THE SLEEPER WAKES -- HARLEM RENAISSANCE STORIES BY WOMEN

Bathesda of Sinners Run
MAUDE IRWIN OWENS

It was like reading the Books of Chronicles, to read in the Thornton family history of the attending succession of slave women that formed the single line of Bathesda's ancestry. The Thorntons had always boasted of their seven generations of slave housekeepers who had directly descended from the housekeeper of the first American Thornton. They would proudly point out the precious, faded entries, so faithfully recorded in the old genealogy. The paternal side of the issue was always politely ignored in strict accordance with the manners and customs of the South.

The scapegrace of the younger son of an English baron, Richard Thornton, was founder of the family. When gambling debts and foul dueling forced him to flee his native land, he decided upon the colony of George II under Governor Oglethorpe. His first slave purchase was written in two sentences which seemed to wink and laugh up at the reader with its tan ink and old fashioned lettering. It read:

"On this day did I barter my gold hilted sword, some lace and several shillings to that villain from the Virginia colony whom I do sorely despise -- for a black wench to cook my porridge, brew my tea and wash my linen. She is comely withal and methinks, the temper of a noble blooded colt; so I have named the vixen, JezebeI."

From this Jezebel on the issue became mulatto and less mulatto: for it was written that Jezebel foaled a likely mustard-colored filly whose father and master, with malicious humor, named for his King and the colony.

So Jezebel became the mother of Georgie; who begat Abigail; whose brat was Callie; whose offspring was Ruth; whose child was Viney; whose daughter was Anne; and twenty years after slavery, came Bathesda.

To the utter amazement and chagrin of her erstwhile master and mistress, when the bell of freedom tolled for those in bondage, Anne betook herself from under the Thornton roof, in spite of all the inducements and cajoleries the Thorntons offered.

She married Enoch Creek, a fusion of Creek Indian, Negro and white and who chose to select his surname from the Indian blood which dominated his being. He was a bitter man, having no faith or belief in mankind or the institutions and principles of mankind; a religion of hatred that banned all but Anne and much later, little Bathesda.

They founded a tiny home at Sinners Run, the Negro suburb of Thorntonville, Georgia, that had been called after a famous camp-meeting revival sermon preached there, years back. Their cabin was a little apart and elevated from other huts and shacks of the Sinners Run people, so that they could look down upon the road which was alternatingly red clay or yellow mud and note the comings and goings of those who lived upon it.

Anne attended the Sinners Run Baptist Church regularly and prayed that her husband find salvation. Enoch traded at the store because it was necessary -- but after that, all socializing with their neighbors ceased; unless in the case of illness, when Anne was a ministering angel and healer of the small community. Within her lean yellow hands was the strange, soothing power to allay pain, and from her husband, she learned much of the Indian mysteries of roots and herbs for medicinal use.

They were thrifty and got along. For twenty years they worked, saved, improved their little two room home, and the acre upon which it stood. Anne was an expert needlewoman as Viney, Ruth and Callie had been before her; and she was in great demand in all the big houses down in Thorntonville. Enoch hired himself out as a plantation farmer, and in spite of his scowling silence, was known as a good hand.

Then, at the age of forty-when all hope of bearing the traditional girl-child had flown from the heart of Anne, it happened; and Bathesda made her advent into the life of Sinners Run.

Enoch smiled for the first time -- his squinting Indian eyes snapping with delight at the yellow gypsy-like Anne in the role of Madonna, with the robust little papoose that was his. Of course the Thorntons got wind of it, investigated and greedily annexed one more generation to old Jezebel's descendants, although the essence of reflected glory had lost its flavor since the inconvenient Emancipation. The distinction of being the first of her line born out of slavery, was the most disgraceful thing that could have been written about Bathesda, into the sacred Annals, according to Thornton opinion.

Two weeks later, Enoch stepped on a rusty spike. Blood-poisoning set in and; in spite of their combined knowledge of medicine and healing, his time had come to leave Anne and Bathesda, before Anne had convinced him there was a God.

Anne turned from the unmarked grave, and faced the world alone with her baby, unflinchingly -- with that calm independence that asked no pity. She went about her sewing at the houses of her patrons, for a while, carrying her infant with her.

But as Bathesda began to toddle about, Anne realized her child should have home life, and be allowed to play in the vegetable patch and flower garden which Enoch had so painstakingly planted. So Anne took only work such as she could do at home, and her little daughter grew to be the marvel of the country side -- a healthy, lovely child.

