Stepping Heavenward Part 8

JULY 29.-It is high time to stop and think. I have been like one running a race, and am stopping to take breath. I do not like the way in which things have been going on of late. I feel restless and ill at ease. I see that if I would be happy in G.o.d, I must give Him all.

And there is a wicked reluctance to do that. I want Him-but I want to have my own way, too. I want to walk humbly and softly before Him, and I want to go where I shall be admired and applauded. To whom shall I yield? To G.o.d? Or to myself?

JULY 30.-I met Dr. Cabot to-day, and could not, help asking the question:

"Is it right for me to sing and play in company when all I do it for is to be admired?"

"Are you sure it is all you do it for?" he returned.

"Oh," I said, "I suppose there may be a sprinkling of desire to entertain and please, mixed with the love of display."

"Do you suppose that your love of display, allowing you have it, would be forever slain by your merely refusing to sing in company?"

"I thought that might give it a pretty hard blow," I said, "if not its death-blow."

"Meanwhile, in, punis.h.i.+ng yourself you punish your poor innocent friends," he said laughing. "No child, go on singing; G.o.d has given you this power of entertaining and, gratifying your friends. But ,pray without ceasing, that you may sing from pure benevolence and not from pure self-love."

"Why, do people pray about such things as that?" I cried.

"Of course they do. Why, I would pray about my little finger, if my little finger went astray."

I looked at his little finger, but saw no signs of its becoming schismatic.

AUG. 3.-This morning I took great delight in praying for my little scholars, and went to Sunday-school as on wings. But on reaching my seat, what was my horror to find Maria Perry there!

Oh, your seat is changed," said she. "I am to have half your cla.s.s, and I like this seat better than those higher up. I suppose you don't care?"

"But I do care," I returned; "and you have taken my very best children-the very sweetest and the very prettiest. I shall speak to Mr. Williams about it directly."

"At any rate, I would not fly into such a fury," she said. "It is just as pleasant to me to have pretty children to teach as it is to you. Mr. Williams said he had no doubt you would be glad to divide your cla.s.s with me, as it is so large; and I doubt if you gain anything by speaking to him.

There was no time for further discussion, as school was about to begin. I went to my new seat with great disgust, and found it very inconvenient. The children could not cl.u.s.ter around me as they did before, and I got on with the lesson very badly. I am sure Maria Perry has no gift at teaching little children, and I feel quite vexed and disappointed. This has not been a profitable Sunday, and I and now going to bed, cheerless and uneasy.

AUG. 9.-Mr. Williams called this evening to say that I am to have my old seat and all the children again. All the mothers had been to see him, or had written him notes about it, and requested that I continue to teach them. Mr. Williams said he hoped I would go on teaching for twenty years, and that as fast as his little girls grew old enough to come to Sunday-school he should want me to take charge of them. I should have been greatly elated by these compliments, but for the display I made of myself to Maria Perry on Sunday. Oh, that I could learn to bridle my unlucky tongue!

JAN.15, 1835.-To-day I am twenty. That sounds very old, yet I feel pretty much as I did before. I have begun to visit some of mother's poor folks with her, and am astonished to see how they love her, how plainly they let her talk to them. As a general rule, I do not think poor people are very interesting, and they are always ungrateful.

We went first to see old Jacob Stone. I have been there a good many times with the baskets of nice things mother takes such comfort in sending him, but never would go in. I was shocked to see how worn away he was. He seemed in great distress of mind, and begged mother to pray with him. I do not see how she could. I am perfectly sure that no earthly power could ever induce me to go round praying on bare floors, with people sitting, rocking and staring all the time, as the two Stone girls stared at mother. How tenderly she prayed for him!

We then went to see Susan Green. She had made a carpet for her room by sewing together little bits of pieces given her, I suppose, by persons for whom she works, for she goes about fitting and making carpets. It looked bright and cheerful. She had a nice bed in the corner, covered with a white quilt, and some little ornaments were arranged about the room. Mother complimented her on her neatness, and said a queen might sleep in such a bed as that, and hoped she found it as comfortable as it looked.

"Mercy on us!" she cried out, "it ain't to sleep in! I sleep up in the loft, that I climb to by a ladder every night."

Mother looked a little amused, and then she sat and listened, patiently, to a long account of how the poor old thing had invested her money; how Mr. Jones did not pay the interest regularly, and how Mr. Stevens haggled about the percentage. After we came away, I asked mother how she could listen to such a rigmarole in patience, and what good she supposed she had done by her visit.

