Tells how a little girl lived in a lowly home, and played, and
dreamed dreams, and how a dark shadow came into her life and
made her unhappy; how when she grew older she went into a
factory and learned to weave, and how in her spare minutes she
taught herself many things, and worked amongst wild boys; and
how she was sent to Africa.
One cold day in December, in the city
of Aberdeen, a baby girl was carried by her mother
into a church to be enrolled in the Kingdom of Jesus
and given a name. As the minister went through
the tender and beautiful ceremony the people in the
pews looked at the tiny form in her robes of white,
and thought of the long years that lay before her and
wondered what she would become, because every girl
and boy is like a shut casket full of mystery and
promise and hope. No one knows what gifts may
lie hidden within them, and what great and surprising
things they may do when they grow up and go out into
the world.
The baby was christened “Mary
Slessor,” and then she was wrapped up carefully
again and taken home. Surely no one present ever
dreamed how much good little Mary would one day do
for Africa.
It was not a very fine house into
which Mary had been born, for her father, who was
a shoemaker, did not earn much money; but her mother,
a sweet and gentle woman, worked hard to keep it clean
and tidy, and love makes even the poorest place sunshiny
and warm. When Mary was able to run about she
played a great deal with her brother Robert, who was
older than she, but she liked to help her mother too:
indeed she seemed to be fonder of doing things for
others than for herself. She did not need dolls,
for more babies came into the home, and she used to
nurse them and dress them and hush them to sleep.
She was very good at make-believe,
and one of her games was to sit in a corner and pretend
that she was keeping school. If you had listened
to her you would have found that the pupils she was
busy teaching and keeping in order were children with
skins as black as coal. The reason was this:
Her mother took a great interest in all she heard on
Sundays about the dark lands beyond the seas where
millions of people had never heard of Jesus.
The church to which she belonged, the United Presbyterian
Church, had sent out many brave men and women to various
parts of the world to fight the evils of heathenism,
and a new Mission had just begun amongst a savage
race in a wild country called Calabar in West Africa,
and every one in Scotland was talking about it and
the perils and hardships of the missionaries.
Mrs. Slessor used to come home with all the news about
the work, and the children would gather about her
knees and listen to stories of the strange cruel customs
of the natives, and how they killed the twin-babies,
until their eyes grew big and round, and their hearts
raced with fear, and they snuggled close to her side.
Mary was very sorry for these helpless
bush-children, and often thought about them, and that
was why she made them her play-scholars. She
dreamed, too, of going out some day to that terrible
land and saving the lives of the twinnies, and sometimes
she would look up and say:
“Mother, I want to be a missionary
and go out and teach the black boys and girls real
ways.”
Then Robert would retort in the tone
that boys often use to their sisters:
“But you’re only a girl,
and girls can’t be missionaries. I’m
going to be one and you can come out with me, and
if you’re good I may let you up into my pulpit
beside me.”
Mrs. Slessor was amused at their talk,
and well pleased too, for she had a longing that her
boy should work abroad in the service of Jesus when
he became a man. But that was not to be, for soon
afterwards Robert fell ill and died, so Mary became
the eldest.
A dark shadow, darker than death,
gathered over the home. Mr. Slessor learned the
habit of taking strong drink and became a slave to
it, and he began to spend a large part of his money
in the public-house, and his wife and children had
not the comfort they ought to have had. Matters
became so bad that something had to be done. It
was thought that if Mr. Slessor could be got away
from the bad companions who led him astray, he might
do better. So the home was broken up, and the
family journeyed to Dundee, the busy smoky town on
the River Tay, where there were many large mills and
factories, and here, for a time, they lived in a little
house with a bit of garden in front. That garden
was at first a delight to Mary, but afterwards she
lost her pleasure in it, for her father used to dig
in it on Sunday, and make people think he did not love
God’s Day.
She was now old enough to look after
the younger children, and very well she did it.
Often she took them long walks, climbing the steep
streets to see the green fields, or going down to
feel the fresh smell of the sea. Sometimes her
mother gave her a sixpence, and they went and had a
ride on the merry-go-round. It was the custom
then for girls and boys to go bare-footed in the summer,
and Mary liked it so much that she never afterwards
cared to wear shoes and stockings.