She attended the broken down school-house to be taught by a wizened old maid from Connecticut a few months a year, and she sat at her mother's knee during the school period ... both struggling eagerly to master a clear fluent English. Anne, being ardently religious, insisted that the little girl read her Bible and attend church regularly, in which she was reluctantly obeyed.

Thus Bathesda grew up to womanhood. Beautiful -- of deep-rooted intelligence handicapped by inadequate schooling, a pagan love for the gorgeous wonders of Nature and a passion for all things artistic. She became adept at the fine French seams and hemming; learned to feather-stitch the picturesque quilts on the huge frame, to weave highly imaginative Indian designs out of the bright silken rags into rugs and mats, to make the difficult Yankee hook rug, the knowledge of which had been introduced South by a Yankee Thornton bride; and best of all, she became an expert copier of the old antebellum samplers. Anne's sampler embroidering frame looked worm-eaten -- it was so old; and Bathesda considered it with great reverence.

They made a picture to be remembered, sitting together at their artistic labors -- the older woman and her daughter. Anne invariably talked religion to Bathesda, having sensed a silent indifference which bespoke much of Enoch's atheism. When at the stuffy little church, the sermon had become highly exhortive, and the worshiper's downtrodden souls burst forth in howling primitive devotion to a God they desperately believed in -- even when great tears spilled down her quiet mother's cheeks, Bathesda's sole reaction was a disdainfully cold squinting of her pretty black eyes.

"It's Enoch! It's Enoch!" mourned old Anne, as she watched the child of her old age flower into radiant womanhood with no change of heart.

"But Mother," Bathesda would say, "you take on so 'bout nothin'. Ain't we happy? We have always been different from them in our way of livin' and doin' things and so how can you expect me to be like them in their church doin's? You are not like them when you feel the spirit, Mother. You cry a little bit, but I have never seen you rear and tear and stomp and scream 'halleluliah' like someone crazy ... I hate it! My church is the purple mist stealin' ahead of the red dawn -- the chirpin' wood- chucks; wild wood blossoms! If I ever 'get religion' Mother 'twill be in that kind of church, and not among the sweaty, hysterical hypocrites of your church. Why! I believe to my soul, Mother, you are the only real Christian among them, and do the least testifyin'!"

"Child -- you don't understand. It is as real with them as life itself! It is given to each to work out his own destiny in the Lord, in his own way. It is the feelin' that they are weak and sinful that overpowers them so -- in their strivin' to follow the Good Book."

"I don't care 'bout them anyways, Mother. We are better colored folks ... that's all. It just ain't in them to be better. Look at their homes. Bare plank floors that all their scrubbin' and scourin' don't improve; walls plastered with newspapers full of pictures that they think are pretty; gunny-sacks tacked up to the windows ... ugh! Give them their winter supply of potatoes, rice and hog meat ... let them go to church and give chitterlin' suppers ... plenty of shoutin' and back-bitin' and they are happy all winter long, Mother. But -- look at our home!"

She waved her pale brown hand proudly around the room in which they sat. The walls were whitewashed. The floor was covered with a huge rag rug rich with colorful stripes and the single square window was draped with deep rose curtains that fluttered happily in the breeze. They had been made from flour bags soaked in kerosene to remove the printing, and dyed with berry juice. There were two fine old pieces of colonial mahogany in this outer room -- a gigantic highboy and a marble- topped medicine chest. The other articles of furniture were three rush-bottomed chairs and a table that Enoch had made, and carved all over with the weirdly grotesque totem-pole gargoyles. Upon the mantel over the fireplace were a brilliant basket and two odd potteries also relics of the Creek strain in the father of Bathesda. Small painted tubs and cans were in interesting groups about the room, filled with plants of various sorts.

"I don't suppose I should say I hate them, Mother dear," Bathesda continued, "but I can get along without them. I shall do as you have always done ... when they're sick, I'll make them well if they call upon me -- but I don't ... I can't be one of them in religion or otherwise."

"Ah, my child," sadly smiled Anne, "you may have inherited the sense of medicine from Enoch, your father, but the Divine gift of healing can never descend upon a disbeliever ... and you are the first of us women who has not been born with the gift since Mother Jezebel. She, even in her early day, was a Christian convert."

