Silhouettes and Salvation

Our friend, the mother of three young children, came into the office to ask about new children’s books. ‘ I have a hard time pleasing my husband,’ she said. ‘I buy books for the children and he turns up his nose at them. He says he supposes virtue has to triumph, but he wishes it would not do so in such a smug and unpleasant manner. Probably he is just talking — but he gets up a long theory about it. He says when he was a boy he read The Pilgrim’s Progress.’

This was like magic to the Shop-Talker — the mother of three had fairly played into his hands. He pointed to his desk on which was a pile of black and white silhouette pictures, charming representations of the adventures of Christian amid peril, toil, and pain.

‘Tell your husband to come around in May,’ he said, ‘ and the Press will have Miss Edith Smith’s abridgment of Bunyan ready for him — and illustrated with these drawings by Miss Harriet Smith, not sisters, but you might think they were, so closely have their spirits run together in making this work — almost like one person with two talents.’

The mother of three sat there and kept the Shop-Talker from his work until she had looked at every one of the drawings,

‘ But these are fascinating,’ she said finally. ‘ Is the story as good as these? ’

‘Of course it is. It always was a good story, but as Bunyan wrote it, it is too devious, and too theologic, for most children, and many adults. Miss Smith has made it a tale of adventure, bodily as well as spiritual, and has unwrapped the plot.

And after that we talked about other things, most of which were the beautiful failures of our mutual enemies.