On Sundays they all trotted away to
church, clean and sweet, each with a peppermint to
suck during the sermon, and afterwards they went to
Sunday School. As a rule Mary was good and obedient,
though, like most girls, she sometimes got into trouble.
Her hair was reddish then, and her brothers would
tease her and call her “Carrots,” and she
did not like that. She loved a prank too, and
was sometimes naughty. Once or twice she played
truant from the Sunday School. She was always
very vexed afterwards, for she could not bear to see
her mother’s face when she heard of her wrong-doing it
was so white and sad. The quiet little mother
did not punish her: she would draw her instead
into a room and kneel down and pray for her.
“Oh, mother!” Mary would say, “I
would rather you whip me!”
But all that soon passed away, for
she had been dreaming another dream, a very sweet
one, which always set her heart a-longing and a-thrilling,
and it now came true and changed her life. It
was the biggest thing and the happiest that ever happened
to her. She gave her heart to Jesus. Very
shyly one night she crept up to her mother, nestled
close to her, and laid her head on her knee, and then
whispered the wonderful news. “I’ll
try, mother,” she said, “to be a good girl
and a comfort to you.” Her mother was filled
with joy, and both went about for long afterwards
singing in their hearts. If only the shadow would
lift!
But it settled down more darkly than
ever. We can change the place where we stay and
wander far, but it is not so easy to change our habits.
Mr. Slessor was now bringing in so little money that
his wife was forced to go and work in one of the mills
in order to buy food and clothes for the children.
Mary became the little house-mother, and how busy her
hands and feet were, how early she was up, and how
late she tumbled into bed, and how bravely she met
all her troubles! Tears might steal into her
eyes when she felt faint and hungry, but it was always
a bright and smiling face that welcomed the tired
mother home at night.
Gloomier grew the shadow. More
money was needed to keep the home, and Mary, a slim
girl of eleven, was the next to go out and become a
bread-winner. One morning she went into a big
factory and stood in the midst of machines and wheels
and whirling belts, and at first was bewildered and
a little afraid. But she was only allowed to stay
for half a day: the other half she had to go
to a school in the works where the girls were taught
to read and write and count. She was fond of the
reading, but did not like doing the sums: the
figures on the board danced before her eyes, and she
could not follow the working out of the problems,
and sometimes the teacher punished her by making her
stand until the lesson was finished.
But she was clever with her fingers,
and soon knew all about weaving. How proud she
was when she ran home with her first week’s earnings!
She laid them in the lap of her mother, who cried
over them and wrapped them up and put them away:
she could not, just then, find it in her heart to
spend such precious money.
By the time she was fourteen Mary
was working a large machine and being paid a good
wage. But she had to toil very hard for it.
She rose at five o’clock in the morning, when
the factory whistle blew, and was in the works by
six, and, except for two hours off for meals, she was
busy at her task until six in the evening. In
the warm summer days she did not go home, but carried
her dinner with her and ate it sitting beside the
loom; and sometimes she went away by herself and walked
in the park. Saturday afternoons and Sundays
were her own, but they were usually spent in helping
her mother. Her dress was coarse and plain, and
she wore no pretty ornaments, though she liked them
as much as her companions did, for she was learning
to put aside all the things she did not really need,
and by and by she came not to miss them, and found
pleasure instead in making others happy. She would
have been quite content if only her father had been
different.
But there was no hope now of a better
time. The shadow became so black that it was
like night when there are no stars in the sky.
Mrs. Slessor and Mary had a big burden to bear and
a grim battle to fight. In their distress they
clung to one another, and prayed to Jesus for help
and strength, for they, of themselves, could do little.
On Saturday nights Mr. Slessor came home late, and
treated them unkindly, so that Mary was often forced
to go out into the cold streets and wait until he had
gone to sleep. As she wandered about she felt
very lonely and very miserable, and sometimes sobbed
as if her heart would break. When she passed the
bright windows of the places where drink was sold,
she wondered why people were allowed to ruin men and
women in such a way, and she clenched her hands and
resolved that when she grew up she would war against
this terrible thing which destroyed the peace and happiness
of homes.
But at last the trouble came to an
end. One tragic day Mary stood and looked down
with a great awe upon the face of her father lying
white and still in death.
