembered, I could really think that morning, that Job's riches were not in camels and sheep. So I might be rich in other things beside codfish and oil, but I grew ashamed of myself that morning when I come to see how little I could count up that was worth carrying with me for eternity.

"Bob McCartney's friendship, the part I'd given, counted a little; but when it come to counting faith and hope and truth, it didn't show up very well. I was poor and I had come to know it and that was the best part of it. There was hope then for me and a chance I might become rich.

"'Where are you going?' again the Voice asked me a big question. I meet folks who have forgotten, just as I had done. But it helps to keep a fellow on the right track to remember where the road ends.

"'What are you doing here?' was the next question and I put myself to answer it there on the rock that morning I was converted.

"Fishing, I answered first, but what for, and is that all, came the questions. Now I take it fishing or farming, writing or preaching, it don't make much difference, so long as we're each just where He wants us to be and are doing just what He wants us to do. And every man has got to find out if he is where the Father wants him to be.

"It didn't take me long to find out that I might be where He wanted me to be, but I knew I wasn't doing all He wanted me to do and I was adoin' a good many things He didn't want me to do.

"Then I made some resolutions. Some folks don't believe in 'em, I know, but they always seemed to me to be good crutches, till a man could manage to get on without them and learn to walk straight. I resolved to be the best fisherman ever put out to sea, to clean my fish thorough, to salt 'em well and sell 'em honest weight.

"Then I resolved to know more of His world since He made it for me and the other children. Then, I remembered that since He had sent His Son to show the way, I'd better listen to Him and go His way.

"The next day I went over to Parson Curtis' and said to him:

"'Yesterday was my day o' grace, and I was converted at half past nine. I'm not saved, but I'm on the way to salvation and I'd like to be broughten just as near to His Son as I can be. I'm just a learnin', but no child ever wanted to learn more than I do now.'

"So when it come Sunday, he took me into the fellowship of Jesus and I've been learnin' ever since."

I think I have given you almost his words. You see they were short, real words, and the only fear I have is that in repeating them I may have lost the quiet, deep-seated earnestness that was in his voice. He spoke that night from his heart. We were on Water Street now and it was time for us to part.

"Thank you," I said, and I spoke as sincerely as he had spoken, "and if you don't mind I would like to know your name. It is James, what?"

He reached out a big hand and took a firm grip of mine and said: "I'm Jim. Harbor Jim they call me." And then I remembered that I had been looking for him.