That is the great consolation, it is nothing personal and special, every one shares in the disaster, and to them it makes it easy to bear. For myself it does not help me, it only makes it harder, the loss is so widespread and complete. I fear the storm drops a dramatic, I may say tragic, curtain on my career as a rice planter.
The rice-fields looked like a great lake.
Cherokee, September 23.
I did not go to Peaceville to church this morning, C. having written me that the dean would hold service at St. Peter's-in-the-Woods at four, that he would drive him there and that they would come back with me and spend the night. So I prepared a nice dinner of wild duck and broiled chicken for them and took my own frugal little lunch at 2 o'clock and drove out to the church.
The day was very hot but beautiful. Jim did not go to town last evening, but stayed to drive me out in wagon with Ruth and Marietta. I always enjoy driving behind this pair of mother and daughter. Marietta dances along gayly and Ruth tries her very best not to let her daughter outdo her.
The little church was crowded with the simple, pathetic congregation. Louise Moore looked sweet in her black dress, her face so sad, for it is just two months since she lost her beautiful seven-year-old boy. She held up with pride her new baby, which she tightly clasped in her arms. So it is with them always: "Le roi est mort; vive le roi." But I know this new baby can never be as clever and good a child as the little Charley was.
The dean read the gospel for the day, the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, beginning "No man can serve two masters." He shut the book and spoke quietly and beautifully on what makes a Christian. Is it baptism? No. Going to church? No. And so on, and then he explained what it was; to follow in the footsteps left by the Saviour; to be kind, gentle, thoughtful to others, helpful in word and deed, unselfish, self-denying, and to be guided by counsel from above, asked for daily, hourly, in what we call prayer. Then he explained how one can pray in the midst of work and turmoil; the heart needs no ceremony to ask the help of the Heavenly Father. There are no doorkeepers or guards at the gates. There the humblest kind of prayer, the silent aspiration, "Lord, be merciful to me a sinner," goes straight, unimpeded, to the throne of grace. Then he dwelt on God's special care for each of His children and His knowledge of their weaknesses and temptations and needs.
It was a joy to me to see Solomon's great round eyes fixed eagerly on the speaker, looking for something which his simple mind could grasp and hold. He was asking bread, and I was so thankful that he was not getting a stone. Col. Ben fixed his wistful eyes with their long lashes, the only spark of beauty about his very freckled face, on the preacher and never seemed even to wink. A very stout man in his shirt sleeves whom I did not recognize as one of the regular congregation (the men are all so thin and tall), looked as though he was forced to listen and understand against his will.