What she went through in these days
made her often sad and downcast, for she had a loving
heart, and suffered sorely when any one was rough to
her or ill-treated her. But good came out of it
too. She was like a white starry flower which
grows on the walls and verandahs of houses in the
tropics. The hot sunshine is not able to draw
perfume from it, but as soon as darkness falls its
fragrance scents the air and comes stealing through
the open windows and doors. So it was with Mary.
She grew sweeter in the darkness of trouble; it was
in the shadows of life that she learned to be patient
and brave and unselfish.
We must not think less, but more,
of her for coming out of such a home. It is not
always the girls and boys who are highly favoured that
grow up to do the best and biggest things in life.
Some of the men and women to whom the world owes most
had a hard time when they were young. The home
life of President Lincoln, who freed millions of slaves
in America, was like Mary’s, yet his name has
become one of the most famous in history. No
girl or boy should despair because they are poor or
lonely or crushed down in any way; let them fight
on, quietly and patiently, and in the end better things
and happier times will come.
Mrs. Slessor now left the factory,
and for a time kept a little shop, in which Mary used
to help, especially on Saturday afternoons and nights,
when trade was busiest. The girl was still dreaming
dreams about the wonderful days that lay before her,
but, unlike many others who do the same, she did her
best to make hers come true. She wanted to learn
things, and she found that books would tell her, and
so she was led into the great world of knowledge.
The more she read the more she wanted to know.
So eager was she that when she left home for her work,
she slipped a book into her pocket and glanced at
it in the streets. She did not know then about
Dr. Livingstone, the African missionary and traveller,
but she did exactly what he had done when he was a
boy: she propped a book on a corner of the loom
in the factory, and read whenever she had a moment
to spare. Her companions tell how they used to
see her take out a little note-book, put it on the
weaver’s beam, and jot down her thoughts she
was always writing, they say; sometimes it was poetry,
sometimes an essay, sometimes a letter to a friend.
But she never neglected her work.
How different her lot was from that
of most girls of to-day! They have leisure for
their lessons, and they learn music and do fancy work
and keep house and bake and how many hate
it all! Mary had only a few precious minutes,
but she made the most of them. The books she read
were not stories, but ones like Milton’s Paradise
Lost and Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus,
and so deep did she become in them at night that sometimes
she forgot everything, and read on and on through the
quiet hours, and only came to herself with a start
when she heard the warning whistle of the factory
in the early morning.
She was fond of all good books, but
the one she liked most and knew better than any was
the Bible. She pored over it so often that she
remembered much of it by heart. In the Bible Class
she was so quick and so ready to answer questions
that Mr. Baxter, her minister, used to say, “Now,
Mary Slessor, don’t answer any more questions
till I bid you.” When every one else failed
he would turn to her with “Now, Mary,”
and she always had her reply ready. She was never
tired of the story of Jesus, especially as it is told
in the Gospel of St. John, for there He appeared to
her so kind and winsome and lovable. When she
thought of all He did, how He came from His own beautiful
heaven to save the world from what is sinful and sad,
and how He was made to suffer and at last was put
to death, and how His teaching has brought peace and
safety and sunshine into the lives of millions of
women and girls, she felt she must do something for
Him to show her love and thankfulness and devotion.
“He says we must do as He did
and try to make people better and happier, and so
I, too, must do my best and join in the war against
all that is evil and unlovely and unrestful in the
world.” So she thought to herself.
She did not say, “I am only
a girl, what can I do?” She knew that when a
General wanted an army to fight a strong enemy he did
not call for officers only, but for soldiers hosts
of them, and especially for those who were young.
“I can be a soldier,” Mary said humbly.
“Dear Lord, I will do what I can here
are my heart and head and hands and feet use
me for anything that I can do.”
The first thing that she did was to
take a class of little girls in the Sunday School,
and thus she began to teach others before she was
educated herself, but it is not always those who are
best trained who can teach best. The heart of
Mary was so full of deep true love for Jesus that
it caused her face to shine and her eyes to smile and
her lips to speak kind words, and that is the sort
of learning that wins others to Him.
Wishart Church, to which she went,
was built over shops, and looked down upon the old
Port Gate and upon streets and lanes which were filled
at night with big boys and girls who seemed to have
no other place to go to, and nothing to do but lounge
and swear and fight. Mary felt she would like
to do something for them. By and by when a Mission
was begun in a little house in Queen Street there
is a brass inscription upon the wall, now, telling
about Mary she went to the superintendent
and said, “Will you take me as a teacher?”