"Why the poor creature likes to show off her bright carpet and nice bed, her chairs, her vases and her knick-knacks, and she likes to talk about her beloved money, and her bank stock. I may not have done her any good; but I have given her a pleasure, and so have you."

"Why, I hardly spoke a word."

"Yes, but your mere presence gratified her. And if she ever gets into trouble, she will feel kindly towards us for the sake of our sympathy with her pleasures, and will let us sympathize with her sorrows."

I confess this did not seem a privilege to be coveted. She is not nice at all, and takes snuff.

We went next to see Bridget Shannon. Mother had lost sight of her for some years, and had just heard that she was sick and in great want.

We found her in bed; there was no furniture in the room, and three little half-naked children sat with their bare feet in some ashes where there had been a little fire. Three such disconsolate faces I never saw. Mother sent me to the nearest baker's for bread; I ran nearly all the way, and I hardly know which I enjoyed most, mother's eagerness in distributing, or the children's in clutching at and devouring it. I am going to cut up one or two old dresses to make the poor things something to cover them. One of them has lovely hair that would curl beautifully if it were only brushed out. I told her to come to see me to-morrow, she is so very pretty. Those few visits used up the very time I usually spend in drawing. But on the whole I am glad I went with mother, because it has gratified her. Besides, one must either stop reading the Bible altogether, or else leave off spending one's whole time in just doing easy pleasant things one likes to do.

JAN. 20.-The little Shannon girl came, and I washed her face and.

hands, brushed out her hair and made it curl in lovely golden ringlets all round her sweet face, and carried her in great triumph to mother.

"Look at the dear little thing, mother!" I cried; "doesn't she look like a line of poetry?"

"You foolish, romantic child!" quoth mother. "She looks, to me, like a very ordinary line of prose. A slice of bread and b.u.t.ter and a piece of gingerbread mean more to her than these elaborate ringlets possibly can. They get in her eyes, and make her neck cold; see, they are dripping with water, and the child is all in a s.h.i.+ver."

So saying, mother folded a towel round its neck, to catch the falling drops, and went for bread and b.u.t.ter, of which the child consumed a quant.i.ty that, was absolutely appalling. To crown all, the ungrateful little thing would not so much as look at me from that moment, but clung to mother, turning its back upon me in supreme contempt.

Moral.-Mothers occasionally know more than their daughters do.

Chapter 6

VI.

JANUARY 24. A Message came yesterday morning from Susan Green to the effect that she had had a dreadful fall, and was half killed. Mother wanted to set off at once to see her, but I would not let her go, as she has one of her worst colds. She then asked me to go in her place.

I turned up my nose at the bare thought, though I dare say it turns up enough on its own account.

"Oh, mother!" I said, reproachfully that dirty old woman!"

Mother made no answer, and I sat down at the piano, and played a little. But I only played discords.

"Do you think it is my duty to run after such horrid old women ?" I asked mother, at last.

"I think, dear, you must make your own duties, she said kindly. "I dare say that at your age I should have made a great deal out of my personal repugnance to such a woman as Susan, and very little out of her sufferings."

I believe I am the most fastidious creature in the world. Sick-rooms with their intolerable smells of camphor, and vinegar and mustard, their gloom and their whines and their groans, actually make me shudder. But was it not just such fastidiousness that made Cha-no, I won't utter his name----that made somebody weary of my possibilities?

And has that terrible lesson really done me no good?

JAN. 26.-No sooner had I written the above than I scrambled into my cloak and bonnet, and flew, on the wings of holy indignation, to Susan Green. Such wings fly fast, and got me a little out of breath.

I found her lying on that nice white bed of hers, in a frilled cap and night-gown. It seems she fell from her ladder in climbing to the dismal den where she sleeps, and lay all night in great distress with some serious internal injury. I found her groaning and complaining in a fearful way.

"Are you in such pain ?" I asked, as kindly as I could.

"It isn't the pain," she said, "it isn't the pain. Its the way my nice bed is going to wreck and ruin, and the starch all getting out of my frills that I fluted with my own hands. And the doctor's bill, and the medicines; oh, dear, dear, dear!"

Just then the doctor came in. After examining her, he said to a woman who seemed to have charge of her:

"Are you the nurse?"

"Oh, no, I only stepped in to see what I could do for her."