MISS ISABEL D. EUSTIS.
Many warm friends of Hampton have come to see her on her gala days; have crowded into the hall decorated with flags and flowers, while the band played a welcome, and her graduates waited to give to the audience the fruit of their three years’ study and experience. Perhaps some of these would like to go with the quiet company who are walking to the little church in the Soldiers’ Cemetery, near the close of a bright day that has fallen in the midst of weeks of rain and storm, and join in the simple communion service of the first Sunday in the New Year.
The afternoon sunlight slants in through the windows upon the plain walls and benches, and lights up the dusky faces of the colored and Indian students who fill the seats. The simple service upon the communion table is the gift of the strong and loving woman, who gave the best of her heart and brain to Hampton at its start, and who kept her connection with the church she helped to organize until she was called to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. In the seats nearest the table are six colored and eight Indian students who begin the New Year by confessing Christ as their Saviour. We ask ourselves, as we notice their quiet and decorous manner, if these can be some of the strange and uncouth people who came knocking at our doors two years ago, and as we watch the sweet, softening expressions stealing over their faces, telling of reverent and gentle thoughts within, we wonder still more if these are the very faces from which once it seemed impossible to win an answering smile.
The congregation rise and sing together in full, sweet chorus, as only a colored audience can, “My faith looks up to thee.” The minister reads the creed and covenant, and then the Indian scholars, whose parents had, perhaps, hardly heard the name of Christ, come one by one to receive the rite of baptism. As they kneel beside the font the minister says to each, separately and calling him by name, “Do you promise to take Jesus Christ as your Saviour, to love him and serve him? Do you promise?” and the emphatic Indian assent and little Annie’s timid “Yes, sir,” are heard through the still church, and those who wait to hear know that the heart’s promise has gone with the lips.
Ahuka (White Wolf) comes first for baptism. As he stands there quiet and reverent, a sudden memory of the first time we saw and knew him flashes across our minds. We see again the school-room, the day after the arrival of the new pupils. They are seated in a semi-circle around a teacher, who stands by a black-board on which some easy English words have been written: “Stand up; Walk; Stop; Look up;” which she has been teaching the scholars to illustrate. On the front seat at one end sits Ahuka, a somewhat alarming-looking pupil. His thick, shaggy, black hair bangs down to his waist over the blanket which he holds wrapped tight about him, while he casts now and then stealthy but keen glances from under his heavy eyebrows.
Teacher debates for a few seconds whether to call on him for a recitation; but concludes not to shirk, and he comes to the board. Teacher points to the first word on the blackboard, on the pronunciation of which she has been drilling the class, and looks at the brave for a response. Brave looks at her, then at the word, back again, more sharply at her, says nothing. Teacher mustn’t expect a response in a hurry, keeps her pointer on the word and her eye on the brave. Brave continues to transfer his glance from the word to the teacher, till suddenly, whether in despair or rage she cannot tell, he throws his head back, bends forward and utters a prolonged howl. Teacher with difficulty restrains herself from a flight down the corridor, and doesn’t question why he is called “the Wolf.” It is no difficult task to picture him back in the wilds of Dakota.
We think of him now: his quiet and reverent manner; the pleading look we have learned to know in the once defiant, savage eyes, and we pray that as he is laying aside all that was the pride and pleasure of his savage strength he may grow (slowly he must, but certainly he shall) into the beauty and power and glory of a Christian manhood.
Harry Brown, Chief White Horse’s manly little son, stands by the font now. We came near making a bad mistake about Harry. The day that the minister had appointed to talk to the scholars who were to unite with the church was a crisp winter one, and the creek was covered with glittering ice. Harry went skating; almost the first chance he’d had since he left Dakota. There was no way to tell the time; he was having splendid fun. He stayed too long; when he came back it was too late for the meeting. The next day, when the minister kindly made an appointment for him by himself, one of the first questions he asked was, “Harry, do you pray?” “No.” “Not pray?” “No.” “Did you ever pray?” “Yes.” “And you don’t pray now?” “No.” “Why not?” And then Harry shut himself behind his Indian reserve and his inability to talk English, and didn’t say anything more. It certainly didn’t look as if he was far on the road to saint-ship. And yet if there was a boy in the school who was commending himself by his faithful, kind and manly conduct it was Harry Brown. What did it mean? The minister asked one of the teachers, with whom the boy might not be so shy, to try and find out. She dismissed the interpreter, who seemed to embarrass him, and all her questions were answered with thoughtfulness and earnestness till the old one came up, “Harry, the minister says you don’t pray?” Then came the same emphatic “No.” “Well, Harry, this isn’t a little thing you want to do. You are going to give yourself to God to be His child all your life, and you say you don’t pray to Him. It seems as if you didn’t care much about it. We think you had better wait till the next Communion Sunday, and be sure you mean what you are going to do.” “How long?” said Harry. “Two months.” “Too long. Can’t wait. Must come now,” said Harry decidedly. “How long have you been trying to do right, Harry?” “Two years.” Then I think Harry’s good angel put a thought into the teacher’s mind. “Harry, have you changed your room lately? Do you stay now with those seven boys up-stairs?” “Yes.” “Is that the reason you don’t pray? Are you ashamed?” “Yes.” “Doesn’t any boy in that room pray?” “Just one.” “Well, if you are going to be Christ’s soldier you have got to fight for Him sometimes when it’s hard. Will you pray to-night?” “Yes.” And knowing that older Christians had wavered before the same temptations, and not been more honest and brave in acknowledging it, we forebore to shut the boy away from the patient guidance and long suffering love which leads us all. A few weeks afterward we asked Harry one day when the interpreter was by, “Harry, do you pray now?” The little interpreter himself looked up with a quick, bright smile, “All we boys in that room pray now every night.” It was a good victory, surely, for the first one. God grant that each of those who are now confessing Christ be kept by Him in the temptations which will crowd them in the life to which they must go.
The service is almost over. The bread and wine have been passed. To each waiting heart down through its darkness to its weakness has come the touch of the Divine Soul which is light and power.
Once more the sweet strong chorus rises, “Jesus, Lover of my Soul.” We go out into the twilight. The young crescent and the star of love hang in the Western sky whose glowing sunset lights are reflected in the lovely waters, and through the heavens falls a voice with the old word, at once reproof and inspiration, “Say not ye, There are yet four months and then cometh the harvest. Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest, and he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal.”