“Who said she wasn’t!” says I in real excited axents. “But this I will contend for, that her sin compared to his, wasn’t so much as a morphine powder to a barrell of flour.”
“She no need to have sunk down to where she is now,” says sister Minkley speakin’ again, in a real prudent, womanly tone.
FALLEN.
Says I, “Sister Minkley, when that girl found out that the man she loved better than her own soul, that she looked up to as a God, as wimmen will, when she found that that man had betrayed her, ruined her, do you s’pose she had any faith left in God or man? The hull world reeled with her, and she went down with the shock. How low she went down, you nor I shall never know. And may the God above, who is able to keep us all from temptation, keep your childern and mine, sister Minkley.”
“Amen!” says sister Minkley jest as solemn as if she was to camp-meetin’. For danger never looks so dangerous, nor ruin so ruinous, as when a mother thinks of her own childern fallin’ onto it.
Says I, “Sister Minkley when I think it might have been my Tirzah Ann, what feelin’s I feel.”
“And jest so I feel,” says she. Sister Minkley does dretful well by her childern, thinks a sight on ’em, and the mother in her was touched.
Says I, “Sister Minkley, that girl had a mother once. A mother’s hand to guide her upwards—to lay on her brow when it ached. A mother’s love to keep her from temptation. A mother’s arms to hold her from evil, from coldness, from blame. A mother’s heart to rest on, when tired, tired out with the world. Less try to feel for her a little as that faithful heart would, if it wasn’t put away under the grasses.”
Says I, almost eloquently, “It don’t look well sister Minkley for mother’s hands that have held little trustin’ baby fingers in them, to be pinted out in mockery, or stun bruised in stunnin’ such as she. No! rather let them be lifted up to high heavens in prayer for ’em, or reached in help to ’em, or wipin’ away tears of pity and sorrow for ’em. Let mothers think for one half or even one third of a moment, what if death had unloosed their own claspin’ lovin’ hands from the baby fingers—tender trustin’ little fingers,—and so many different hands in the world reached out to clasp ’em, and they so weak, so confidin’, and so woefully ignorant what hands to lay holt of, little helpless, foolish lambs, that love guarded, love watched in safe homes, need such wise guidance, and prayers, and tears, and watchfulness—what would become of them wanderin’ alone in a world full of wolves, temptation, starvation, and more’n forty other old whelps, some of the fiercest ones so covered up with honest lookin’ wool, that the keenest spectacles are powerless for the time bein’ to tell ’em from sheep. Little white lambs travelin’ alone so dangerous and black a road, how can they keep themselves white unless God keeps ’em. We mothers ort to think such thoughts sister Minkley, and pray prayers daily, not alone for our own childern, but for all of Gods little ones—for all of these poor wanderers; askin’ for heavenly wisdom and strength to save them, win them back to a better life.”