GEORGIA.
Thanksgiving Letter—Sequel to Begging Letter.
MRS. T. N. CHASE, ATLANTA.
I confess that it is with some regret I must inform you the 26 rooms are all furnished, for this very morning the post brought me these words from dear old Massachusetts: “My Willing Workers, a society of nearly 70 young people, earnestly desire to send $25 to furnish a room in response to your letter in the October American Missionary, but fear it is too late. * * With kindest wishes for abundant answers to all your begging letters, I am yours, sincerely,
Mrs. W.”
During the past three months so many such cheering, cordial messages have come in response to that October call, that I’m sure they have a mission to other hearts as well as mine.
Before ever the October Missionary reached my eyes, came this message from a tried veteran in the field who frequents the New York office: “I think myself fortunate in seeing the advance sheets of the Missionary, and in getting the first taste of your appeal; I think it my privilege to be the first to respond. Save me a light and cheery room, to be named my daughter.”
A few days later came the following from one who has made thousands of hearts glad during the past two years.
“I have just finished reading your letter in the October Missionary, and as I closed, proposed to my wife that we each respond with $25. She, good, dear wife that she is, at once assented, and enclosed I send you my check for $50.”
Next came an inquiry from one who had “just read” the appeal. He had furnished a room ten years before in memory of a brother, and now begged the privilege of naming another for a sainted sister. His consideration for others that made him fear the furnishing of two rooms was too great a privilege to be granted to one, made us question whether the millennium had not really begun.
Later comes a check, and “The money is the gift of the Sunday-school, and they desire to have the room named for our old pastor,——-, who was one of the early abolitionists, and lived to see the slave made free. We feel it would give him pleasure could he know that we remembered him in this way.”
Again from the Ladies’ Department of a Classical School “way down in Maine.” “We number fifteen girls in our home, and are—some of us, at least—trying to work for the same Master as you in your Southern home. We bring our money regularly to our meetings, and soon expect to send you the money to fit up a room for some girl who shall in the future do good work.”
Still later, “Another of my dear Sunday-school scholars, a young lady of twenty, for whom I’ve labored, prayed and trembled for many long months, has been ‘born again.’ She is radiant with the new love in her soul, and when I think how long she was indifferent to all His entreaties, and know what an unsatisfactory life she was leading. I cannot thank and praise Him enough who has so transformed her. And so with the ‘song of thanksgiving’ on my lips I offer to Him through you this memorial of love and gratitude. Appropriate it, if you please, to the furnishing of a room in the new wing. Name it for me, if you choose, but know assuredly it will henceforth be to me a ‘Peniel.’”
But I must not weary you with extracts. The unwritten history of other gifts will doubtless touch our hearts even more deeply when revealed in the light of the Bright Hereafter.
Over 80 girls have already filled the new rooms. Next year it is hoped still another addition will be made. If so, writing another begging letter will be no burden while the memory of such prompt and delightful responses remains.