CHAPTER X.
Our Baby.
“The cup of life first with her lips she prest,
Found the taste bitter and declined the rest;
Averse, then turning from the face of day,
She softly sigh’d her little soul away.”
I MENTIONED in the last chapter that I had often seen the necessity of deferring a subject previously prepared for the evening of our meeting, and adopting, in its stead, a topic more appropriate to passing events. As I consider this point of much importance, I am glad that my journal can furnish an illustration.
One evening, in the year 1854, as we were putting aside our work, one of the women reminded me that the day of our next meeting would be a fast-day; and she asked if we were to assemble as usual. I replied, “That as that day would be set aside for a special purpose, and one in which we were all deeply interested, I thought it would be better for us to make a point of all attending some place of worship, and uniting with others in our prayers for the deliverance of our country from the great evils which threatened it.”
Two or three voices exclaimed at once—“Then, if that is it, we shan’t go nowhere.” “Why not?” I asked.
One of them replied—“My master never lets me go to any place. We have neither of us ever been inside a church since we were married.”
Two or three of the others said that was just the case with them.
“How is it, then, that your husbands let you come here?”
“Why, ma’am, we goes on with our work here; and it helps us to get many a nice bit of clothes, that we should have to go without if we didn’t get them here, by paying a little at a time; and the children, too, you see, ma’am, is mostly in bed before we come.”
“Do you not think that some of you could persuade your husbands to go to church with you, for once?”