After the preliminary business was over, and as I sat down to read, I said, “Now, though you are generally so quiet and orderly, I must ask you to-night to be, if possible, still more so. I have been suffering very much from pain in my face; and it has made me so nervous, that I cannot bear any noise. When my children came to me to-day, after dinner, though they tried to be quiet, yet even their moving about made me so much worse, that I had to send them away to the nursery. After they were gone, and the room was still, I thought that some of you, no doubt, suffered sometimes just in the same way, and that you had no nursery to send your children to; and I felt very sorry for you.”
The Mrs A— mentioned in a former chapter was there: she had become a most zealous champion of mine. I cannot help laughing now at the recollection of her tall, commanding figure, as she sat that evening bolt upright in her chair, looking round with an air of defiance, as much as to say, “Let me see any one dare to make a noise.” If a chair creaked, or scissors dropped, her head was round in an instant. A little, unfortunate boy, about four years of age, who came with his mother because he could not be left at home, was singled out as her special victim. He could not move, however quietly, without her threatening face and finger being directed towards him. She seemed to exercise some mysterious spell over him, as he scarcely withdrew his eyes from her; and at last, when a halfpenny rolled off his lap under the table, he instantly followed it, and remained out of sight, as if unable to face her again after that. The energy of her character communicated itself to her needle. Presently this noisy needle stopped. I did not notice it at first, thinking that, perhaps, she was watching some fresh victim; but, as she continued idle, I looked up from my book, and said, “Are you waiting for anything, Mrs A—, that I can give you?”
“Why, ma’am, you see I forgot to bring the sleeves out of the box, when I fetched my work, and I can’t go on any longer without ’em; but I have got such thick shoes on, I thought I should make such a racket in fetching ’em, that I should upset you altogether, and I had rather not finish my work than do that.”
I knew what a self-denial it must be to her not to drive on to the end of her work, when she had intended to do so; and I appreciated her kind consideration accordingly.
It has been quaintly said, that “there are more points in which a Queen resembles her washer woman than in which she does not.” Without dwelling upon these extremes, nothing is more certain than that whenever a lady goes amongst the poor, hoping to benefit them by her influence, she must be impressed much more by the points of resemblance that exist between them, than by the points of difference. Mothers’ Societies have a peculiar advantage in this respect. The sufferings and joys attendant on the mother’s life are common to all, and enable us to realise, more than any other circumstance or relation in life, that we are all children of one great family. The best lessons we can find for our poor sisters will be always those which we learn from our own hearts—from our own actual every-day experience. Sometimes I have repeated a portion of Scripture with them, which I had previously read with my own children; telling them what remarks I made upon it, and what the children said about it. This, besides interesting and amusing them more than a common explanation, has a better effect than saying, “You should teach your children so and so.”
I should be afraid of the accusation of “telling as new what everybody knows,” if I had not so often seen good and excellent people, from whom I could learn much on most other points, almost entirely fail in anything which they attempted amongst the poor, just because they did not recognise the fact that the law of “doing as we would be done by” applies as much to our intercourse with the poor as with our equals. I remember a case in point. One of our poor mothers had for some months brought with her a very fine baby. He was a beautiful child, and so sweet-tempered, that she had no difficulty in keeping him quiet. She was very proud of him, of course, and used to seat him on the table, and resort to a variety of little manœuvres to induce us to notice and praise him. But when he began to cut his teeth, a sad change occurred. He became thin and pale, and so did the poor mother, through her night-watching, and hard work; and we could hardly recognise in them the bright child and happy mother we used to see. At last, the little fair head became covered with sores—very sorrowful to witness; and, instead of now shewing off her child, the poor stricken mother concealed him as much as possible with her shawl, and sat apart from the rest of the company.
One evening, a visitor came in and staid about an hour with us. She evidently had not been much accustomed to such society, and did not feel at home in it. Whilst I was taking the money for the work, she tried to talk to some of the women, but I saw that she found great difficulty in it. Presently, a feeble cry attracted her attention to the poor baby; with a look of great disgust, she said to the mother—
“Why, what have you been doing with that child’s head?”
“What did you say, ma’am?” answered the mother, hoping, I suppose, that she had mistaken the question. It was repeated. The mother looked very angry, and replied, “I hav’n’t been doing of nothing with it. I suppose rich people’s babies get bad heads, sometimes, as well as poor people’s?”
Many in the room sympathised with her, as I plainly saw, when looking up from my account-book. It seemed as if an evil spirit had suddenly alighted amongst us, and taken possession of us all; for every countenance looked more or less angry. Such is the wonderful power of a few words. When shall we ever duly estimate the omnipotence of words? I had finished my accounts, so I rose from my seat, and went across the room to fetch something that I did not want; and, as I passed the offending head, I stroked the little pale face, and said—