At this, Bathesda would shake her head impatiently as if flinging aside the admonitions of her mother, and the two long black braids would flare about her arms and shoulders. Then, bowing earnestly over her work, she would concentrate upon the exact copying of probably old Viney's intricately designed sampler with the words -- "Little flakes make the biggest snow," ordered by an antique dealer from Savannah.

Bathesda's mother died in her sixtieth year, and never had there been such a funeral in the history of Sinners Run. Unlike her husband who had only a faithful wife and new born babe to follow him to his grave, the entire countryside turned out to do honor to Anne Creek. All of the present generation of Thorntons came from their town house in Savannah, in full force, much to the awe of the Sinners Run folk. They even hinted about how appropriate and fitting it would be if Anne were buried beside Viney, in Thorntonville; but Bathesda was obdurate.

"Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Thornton, but my mother's place is beside her husband. My father has been alone out there, long enough."

So the Thorntons had a second lesson in Negro independence.

"Promise me, my daughter, that you will seek Jesus!" gasped Anne in her last consciousness. "Go to the church -- seek Him until you find Him ... and He will give you your birthright like he has given it to all the rest of us. Promise your poor old Mammy, Bathesda ... baby!"

And so she had promised to seek religion and the power to heal the sick.

Bathesda lived on, as the years rolled by, much as when Anne lived. She made beautiful things with her graceful slender hands, and more money than she needed in her simple mode of living. She lived alone with the spirit presences of her parents, except for the loyal protection of a watch dog. She cared for the gay little flower garden tenderly and kept her graves freshly decorated in flower season. She grew her vegetables, also the roots and herbs with which she concocted her famous medicinal recipes. She attended the Sinners Run Baptist Church and contributed to its support; but the Indian in her worshiped only the wonders of Nature and she put no other gods before the beauty of the earth.

The colored people of Sinners Run envied and hated her, yet maintained a deceitful courtesy that permitted them to call upon her when in need of intervention with white people, money or in sickness. Her ability to always smooth the way for them, in any form of distress, was known with a certainty that was uncanny to their superstitious minds. She could do all except smooth out actual pain like her mother had done. However, she did her all, in the name of Anne ... she herself caring little for these crude mean-hearted and petty people, who grinned in her face for favors, and hissed "half-white bastard" behind her back. This last amused her, however, since her intelligence allowed her to see no difference between the black and yellow progeny of the illicit unions of slavery.

"What queer religion these folks have," laughed the woman, "it breaks forth in a certain place, and at a certain fixed time, then they lose it 'til the next time."

The women were especially incensed against her, because -- if they married at all, they invariably married men who Bathesda had rejected. She allowed each suitor in his time, to visit her, sit as long as he pleased admiring her at the embroidering rack, while she, with serene indifference, hoped he would make his departure in time for her to take her dog and go to the crest for the sunset, or some such solitary jaunt. She could say "no" with a cool pleasantness that retained their goodwill; but the wives to whom she gave the men up, hated her venomously for so doing. Hated her for wrapping her long glossy braids around and around her head in a coronet which made her a queen among them. Hated her for appearing so youthful despite her forty- seven years. Hated her for not shouting at church, and for failing to testify or profess. Hated her for having the prettiest house and garden in the community -- for making the medicine that cured them. Hated her for weaving and embroidering while they took in washing, or labored beside their men in the cotton and corn fields. Hated her for her chaste aloofness of man, while they bore large families in the morass of poverty and misery. Hated her for showing contempt for the edicts of fashions and mail order houses up North or the cheap stores in Thorntonville and Savannah and for wearing the simply made, richly embroidered garments which none could duplicate. For all these reasons, the women of Sinners Run despised Bathesda.

Among them, she had one sincere friend in the person of young Becky Johnson. The dark-skinned girl had sought Bathesda in a frenzy one stormy midnight. Bathesda had donned her cape and accompanied the wild young mother to the bedside of her baby who was strangling with dyptheria. It was a simple deed; the swabbing of the little throat with boiled vinegar and salt, with a few directions, but the brown girl had hugged Bathesda's knees and kissed her comfortably shod feet in feverish adoration. The father, too, had looked dumb gratitude with brimming eyes. After this incident, Becky took Li'l Jim up to see Bathesda regularly, and Bathesda became greatly attached to the small family, such devotion from Becky having awakened within her cold nature, something akin to affection.

