I found that this poor soul had been for a week nursing a neighbor night and day, only leaving her long enough to walk the mile home and get her meals.
Mrs. Sullivan is very old as well as very ill and very poor, so that all the lifting and cooking and work of every kind Mrs. Lewis has done. When I said, "But you ought to get your meals there," she answered:—
"There isn't enough, Miss Patience, in the house but jus' for her, an' I'm thankful that we've got plenty o' grits to eat now; nobody need be hungry here."
It certainly is a lesson in more ways than one to go among those whose lives are so elementary. This woman, who has been accused of failing in her highest duties, who knows the daily presence of want, who has never had enough of anything but air and sunshine and the breath of life, spends day and night and all her strength in nursing a woman for the moment poorer than herself, in that she is old and helpless, and there is no feeling that she is doing anything unusual.
She put some of the dry hominy in a bucket and saying, "Now I mus' be goin'; Miss Sullivan begged me pitiful not to stay long," she took the bucket and started off at a brisk walk, but I asked her to sit on the back of the buckboard as I had to pass the house. This delighted her and we had much talk.
I asked if Mrs. Sullivan had no children who could help with the nursing. She said she had two.
"Yes, mum, she has a daughter, but she's mighty feeble an' she lives three miles away, an' it jes seems as if she couldn't get to cum to her mar; an' when she does git there, well, she's that tuckered out an' that sorry fur her mar, that she jes sets in to cry. Then Miss Sullivan's son lives with her, but he seems as if his mind was a-goin'; he kyan't do nothing."
"Doesn't he work?" I asked.
"Oh, yes, mum, he goes out an' works turpentine—that's all they've got to live on—but he don't think to cut a stick of wood, or bring a drop of water 'less'n you tell him to do it. His mar's too sick to tell him, an' he'll jes sit there an' see the fire go out an' never think. But soon as I tell him to cut a piece o' wood he'll do it right off. He's a big strong man an' they say a powerful fellow to work, but he don't seem to have no head to think."
I was sorry it was too late for me to go in and see the old woman and her son and find out what was wrong with the latter. I remember John very well. When I taught him in Sunday-school he was a very mischievous boy, but not stupid at all. I cannot think what has come to him.