His father held a light

S. Parkes Cadman once told a lovely story in my presence while we were out in Chautauqua together one summer. He had been a coal miner in his boyhood before he came to the United States, and the outstanding memory of those days was when he was what the English call a “breaker boy.”

He was promoted to driving a mule in the mine. That stubborn mule pulled him and his coal car through the mine’s dark tunnels past an intersection which was a very dangerous spot, for it had a steep incline. At that steep intersection more than a few boys had been killed when a runaway car would smash into another car.

On his first trip young Cadman, behind his mule and riding a big load of coal, approached that intersection with anxiety and fear in his young heart. He had heard so many stories of boys and mules having been killed at that spot that he was frightened nearly out of his wits. His legs went cold; his body trembled so that he could hardly hold the reins over the mule’s back. He was so frightened that he could hardly bring himself to go on toward that dangerous intersection.

He thought he heard the thunder of a runaway car coming down the incline toward that narrow, dark place where two tracks crossed. There were no signals then as there are now in coal mines; human life was comparatively cheap and one just had to take a chance.

Just as he turned a corner and approached the dangerous crossing he saw a tiny gleam of light, and when he reached the intersection he brushed a tear from his eyes with his dirty sleeve, making a smear down across his cheeks. He smiled as he looked up through the mist in his tear-filled eyes, for there stood his own father, a coal miner, with a lantern in his hands. He had thought of the boy’s danger and fears as he made his first approach to that intersection.

Dr. Cadman remarked, “That was the most beautiful light I ever saw in all my life, and my dirty, coal-smeared father was the handsomest man I ever saw, as he stood there in the dim light of that lantern, waiting for me with a big smile on his face.” Then he added, “I have approached many a dangerous intersection of life since that day.

I came to the United States without a friend or a farthing to make my way alone among strange people, but I have never yet come up to a dark, hard, dangerous intersection or problem in this my adopted land, that some kindly soul has not been holding a lantern up to light my way. That seems to be the spirit of this nation, both to its adopted sons and to its own children. There’s always a man holding a lantern at every dangerous crossroads, intersection, and problem.

That is the spirit of this nation and its friendly, generous people.”