Becky's sister, mother and grandmother, strongly disapproved of this friendship. The sister, whose name was Cisseretta, was somewhat of a belle, and when rigged up in the cast-off clothes of the white people for whom she worked, was, for Sinners Run, quite elegant. She was light brown, with hazel eyes that were sly and coquettish. Her hair was of that yellowish cotton- batten sort, known as riney. She meant to marry better than had her older sister, and scorned the field hands as prospective husbands, although she was not averse to keeping them from dancing attendance on the less discriminating girls of her set.

The mother, Eliza Lambert, was about Bathesda's age and a malicious "yes" woman to gossip and trouble making, although too stupid herself to even instigate a healthy lie.

The grandmother, Granny Lou, was an ancient crone, black as pitch, who had lost track of her age, but knew everything pertaining to a scandalous nature concerning the families of both races for miles around. She sat in one corner year in and year out, wrapped in filthy shawls and hoods summer and winter, smoking her foul clay pipe, and spitting snuff into the maw of the tumble-down stove, or gumming her vicious old tales. She was reputed to be the oldest woman in that section of Georgia, and to have borne more children than she herself knew; Eliza, being her youngest, to whom she had hitched herself. Just as most of the trouble making and under-current of evilness in the neighborhood could usually be traced to the chair of Granny Lou and Lambert household, so was she guilty of inciting most of the fierce antipathy among the women, against Bathesda.

One particular early autumn morning, she pursed and screwed her shrunken lips around to settle the snuff and saliva making a "Mpwhumm-mpwhumm" noise, and began lisping to Eliza who was washing:

"Reh, heh! Ah sees whar dat-ar new ministah done gine sottin' up to Thesdy's already-heh, heh! 'Pears lak to me dat you 'omans ain't slaves no moah an' oughten't go fer to put up wid sich cayin' on. Lize ... Yo' Cissy tryin' to sot huh cap foah him, but 'pears lak to me, effen she gits him, won't be twell dat Thesdy's chawed 'im up an' spat him back at huh! Heh, heh!" and as if to suit the word with the action, she spat into the pink wood ashes which were falling out of the stove pit.

"Tain't nothin' to them Jezebel 'omans, noways. De white folks make me sick cayin' on so high 'bout dem. Day all sold dere souls to de debbil. Don't dey fool 'round wid roots 'n things? ... mind how dey nebber show dere natchul age lak we'uns does?"

The silence that followed was broken by the sudsy slapping of wet clothes with home made lye soap. Eliza was too busy to bother about her old mother's chatter this morning, but Granny Lou was nothing loath to amusing herself.

"Becky, lak a li'l fool ... she run up dere case day yaller 'oman do foah dat brat ahern, jis what any of ussen coulda did. Ah knows, chal! Yo Granny Lou knowed dem f'om way back to Callie!"

"Kyah, kyah, kyah! Granny Lou -- hush yo mouf," laughingly yelled Eliza above the suds, steam and slop, with perspiration dripping from her corn-rowed head into the tub.

Cisseretta, who had entered the room unnoticed, flared up angrily at the old hag's challenge --

"I wants Brother Parson Brown, and I's shore goin' to git him. 'Tain't goin' to be after Thesdy done chawed him, either, Granny!" So saying, she jammed her hands down upon her hips with her legs astride and frowned belligerently from her mother to her grinning grandmother.

The pine door swung open admitting Becky, resplendent in a soft white dress carrying Li'l Jim who was sportive in a blue smock and cap. The three women were aghast at the sudden picture. Poor Becky who was content to drudge in a one room cabin with her baby, for a husband who scarcely could pay for his fat back and meal down at the store, what right had she to look nicer than Cisseretta, the acknowledged social leader of Sinners Run!

"Whar'd je git dem cloes?" darkly inquired Eliza of her daughter.

"Oh Mammy! Ain't dey jist swell? Miss Thesdy done made dis up special foh me out o' brand new goods case Ah told huh 'twas my second year married, today! See Li'l Jim? Ain't he grand? I has a big suppah foh Big Jim when he gits home and thought I would run in an' let you folks see us."

"Humph! 'Miss' Thesdy! Since whin did we start 'Missin" yaller niggers? Was Parson Brown anywhere bouts up there?" this from Cisseretta.

"Seems to me dat dose clo'es would scorch yo' skin, chal. Dat Thesdy is a woman wid no religion whatsomever," exasperatingly sighed Eliza.

