In a certain village there lived a farmer named Tom, known far and wide for his kind heart. Wherever a poor person appeared, even though he might be a complete stranger, Tom was sure to get notice of him somehow, and he always went to help him in his trouble.
One winter, all at once, a great number of misfortunes fell upon his neighbors. First of all the family on one side of him were taken ill with a fever, and Tom did his best to look after them, but he was obliged to see his cow die of starvation, for he could not get a morsel of fodder for her. Then on his other side lived Mr. Tily, who broke his leg in a fall off his horse the very day after the fever came to his neighbor. Then the father of this family had a bad accident which put him in the hospital just at the time that his wife was confined of her seventh child.
“What a pity it is,” said Tom to his wife, as they sat over their coffee one evening after all their hard work, “that misfortunes come all together! Did you ever notice it?”
“Yes,” said his wife, whose thoughts were only too busy that night, “but if so many people are in trouble, how come you to be the only one without a cow, or a plough horse, or anyone to help you? How do you manage your work alone?”
At this Tom’s head sunk on his breast in thought, for it was quite true, his work was very heavy for one man, especially with a family as large as his. It is true that he never exacted work at homework, and he was always glad to see anyone drop in of a morning to work for him, but by degrees hardly anyone came, as everyone was obliged to work for everyone else, and at last this turned all the village against him.
His wife was a very good woman, but that evening she felt hardly very amiable.
Tom tried to keep her spirits up, and put on a good face between the prams, but he found it very hard work.
“And besides,” said he to himself in the evening, “if I were to get some people together to ask their help, they would have to do less for themselves, and people have so many things to think of nowadays, and are so hard driven that I cannot see how I could venture to do so.”
So he took another cup of coffee, and then they went to bed and slept over the matter till morning in hope of better counsels, but they did not come.
He heard the church bells ring for eleven for prayers, but the prayers were only for his neighbors, whose sick and sorry condition did not seem to mend the matter much. He was obliged to help them all he could, and that underhanded their own work. Then he had to work in the field from getting light, after having to go hither and thither in hopes of a morsel of fodder for his horse, and the work went on just in the old fighting way.
About three weeks after he had now over work had come home, he was met by a party from the village, who begged him, as the most properly qualified man in the parish, and in the absence of the rector, to undertake the care of everything, as everyone living in was ready to do all he could.
“How can I do it without anyone to help me?” said poor Tom, afraid to give himself any hopes. “I cannot send for a doctor, I have no horse to carry him about, and my own family are not yet what they were.”
But he soon discovered that the people had a purse provided by contributions from the sick without everyone who were before by hand by the others and that it held about three hundred pounds.
Is it possible, cried he, is it possible to collect so large a sum of money? Then how was it done? “Oh, it was very easy. People who were able to contribute to the fund had furnished a sum to be told to everyone. Sometimes it is true they are people do not so much trouble us as those who know them do, but it is better the money should go to one man and done with it than to twenty in twopences, like it was at first. Besides that no one ever thought real. But what use is all that money to us?”
Then Tom brightened up. All that followed was done without asking a word. Each family, old and young, confined and healthy, in what was then their needed to every person who heard it given was rushed, and collecting all everyone into their own and running into farms, here to collect all within common. In the end, before nightfall we could collect all the sum that would be sufficient to keep folks from starving, is a shameful state men to think of.