The Story of a Life

by J. Breckenridge Ellis

"This year marks the twenty-fifth year of the C. W. B. M. in Missouri—1894. My board has authorized me to issue an historical sketch of the work. We are publishing the faces of many of those who served us officially. We want your picture for this book. Please, my dear sister, send me a half-tone cut, as soon as possible."

Mrs. A. B. Jones of Liberty, Mo., seconds the request: "I have been asked to write an historical sketch of our C. W. B. M. for a book which our state secretary is preparing for our 25th anniversary. We want our state officers from the time of our organization. Will you kindly send a photo, or cut, to Mrs. Bantz at St. Louis? I would be so glad to have a picture of yourself and Brother Carr. Both of you are lovingly remembered by us."

Now that the college is built at last, and Mr. and Mrs. Carr have assumed its management, the story of their lives enters the peaceful channel of daily service together.

A few events of distinction stand out from among the minor affairs of fourteen years. The incessant work in the school room, the canvassing tours during vacations,—involving lectures with the stereopticon,—the correspondence with new pupils, old pupils and prospective pupils, the worrying over misunderstandings and misrepresentations; the struggle against prejudice, and jealousy; the sweet companionship with each other, and with congenial friends—all this is the story of daily living, that does not belong to the world of books.

Let the reader imagine the interlinked events of these fourteen years—the fourteen years that followed the accomplishment of Mrs. Carr's life-work. The honors bestowed upon her and her girls at the Confederate Reunion at New Orleans, and at the World's Fair at St. Louis, may be found fully described in the great daily papers of those days. The mass of printed programs that lie before me tell of brilliant success before the footlights—and hint at long hours of nerve-racking rehearsals. And here are confessions of school-girls who have done wrong, and who ask to be forgiven; and other letters which wound cruelly and do not ask for pardon. But shall we not forgive all? And how can we forgive, if we do not forget?

Upon my table lies documents from disobedient pupils of Carr-Burdette College, ungrateful pupils, narrow-minded pupils, and parents naturally championing the cause of their daughters—in which, all these stand self-accused. Here is one who has discovered how unjust were charges she had made against the Carrs—but not until she had spread those reports to willing ears. And here is one who asks with tears that she may be forgiven; but who laments that the harm she has done can never be overcome.

But what of it all, now! I should not mention these things if it were not for this: that the evil reports live in some minds and, no doubt, are handed down to strangers. Here are the refutations to several such reports, but we push them aside. Can falsehood wound beyond the grave?

Nor would we expose anyone to shame by bringing her name upon the printed page, with quotations of her own rash words. There is no punishment for a malicious nature so terrible as the vengeance of its own malice which reacts upon itself, dwarfing, embittering, deadening the higher capabilities of the soul that harbors it. He who took the snake to his warm hearth to nourish it to life, is not he who suffers from the ingratitude of a friend, but rather he who admits hate to warm it in his own bosom; for it wounds him, first of all.

Fourteen years of labor in the work Mrs. Carr loved best, amid surroundings best adapted to call forth one's greatest capabilities, and then—the last journey. The school year of 1907-8 had opened prosperously. September passed, and in the warmth of its haze, and in the tender blue of its Texan sky, there was no hint that its sister-month would bring the chill of death.

It was on the thirty-first of October that there came the summons of which she had spoken in her dedicatory speech. Not, indeed, as a quarry slave, scourged to his dungeon, did she go to meet that call, but rather as one who had followed her Lord across the seas, who had dwelt with him in many lands, and who was now to abide with Him forever.