"Jes' gib yo' all dose cloes fuh to git yo' wrapped up in huh, fudder -- dan she gine conjuh yo' ... heah me, now, heah me!" snapped old Granny Lou with a portentious shaking of her beshawled head.

Poor Becky! All her joyous happiness so quickly transformed to bitter antagonism.

"How come yo'all hates that pore woman so? What she done done aginst you? All I seed she done was good! She's up dere in huh own pretty li'l house, amindin' huh business, and you folks down heah hatin' huh! Cisseretta? You won't make no hit wid Parson Brown ... hatin' Miss Thesdy, 'case he thinks she is jest grand! As for me and Big Jim, she saved our boy's life which is moah dan you what's his own kin-folks done, and we loves huh, even ef she ain't done professed 'ligion. From what I seed of huh and knowed of younes, she's a heap sight nigh to God dan you folks who eat out yo' hearts wid hatin' huh!"

She gathered the bewildered Li'l Jim up and left the scene of unsympathetic relatives, muttering to herself -- "Gawd! Effen I stayed widdem any longer I would lose my own 'ligion. They's my own folks, but dey simply breed evilness, and I doesn't blame sweet Miss Thesdy from not minglin' wid 'em 'ceptin' when she has to."

In the Lambert cabin, Granny Lou was grunting -- "See dat? She done got dat chal tu'ned agin huh own folks already ... an' de preachuh eatin' out ob huh hand," -- with a cunning glance at Cisseretta.

"For two cents, Granny --" whined Cisseretta, petulantly, "I'd git the women together and go up to her ol' house and beat her up!"

"Kyah kyah! Lawsy me! Hush yo' mouf, chal!" elaborately guffawed her mother.

"Go hade, den ... go hade! Do moah-an' talk less, honey!" huskily whimpered the old woman to her infuriated grandchild.

The day had been a busy one for Bathesda. She had contracted to make reproductions of the old samplers for an important Jewish antique dealer of Atlanta. Little Alice Thornton, quite grown up, and home from college, had motored out to see her, bringing with her her fiance from Boston, an artist. He had begged for the privilege of painting Bathesda in all the glory of her little cottage and embroidering frames. To please Alice, she consented, on condition that it wouldn't interfere with her work.

"Like one of Millet's peasant women," he had said --"and that interior! Worthy of the old Dutch masters."

The young minister had sat awhile, explaining his well meant plan of progress for his congregation, which she knew would never be accepted by the deluded Sinners Run folks, the present pastor being their first seminary man. They understood only the old fashioned untrained "called-but-not-sent" type of ministering.

Becky and Li'l Jim dropped in with the new things she had made for them and the sight of the mother and child transformed by her handiwork, thrilled her deeply.

She bent her queenly head over the crimson, green and purple threads she was interweaving so intricately into the words --  Heart within, God without" on the square of yellow, and smiled the smile of the middle-aged who had all they wanted in life -- peace, pleasant labor, and contentment. Why should she be sad because of a God who withheld Himself, or the doubtful power of healing a people who despised her?

She decided to pick a fresh cabbage for her supper, and going to the door, was surprised to see Cisseretta Lambert approaching. With shifting eyes, and lowered brow, she informed Bathesda they had come to fetch her for a friend. At the little picket gate stood an old rickety homemade cart with ill matched wheels, drawn by a sorry nag whose hips punctured his skin in miss-meal significance. Eliza was driving and perched beside her for all the world like a bundled up mummy, sat Granny Lou.

"We kin fotch you there and back in no time, Thesdy. New folks jest come to Sinners Run, and powerful sick."

Bathesda hurriedly threw a light shawl around her shoulders with a strong sense of foreboding which she forcibly thrust out of her mind and joined the trio at the cart.

She and Cisseretta rode backwards with their feet swinging, and nothing was said by the four women as the half-dead animal faltered along the lonely road pulling the unbalanced, lurching, wabbling vehicle behind them.

Then Eliza ...

"Kyah kyah! Heah we all is, folksies! Kyah kyah! Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawd!"

Bathesda turned from the back end of the wagon and saw glaring malevolently at her, the dark faces of ten or twelve women. They were as a pack of hungry hounds eager to be off on the chase. Cisseretta leaped from her seat on the wagon and rudely grabbed Bathesda, causing her to stumble to the ground on her knees. As if waiting for the initiative action from their leader, they pounced upon her, dragging her by the arms up the sloping hill side. The decrepit conveyance with the beswaddled old woman, was left standing on the road.