“Gladly,” he said, but she looked so small
and frail that he was afraid the work would be too
rough for her.
What a time she had at first!
The boys and girls did not want anybody to bother
about them: those who came to the meeting were
wild and noisy; those who remained outside threw stones
and mud and tried to stop the work. Mary faced
them, smiling and unafraid, and dared them to touch
her. Some grew ashamed of worrying the brave little
teacher, and these she won over to her side.
But there were others with sullen eyes and clenched
fists who would not give in, and they did their best
to make her life a misery.
One night a band of the most violent
lay in wait for her, and she found herself suddenly
in their midst. They hustled and threatened her.
“We’ll do for you if you
don’t leave us alone,” they cried.
She was quaking with fear, but she
did not show it. She just breathed a prayer for
help, and looked at them with her quiet eyes.
“I will not give up,”
she replied. “You can do what you like.”
“All right,” shouted the
leader, a big hulking lad. “Here goes.”
Out of his pocket he took a lump of
lead to which was tied a bit of cord, and began to
swing it round her head. The rest of the gang
looked on breathless, wondering at the courage of
the girl. The lead came nearer and swished past
her brow. Pale, calm, unflinching, she stood
waiting for the blow that would fell her to the ground.
Suddenly the lad jerked away the weapon and let it
fall with a crash.
“We can’t force her, boys,” he cried,
“she’s game.”
And, like beaten foes, they followed
her, and went to the meeting and into her class, and
after that there was no more trouble. The boys
fell under her spell, grew fond of her, and in their
shy way did all they could to help her. On Saturday
afternoons she would take them into the country away
from the temptations of the streets, and sought to
make them gentle and kind and generous. Some
of the most wayward amongst them gave their hearts
to Jesus, and afterwards grew to be good and useful
men.
What was it that gave her such an
influence over these rude and unruly boys? They
did not know. She was not what is called a pretty
girl. She was plain and quiet and simple, and
she was poorly clad. But she was somehow different
from most teachers. Perhaps it was because she
loved them so much, for the love that is real and
pure and unselfish is the greatest power in the world.
Through the hearts of the boys Mary
found her way to their homes in the slums, and paid
visits to their mothers and sisters, and saw that life
to them was often very hard and wretched. The
other Mission workers used to go two and two, but
she often went alone. Once she was a long time
away, and when she came back she said laughingly:
“I’ve been dining with the Macdonalds
in Quarry Pend.”
“Indeed,” said some one, “and did
you get a clean plate and spoon?”
“Oh, never mind that,”
replied Mary. “I’ve got into their
house and been asked to come back, and that’s
all I care about.”
She always went in the same spirit
in which Jesus would have gone. Sometimes she
would sit by the fire with the baby on her knees;
sometimes she would take tea with the family, drinking
out of a broken cup; sometimes she would help the
mother to finish a bit of work. And always she
cheered up tired and anxious hearts, and left sunshine
and peace where there had been only the blackness
of despair.
No one could be long in her company
without feeling better, and not a few of her friends
came, through her, to know and love and work for Jesus.
“Three weeks after I knew her,” says one
of her old factory mates, “I became a different
girl.” How eager and earnest she was!
“Oh!” she said to a companion, “I
wonder what we would do or dare for Jesus? Would
we be burned at the stake? Would we give our lives
for His sake?” “She did work hard,”
says another, “and whatever she did, she did
with heart and soul.”
When the Mission was removed to the
rooms under the church, the superintendent said:
“We shall need a charwoman to give the place
a thorough cleaning.”
“Nonsense,” said Mary; “we will
clean it ourselves.”
“You ladies clean such a dirty hall!”
“Ladies!” cried Mary;
“we are no ladies, we are just ordinary working
folk.”
Next night Mary and another teacher
were found, with sleeves turned up and aprons on,
busy with pails of water and brushes scrubbing out
the rooms. Like other young people, she had her
troubles, big and little, and these she met bravely.
