THOMAS CHATHAM.
BY MRS. THOS. N. CHASE.
About fifteen years ago, a colored boy whom we will call Thomas Chatham helped to swell the flock that followed their white teacher to some tumble-down buildings in Atlanta, Ga.
There is a kind of wild delight about the memory of those days, “just after freedom,” when the “old uncles and aunties” as well as the boys and girls endured heat and cold, hunger and rags, inspired by the blissful idea of getting “larnin’” about as they had gotten freedom, “kind o’ sudden like.” When they found their mistake, of course thousands dropped out by the way, but Thomas Chatham was not one of them.
When we went South in 1869, he had gotten quite a start. I first saw him in the Congregational Sunday-school at Storrs Chapel, and noticed that whenever the Superintendent asked a question that nobody else could answer, a queer-looking fellow with a very thick tongue usually answered it. In two or three years he was admitted to the preparatory department of Atlanta University. But how the boys did laugh at him! How shocking! some tender-hearted child says. So it is. Many a time my heart has ached for poor Chatham. But you must remember that colored children are no better than white ones, and I am sure you have seen some poor awkward white boy laughed at till perhaps your kind eyes filled with tears. Then I suppose I don’t see the funny side of comical sights so quickly as some, and Thomas Chatham did look queer. Although he is quite short, he has very large feet and broad shoulders, with a big head set nearly flat upon the latter. Then he was very poor, and did not know how to make the best of the poor clothes he had. His shoes were run down at the heel, so that when he walked he shuffled along, lest, I suppose, his shoes should fall off. He learned with great difficulty and made very droll blunders, but he never lost his temper or got out of patience. At the beginning of each year a new set of thoughtless scholars would make fun of his looks and his blunders, till his calm dignity told louder than words that he lived in an atmosphere far above that level where the taunts or esteem of his fellows had much weight.
His home was two or three miles from school, yet he trudged on year after year, often drenched with rain and chilled into ague, hoping that some time he would know enough to serve his people as a teacher in a country school. Several of his teachers advised him to learn a trade, judging that from all human appearances he could never teach or control a school. Others who knew more of his Bible knowledge and sublime faith thought that, perhaps, God could find a place for him somewhere; and He has.
Every summer vacation now he goes out into some obscure corner to teach, and reports come back to us that our best students are not so successful as he in leading their pupils to that beginning of all wisdom, the fear of the Lord.
Chatham’s success is to me a living sermon from the text, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” And why that Spirit helps him seems to be because he is willing to do anything, to go anywhere, to be only a sower, and let another be the reaper; in short, while he is weak, yet is he strong, because of that most beautiful of all graces, humility. How slow I have been learning the hard lesson, that God passes by the learned, the brilliant and the talented until they are thoroughly humbled, and, to our surprise, honors some lowly one who is willing to give God the glory and not beg back any share of it.
“For thus saith the High and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit.”