The maddened women yelled violent invectives -- brandished whips, twigs and sticks aloft, dragging her roughly uphill, not allowing her to regain her foothold or the freedom of her arms.

"Thought you'd gityo' claws on Revern Bro Brown, didn't you? We see 'bout dat, won't we? Cain't feed him none o' yo' hoodoo vittles ... nuh-uh!"

"Yes indeedy. We is gwine to see 'bout all dis heah monkey business yo' been cayin' on all dese yeahs wid de men folks.... "

"Think you better dan ussens, doesn't you? Humph! Old half white niggers make me sick ... cain't be white an' cain't be black!"

"Naw! We niggers don't want you and de white folks won't hab you!"

"Lawdy, Lawdy, Lawd today! Yeowh!"

"Pull huh ol' plaits down! Make me tiahd wid huh ol' dawg har! Wouldn't have straight har, mahself -- Revelations say as plain as day -- 'har lak lambs wool' like ussen got.... "

"Sis Grenn? Dis is shoah a holy deed Cisseretta done called on us to do . . . to protect ouah poah pastor from de wiles ob dis sinner woman. ... "

"Kyah kyah! Lawd today!"

They reached the summit of the hill which was capped with a small patch of woods. A few of the trees had recently been chopped down, judging by the fresh stumps. The several women in whose clutches Bathesda had fallen, suddenly released their hold on her and jumped back out of her reach. But Bathesda merely stomped the caked dirt from her shoes and torn skirt, threw a quiet searching glance around the semicircle of women, and made to swing her loosened braids around her head.

This action galled Cisseretta, who saw in it a self assurance, a composure that was shaking the courage of her vigilance committee. She sprang at Bathesda heavily with an angry snarl, pushing her back into a tree which instantaneously crashed to the earth, sideways, sending Cisseretta and all the women scrambling and yelping down the hill.

"Conjuh woman! conjuh ... Lawd Ah's feared!"

"Hoodoo stuff! Told yo'all we oughten to bother wid huh!"

"Lawd! Jist 'low me to git home once moah ... please'"

"Cisseretta done got ussen into dis mess ... !"

From the opposite direction came two white men, hurrying toward Bathesda who stood arranging her hair beside the fallen tree.

"Anybody hurt, Auntie? We are clearing these here woods for Ben Lovett who has bought the strip, and my buddy here -- he sprained his joint while chopping down that 'un a few minutes ago. We went up to my shack after some liniment and we didn't 'reckon anyone would come along before we got back. The tree was nearly cut thru and I 'spec a slight jostle knocked her over."

"No one was hurt. It fell to the side," murmured the yellow woman absently -- eyes searching into the distance.

A delicate tenderness played over her face, and kindly wrinkles appeared about her mouth and forehead. Like Haggard's "She," Bathesda unexpectedly looked her age, all at once. She had dropped the cloak of a hardened, held-over youth, and taken on the ethereal robe of an inner beauty -- a soul transformation had taken place.

She, for the first time, turned directly to the lumberjacks, and asked of the one with the bandaged arm --

"Is it bad?"

"Hurts mightily and swellin' every second."

She unwrapped the crude bandage, wiped away the stench of liniment, cupped her two hands about the swollen arm and gazed upward -- her thin lips moving almost imperceptibly while the men stood transfixed.

She finally withdrew her hands, clenched them into tight fists and then shook them open and away from her, as if throwing off the contamination of alien flesh.

"Now ... it is well!"

"Bill! Honest to John! She's right! The dad burned misery had gone completely, and look! The swellin' is goin' down right before my very eyes!"

"Good God! It is a miracle we've just witnessed! The woman's a saint." And he hastily crossed himself while the other man tested his healed arm by swinging an ax.

Bathesda went down the hill with wide masculine strides -- the light winds causing her snagged skirt and white apron to billow and flurry. Her eyes were two muddy pools of tears. She was testifying.

"Up Calvary's rugged brow did I go, this day with Thee, dear Lord ... To the very foot of the Cross and I saw the bloody nails in Thy precious feet ... the cruel thorns and the bitter cup was spared me ... me, a worthless worm ... but Thou didst drink it to the dregs!" And she went home with a new power -- with understanding, tolerance and forgiveness; to be one of her people; to take care of Becky with her Li'l Jim and Big Jim; and the fragrant drops of rain pelted her in gentle benediction.

FROM THE CRISIS, MARCH-APRIL 1928

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