Читать книгу: «The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 03, March, 1889», страница 4

EVERY-DAY LIFE

MRS. A.W. CURTIS

Put on your best glasses, dear friends, and take a peep at the regular, every-day life of some of the workers among the colored people South.

Rap, rap, rap.

"Come in!"

It is a toil-worn, sad-faced woman, with hard, bony hands, and that look of patient endurance that is so pathetic. She is poorly clad, with only a thin bit of an old shawl around her shoulders, and a hat so disreputable that she instantly removes it, and drops it behind her on the floor. After a few kindly words of greeting, she tells her story. A sickly husband, deranged for the last nine years of his life, whom she had to support and care for; a daughter who married a wretch who treated her so cruelly that she, too, lost her mind, when he left her entirely, with their child. She kept the daughter confined to bed or chair, while she worked out as cook, to support them all. She had several other children. Finally the crazy daughter got away, and she does not know whether she is dead or alive.

What had she come to us for? Money, old clothes, help of some kind?

No, indeed. She came to see if we would take her grand-daughter and her own daughter, both about twelve years old, into our school. She had never been able to make them fit to go to any school, so they could not even read, but she would do her very best, if we would take them now. I wish Mr. Hand could have seen her shining face and tearful eyes, when we told her of the kind friend who had provided so grandly for just such cases as these.

A patter of small feet, a hasty rap at the door.

"Please ma'am, send little sister some medicine."

"What ails sister?"

The little fellow looked puzzled for a moment, then confidently answered, "Her stomach has settled on her bowels!"

It is a perplexing diagnosis, but a few skillful questions draw out the fact that she has a bad cold, and some chamomilla is sent at a venture. Word comes back the next day that "Sister is well: that medicine did her all the good."

Next comes, one after another, a perfect rush of small boys and big girls, with now and then a man or woman for variety, on various errands. "Please ma'am, give me a settin' of eggs. Our old hen wants to set, and we haint got no eggs." The great brown eyes grow round with astonishment when we tell them that the hens are A.M.A. hens now, and not ours, and these hungry teachers eat every egg they lay. Two or three others, who have been accustomed to rely on our good nature for their winter supply of greens and salad, receive the same reply, and it is evident that the new order of things is very unsatisfactory and perplexing to them.

"Please ma'am, give me some castor oil for the baby; she's awful sick; Doctor says it's indigestion of the lungs."

She gets the castor oil, but soon comes back to say in most cheerful tones—"Baby is dead. She died at ten o'clock, but she's better off, and please, ma'am, give mother a black basque to wear to the funeral."

Heartless? Oh no. There was great wailing and moaning at the funeral, and when the one carriage, with as many of the family as could crowd in beside the poor little coffin, started for the cemetery, this same child stood in the doorway, waving her handkerchief, and shouting tragically, "Fare thee well, baby! Fare thee well!"

A half-grown girl came up the steps with two tiny chickens about as large as pigeons, their legs tied together, their voices lifted up in shrill squawks.

"Father sent you these two chickens for a Christmas present, and says please send him a coat and pair of breeches, and a vest, too, if you can. And mother sent you these eggs for a present, and please send her a warm underskirt and a pair of shoes!" A modest request, surely.

Next, a great girl, barefooted, though it was a raw, cold day that made us huddle gladly over a big fire, and with her a small boy, literally naked so far as his bony little legs were concerned. A few fluttering rags that had once been pants depended from the remnant of what had once been a calico waist. An old bag was pinned around his shoulders, which completed his entire outfit. "Please ma'am, mother says she'll send Johnny to school if you'll give him a coat and some breeches." Alas, there is neither on hand, nothing for the boy except a thin cotton shirt, and a pair of thin overalls to make over, by a mother who is more accustomed to the use of a hoe than a needle, and who has seven children as ragged and miserable as poor Johnny.

A messenger rushes in without knocking. "Come quick—Mattie's baby burnt!"

"Yes, I'll come. Wrap it in cotton and oil."

Away flies the messenger. I seize the bottle of morphine and a hat, and follow to the child's home. The floor is strewn with fragments of burnt clothing. A sickening odor of burnt flesh fills the room. The scorched high chair, in which the child was tied and put before the open fireplace, while the mother went to a neighbor's for milk, lay in a pool of water, and beside it, the burnt whisk-broom that an older baby had put in the fire, then dropped blazing under the baby's long clothes, these told the whole sad story. They were all at the grandparent's house next door—a crowd of screaming people. Upon the bed lay what was left of the poor child, moaning in conscious agony. A drop of water containing the precious anodyne which alone could ease it then, soon brought blessed unconsciousness until death kindly bore the little soul to God. But oh! the heart-rending grief of that poor mother! God grant we may never witness such suffering again. We tried to comfort her with our tearful sympathy and prayers, but God alone can ever heal her sore heart.

A sad-faced man wants to see the minister. We know his pitiful story and his errand before he speaks. A sick wife and six young children. The desperate daily fight with the hunger-wolf at the door, spite of the little lifts we try to give them. Now the wife is dead, and he comes to ask for money to buy a coffin and a place to lay her away. He has tried in vain elsewhere, so comes to us, and we cannot refuse. A few hours after, the pitiful little procession passes by. The pine coffin in an old cart, the husband and children, the minister and a few friends, following on foot. Such calls are frequent. Does the money ever come back? Once it did.

So it goes on, day after day, twenty, thirty, sometimes forty calls, for all these incidents are actual facts, and fair samples of our daily experiences and only a small part of our work. There is a large household to look after, and between times there must be flying visits to the distant kitchen to see that everything is going on right there. A watchful eye must look after the details of the dining room and see to the comfort of the whole household. Supplies must be ordered; bills must be paid; there are countless letters to write; there are sorrowful hearts to be comforted; wayward church members to look after; cold, dead prayer meetings to warm up; the Sunday-school to carry along; mother's meetings and children's meetings and missionary societies. An unlimited stock of patience, tact and good nature must be constantly on hand to keep all the machinery running smoothly, while the work is exhausting, wearing out body and soul far too soon.

Does it pay? Yes! for slowly but surely this people is being lifted up to a higher life, and while we sometimes grow faint and heartsick and discouraged, still there are rifts in the clouds and bits of sunshine now and then to cheer our hearts, and someday we hope to hear the Master say, "Well done!"