第11章 CHAPTER III.(2)

Oh, how I wanted some one to explain to me. The next day I was taken to a running stream about two miles away, and, although it was quite cold and some ice in the water, I felt no fear. It seemed like a dream. I know God will bless the ordinance of baptism, for the little Carry that walked into the water was different from the one who walked out. I said no word.

I felt that I could not speak, for fear of disturbing the peace that is past understanding. Kind hands wrapped me up and I felt no chill. I felt the responsibility of my new relation and tried hard to do right.

A few days after this I was at my aunt Kate Doneghy's. Uncle James, or "Jim," we called him, her husband, was not a Christian. He shocked me one day by saying: "So those Campbellites took you to the creek, and soused you, did they 'Cal'?" (A nick name.) What a blow!

My aunt seemed also shocked to have him speak thus to me. I left the room and avoided meeting him again. How he crushed me! It had the effect to make me feel like a criminal.

The Protestant Church here makes a fatal error which the Catholics avoid. The ministers of the latter have all young converts come so often to them for instruction. A child may be born, but not being nursed and fed, it will die. God has command them to be fed in the sincere milk of the word. My greatest hindrance has been from the lack of proper Christian teaching. I love the memory of my father, he used to have me read the bible to him, and while I did not enjoy it then, it is a blessed memory. The family altar is essential to the welfare of every home, no other form of discipline is equal to it. The liberty, chivalry, and life of a nation live or die in proportion as the Altar fires live or die.

"And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up."

When I was fifteen, the war broke out between the north and the south. My father saw that Missouri would be the battle ground and he, with many others, took their families and negroes and went south, taking what they could in wagons, for there were no railroads then in that section.

There was quite a train with the droves of cattle, mules and horses.

One wagon had six yoke of oxen to it; had to get into it by a ladder, the kind that was used to freight across the plains. The family went in the family carriage that my father brought from Kentucky.

I remember the time when this carriage was purchased, with the two dapple gray horses, and silver mounted harness, and when my mother would drive out she had a driver in broadcloth, with a high silk hat, and a boy rode on a seat behind, to open the gates. This was one of the ways of traveling in Kentucky in those days. My mother was an aristocrat in her ideas, but my father was not. He liked no display. He was wise enough to see the sin and folly of it.

{illust. caption =

THIS IS THE PICTURE OF MY GIRLHOOD HOME IN CASS COUNTY, MO.

UNDER THE TREES OF THIS DEAR OLD PLACE I LISTENED TO THE SWEET STORY OF MY LOVE OF A MAN MURDERED BY DRINK.

"WHEN THOU HAST LOVED ONE LIVING MAN, THEN MAYEST THOU LOOK UPON THE DEAD."}

After being on the road six weeks, we stopped in Grayson County, Texas, and bought a farm. As we started from Missouri one of the colored women took sick with typhoid fever. This spread so that ten of the family, white, and black, were down at one time. As soon as we could travel, my father left the colored people south, and took his family back to Missouri. That winter south was a great blessing to me, for I recovered from a disease that had made me an invalid for five years-- consumption of the bowels. Poor health had keep me out of school a great deal. My father at one time sent me to Mrs. Tillery's boarding school in Independence, Mo., but I was not in the recitation room more than half of the time.

After I recovered my health in Texas, it was my delight to ride on horseback with a girl friend. The southern boys were preparing to go to war. Many a sewing did we attend, where the mothers had spun and woven the gray cloth that they were now working up so sorrowfully for their sons to be buried in, far away from home. They thought their cause was right. There were many good masters. And again there were bad ones. Whiskey is always a cruel tyrant and is a worse evil than chattel slavery. We were often stopped on our trip by southern troops, in the Territory and Texas, and then again by northerners. We passed over the Pea Ridge battle ground shortly after the battle. Oh! the horrors of war.

We often stopped at houses where the wounded were. We let them have our pillows and every bit of bedding we could spare. We went to our home in Cass County, Missouri.

Shortly after this we, with all families living in that country, were commanded by an order from Jim Lane, to move into an army post. This reached several counties in Missouri. It was done to depopulate the country, so that the "Bushwhackers" would be forced to leave, because of not being able to get food from the citizens. This caused much suffering.

But such is war. We moved to Kansas City. I was in Independence, Mo., during the battle, when Price came through. I went with a good woman to the hospital to help with the wounded. My duty was to comb the heads of the wounded. I had a pan of scalding water near and would use the comb and shake off the animated nature into the hot water. The southern and northern wounded were in the same rooms. In health they were enemies, but I only saw kindly feeling and sympathy.

Mothers ought to give their daughters the experience of sitting with the sick; of preparing food for them; of binding up wounds. It is a pitiful sight to see a helpless woman in the sick room, ignorant through lack of experience and education, of ways to be useful at the time and place where these characteristics of woman adorn her the most of all others.