In days of great calamity or sorrow, sometimes little things annoy strangely, and it is not until after the grief has passed that the memory recalls and the mind wonders why trifles should have had such power amid such vastly important things. While the grasshopper was a burden, one loss wore heavily on Virginia Aydelot’s mind. She had given up hope for vines and daintier flowers in the early summer, but one clump of coarse sunflowers she had tended and watered and loved.
“It is our flower,” she said to Asher, who laughed at her care. “I won’t give them up. I can get along without the 101 other blooms this year, but my sunflowers are my treasure here—the only gold till the wheat turns yellow for us.”
“You are a sentimental sister,” Asher declared. But he patiently carried water from the dwindling well supply to keep the drouth from searing them. When they fell before the ravenous grasshoppers, foolish as it was, Virginia mourned their loss above the loss of crops—so scanty were the joys of these women state builders.
The day after the pests left was the Sabbath. When Asher Aydelot read the morning lesson in the Sunday school, his voice was deep and unfaltering. He had chosen the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, with its sublime promises to a wilderness-locked people.
Then Pryor Gaines offered prayer.
“Although the figtree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines”—the old, old chant of Habakkuk on Mount Shigionoth—“the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He will make my feet like hind’s feet, and He will make me to walk upon mine high places.”
So the scholarly man, crippled and held to the land, prayed; and comfort came with his words.
Then Jim Shirley stood up to sing.
“I’m no preacher,” he said, holding the song book open a moment, “but I do believe the Lord loves the fellow who can laugh at his own hard luck. We weren’t so green as Darley Champers tried to have us believe, because the hoppers didn’t bite at us when they took every other green 102 and growing thing, and we have life enough in us to keep on growing. Furthermore, we aren’t the only people that have been pest-ridden. It’s even worse up on Big Wolf Creek, where Wyker’s short on corn to feed his brewery this fall. I’m going to ask everyone who is still glad he’s in the Grass River settlement in Kansas to stand up and sing just like he meant it. It’s the old Portuguese hymn. Asher and I learned it back on Clover Creek in Ohio.
| How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith—in His excellent word!” |