MRS. TUCKERS’ CONVERSION.
It was Saturday afternoon, and Mrs. Tucker was very tired. Life was hard at best, only a tedious routine of wearisome duties; but on this particular afternoon, the closing of the week’s work pressed very heavily upon her.
“Oh, Mrs. Tucker, can Sallie go with us to the mission band?”
Mrs. Tucker raised her eyes, and saw, standing in the doorway, two little girls.
“Mission band! I’d like to know what’s a mission band?” she demanded sharply.
“Why,” spoke out the bolder of the two; “it’s lot of us children all together, working and sewing for poor folks. We bring our pennies to Miss May for them, and she says it’s giving to Jesus. We have just the nicest time; do let her go.”
“Oh, mother,” and Sallie’s brown eyes looked appealingly into her mother’s face; “please say I may—do let me.”
Mrs. Tucker slowly folded the garment she had ironed, and hung it in its place before she answered.
“No, she can’t. I can give her all the sewing she wants to home, and we’ve got nothing to give the Lord; he don’t give to us. So go along, and tell Miss May that Sallie Tucker’s better set to work.”
When Mrs. Tucker, the hard day’s work at last completed, toiled wearily up stairs, she found her little daughter seated upon the top stair, while about her on the floor, were scattered all her childish treasures.
“What on earth, child,” exclaimed her mother, “is all this clutter for? What are you trying to do?”
“Why, mother,” chirruped the sweet child’s voice; “I am looking to find something to give to Jesus.”
“Give to Jesus! What do you think the Lord wants of such stuff as this?”
“But, mother,” she explained, and her voice grew unsteady, and the bright eyes filled with tears, “my teacher said anything we give to him, he would like it; and if we gave what we loved best, it pleased him most. And this is what I love most—my wax doll and my birthday book. Won’t he take it, mother? Can’t I give him anything?”
“Sallie Tucker!” and her mother’s voice was cold and stern, “you just put this notion out of your head. You don’t know what giving to the Lord means. Put this trash away. When the Lord remembers us with some of his plenty, ’twill be time enough to give to him, I reckon.”
It was the afternoon for the Woman’s Quarterly Missionary Meeting, in the Shadyville Baptist church. Mrs. Gray, the minister’s wife, came to the vestry with a sad heart. She knew too well the character of these gatherings. A few ladies came together, in a listless, apathetic way, a few lifeless prayers were offered, a little business disposed of, and the ladies went to their homes wondering why there wasn’t more interest in missions. Mrs. Tucker wasn’t in the habit of attending the missionary meeting, so when she came into one this afternoon, the ladies present looked at each other in surprise. Mrs. Gray read the psalm and offered prayer, and then came the usual dead silence.
Presently Mrs. Tucker rose to her feet, and, in a voice shaken with emotion, said:—
“I s’pose you’re all astonished to see me here, but the truth of the matter is, I’ve got something to say to you, which can’t half be told in words, neither. You all know my little Sallie has been sick; but I don’t s’pose none of you know what that sickness has been to me. You see the children wanted her to go to the mission band, but I was tough and cranky, and dead set ag’in’ anything of the kind, and told her, in the crossest way, she couldn’t go. She’d heard somethin’ about giving to Jesus, and laid out her best doll and book; an’ I laughed at it, an’ told her the Lord didn’t want her trash. Well, she took sick, an’ got sicker an’ sicker, till my heart stood still with the fear o’ losing her. She was out of her head, you know; and every time I come near the bed, she’d start right up an’ say, ‘Oh, can’t I give him anything? Don’t he want my dolly? O mother, mother can’t I go?’ till I just thought my heart would break in two. Everywhere I looked, I could see her eyes, with such a beseechin’ look in ’em, and hear her voice callin’, ‘Mother, mother, can’t I give anything?’ till at last I went down on my knees, all broke up like, and I sez:—
“‘Lord, I’m a poor, ungrateful sinner, and I’ve been a-withholding from you all these years; but if there’s anythin’ I can give you, won’t you please take it? Even my little girl, and everything I’ve got I just lay down.’
“Well, my sisters, I cried an’ cried as I hain’t for years, and it wasn’t all for sorrow, neither; there was a great deep joy in it all. An’ I come here to-day to tell you that I just give myself and all I’ve got to the Lord’s work. I’m fairly converted to missions, and if the Lord will only take the poor, miserable offerin’ I’ve got to give, and use me rough-shod in his work, I’d really be only too thankful. Why, my sisters, I’m the happiest woman on earth, and it’s all owin’ to the blessed child and that there children’s band.”—Selected.