Drinking has disappeared except in sporadic cases. Lawlessness is under ban. A great, throbbing, new life has come to stimulate and inspire not only the valley, but its environs.
Here the reclaiming power of Christian service meets with fullest response. A church and Sunday-school (also four outlying schools), men's Bible classes, several Endeavor Societies and King's Daughters' Circles, Boy Scouts, Girls' clubs—the ministry of a hospital, schools and dormitories, all are spreading the regenerating forces and bringing in a new day of hope, opportunity, and efficiency to this valley, and to hundreds of others throughout the Southland.
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All along the fine military road built by Spain in Porto Rico—and still more on the bridle paths that pass for roads in much of the island—may be seen little brown shacks, or huts, made of old boards and tin cans flattened out, and thatched with palm leaves. In these the people live.
"We had sixty names on the waiting list of the Missionary Home in Porto Rico, and money had come so we could take in a few more, and we—the superintendent and I—went to try to find the most needy. Our search took us into a dreadful, slimy patio, where we found a grandmother and three little girls. We could take but two of them. The oldest was thirteen—we knew she would soon be too old to be helped at all if we did not take her now. The second was under ten, and the youngest was three and a half. We could not bear to leave the dead mother's baby, so we took the oldest and the youngest, and promised the second girl that we would come for her as soon as possible. They lived in a room nine by twelve feet in size, in which twenty-two people slept under some old clothes. Do you wonder that she fell on her knees begging 'Oh, lady, take me, too!'"
"The next day the grandmother was taken ill and had to be sent to the hospital, and on Tuesday when I went to the patio again the girl had disappeared.
"Three months later we found her, beaten and bruised from head to foot, at the door of the Home. She had been in a place where care and shelter were expected, but when the poor, home-sick girl cried, they abused her and then put her out on the street, and somehow she found her way to our Home.
"You would enjoy seeing how quickly the girls in our Home learn to help each other. Mercedes had been in the Home but ten days when Francesca came—a bit of a waif who had never worn shoes in all her life, nor seen a bed before. Of course she knew nothing about undressing and sleeping between clean, white sheets. She tried to do like the others, but got into bed with her precious new shoes and stockings on. Mercedes watched her, and when ready herself, slipped across the room, whispered to Francesca, took off her shoes and stockings, pushed her—but very gently—down on her knees for the evening prayer, and then covered her up in bed as softly and lovingly as a mother." [Footnote: In Southern Seas—Alice M. Guernsey—Women's Home Missionary Society, Methodist Episcopal Church.]
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With soft, Insistent regularity came the beat of the tom-tom over the hills, calling the Indians to the Medicine Lodge dance. There was something weirdly fascinating in the reiterated turn, turn, that carried almost a hypnotic power as hour after hour it called through the stillness.