I must stop writing now or I will get too blue. I must go out and bathe in the generous sunshine and feast my eyes on the glory of yellow jessamine that crowns every bush and tree and revel in the delicious perfume as my bicycle glides over the soft, brown pine-needles along the level paths where the great dark blue eyes of the wild violets look lovingly up at me.
Yes, yes, God is very good and His world is very beautiful, and we must trust Him. When these brown children of His were wild, they were, no doubt, in a physical way perfect, but when they were brought to a knowledge of good and evil and brought under the law, like our first parents, the Prince of Darkness stepped in and the struggle within them of the forces of heaven and hell has been going on there ever since.
Each field has a small flood-gate called a "trunk."
Can we doubt which will conquer in the end? No! Evil can never have the final victory, but the struggle will be long, for the Prince of Darkness uses such subtle emissaries. They come in the guise of angels, as elevators and instructors, taking from them the simple first principles of right and wrong which they had grasped, and substituting the glamour of ambition, the desire to fly, to soar, for the God-given injunction, "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?" Thank God, there is one man of their own race striving to hold up true standards of the Cross instead of the golden calf of the politician.
I fear this is a dull letter, but I have tried to make you understand something of the situation.
Patience Pennington.
Cherokee, June 1, 1903.
Since last I wrote I have been the sport of winds and waves. This place is still under water from a freshet, and on Sunday, April 5, there was a severe gale, and the water swept over the whole 200 acres of Casa Bianca, flowing up the rice-fields in an hour. Saturday evening the hands, after ploughing, left their ploughs in the field to continue work Monday, and they could not see the handles of the ploughs Sunday morning. I went down Tuesday, to find bridges carried away and even the banks still under water, and the head man reported five breaks in the Black River bank. It was impossible to do anything until the tide receded, and as there was a strong east wind blowing and a freshet coming down the Pee Dee, things looked very black.