When in 1886 I went out for good, that I might be of some use to my own people I started in the strength of the Lord, and He did give me the greatest victory as a school teacher, for all of the people sought me to take their children in my school and give them a start. I had my hands full of work, but I let them come in for the Board always sent them to me find out if I could find room and time, and I always made the time for when scholars find that a teacher loves them they will do any amount of hard studying.
And so the time rolled on, with everything to make me feel like hard work, in the strength of the blessed Lord.
I was three years old when I was leaving my own dear mother's home to go to my new mother's home, or I should say to my white mother's home, to live with her, and I left my mother's as happy as any child could leave her own home, for this lovely lady was always at my mother's to see me ever since I could remember anything, and she was the joy of my little life and I seemed to be all the joy of her sweet life. She had learned to love me from the time that I came into the world.
She had watched me in my cradle and longed for the day to come when I should be able to walk, for she knew that I would follow her everywhere she should go. She said to all of the friends around that if I should live to remember her that would be all that she would ask.
And so she read her blessed Bible and prayed until she saw her prayers answered, and then she went to her home in glory, where she has watched and waited and longed to see the good old ships of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb.
I can never tell any one how many happy hours that I had, for the only trial that I had was that of sickness, which caused me to be of a great care to her all of her life. It was her delight to wait on me and to have her cousin, the doctor, to be always ready to come at any moment she should send for him. He was a good doctor by the name of Sims, and I always liked him, too, until I had the typhoid fever and I had to take some oil. I did not like to take it and he held my hands so that they could pour that in me, and he and I fell out.
My white mother used to give it to me, but she did not let me know what she was giving me, for she put some molasses in the oil and cooked them, so I should not know. I would not have known if I had not seen her one night have the old bottle in her hand putting the oil in the kettle, which she was making ready for me, and I looked up and saw what it was and, as young ones will do, did not want to take molasses and butter which I had been taking so long, for I had to take it on every night or I could not speak.
Later on she moved from the place where she was and bought another farm where it was not near the water, as the doctor thought that was not a good place for me to be, and I was not sick so much as I had been at the former.
The first hard spell of sickness on this farm was the fever that I was sick of at the time that she took sick of the yellow jaundice, and she turned as yellow as anything could be. She went home with that awful malady, thinking of me and of what my future should be in God's hands, to love and bless the world in which I should live if it should be the will of Him who knows the future of all the people that live on this earth.
So God has been a father and a loving mother and all else to me, and sometimes there has been enough of trials in this life to make me almost forget that I had this strong arm to save me from these trials and temptations; but when I fly to Him I find all and in all in Him.