Evil-minded persons, jealous of her goodness, sometimes
said unkind things about her, but she never paid any
heed to them. She always did what she thought
was right, and went her own way. On Saturdays
she used to put her hair in curlpapers, and her companions
teased her a lot about it, and tried to laugh her out
of the habit, but she just laughed back. When
she and two or three friends met during the meal hour
and held a little prayer meeting opposite the factory,
the other girls would come and peep in, and one of
her companions would be vexed and scold them.
“Dinna bother, Janet,” she would say quietly,
“we needna mind what they do.”
She was not always serious, but could
enjoy fun and frolic with the wildest. Once while
walking in the country with a girl she knocked playfully
at some cottage doors and ran away. “Oh,
Mary,” said her friend, “I’m shocked
at you!”
Mary only laughed, and said, “A
little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest
men.”
From one old friend we get a picture
of her at this time. “Her face was always
shining and happy. With her fresh skin, her short
ringlets, and her firm mouth she somehow always made
me think of a farmer’s daughter coming to market
with butter and eggs!”
Her life during these years was a
training for what she had to do in the future.
She must have had an inkling of it, for her dreams
now were all of service in the far lands beyond the
seas. Through the gloom of the smoky streets
she was always seeing visions of tropical rivers and
tangled jungle and heathen huts amongst palm trees,
and above the noise of the factory she was hearing
the cries of the little bush-children; and she longed
to leave busy Dundee with its churches and Sunday Schools
and go out and help where help was most needed.
She did not say anything, for she knew it was her
brother John that her mother was anxious to make a
missionary. He was a big lad, but very delicate,
and there came a time when the doctor said he must
leave the cold climate of Scotland or die. He
sailed to New Zealand, but it was too late, and he
passed away there. His mother grieved again over
her lost hopes, and Mary, who was very fond of him,
wept bitterly. As she went about her work she
repeated the hymn, “Lead, kindly Light,”
to herself, finding comfort in the last two lines:
And with the morn those angel
faces smile
Which I have loved long since,
and lost awhile.
And then she came back to her dazzling
day-dream. Could she not, after all, be the missionary?
But she was not educated, and she was the chief breadwinner
of the family, and her mother leant upon her so much.
How could she manage it? She thought it all out,
and at last said, “I can do it.
I will do it.” She was one of the
cleverest weavers in the factory, and she began to
do extra work, thus earning a bigger wage and saving
more money. She studied very hard. She practised
speaking at meetings until she learned how to put
her thoughts into clear and simple words.
But it was a weary, weary time, for
she spent fourteen years within the walls of the factory.
Thousands of other girls, of course, were doing the
same, and sometimes they got very tired, but had just
to go bravely on. In one of her poems Mrs. Browning
tells us what it was like: how the revolving
wheels seemed to make everything turn too the
heads and hearts of the girls, the walls, the sky
seen out of the high windows, even the black flies
on the ceiling
All day, the iron wheels are
droning,
And
sometimes we could pray,
“O ye wheels,”
(breaking out in a mad moaning)
“Stop!
be silent for to-day!”
But they never did stop, and the girls
had only their hopes and dreams to make them patient
and brave.
One day there flashed through the
land a telegram which caused much excitement and sorrow.
Africa was then an unknown country, vast and mysterious,
and haunted by all the horrors of slavery and heathenism.
For a long time there had been tramping through it
a white man, a Scotsman, David Livingstone, hero of
heroes, who had been gradually finding out the secrets
of its lakes and rivers and peoples. Sometimes
he was lost for years. The telegram which came
told of his lonely death in a hut in the heart of
the continent. Every one asked, What is to be
done now? who is to take up the work of the great pioneer
and help to save the natives from misery and death?
Amongst those whose hearts leapt at the call was Mary
Slessor. She went to her mother.
“Mother,” she said, “I
am going to offer myself as a missionary. But
do not fret. I will be able to give you part
of my salary, and that, with the earnings of Susan
and Janie, will keep the home in comfort.”
“My lassie,” was the reply,
“I’ll willingly let you go. You’ll
make a fine missionary, and I’m sure God will
be with you.”
Some of her friends wondered at her.
They knew she was not specially brave; indeed, was
not her timidity a joke amongst them? “Why,”
they said, “she is even afraid of dogs.
When she sees one coming down the street she goes
into a passage until it is past!” This was true,
but they forgot that love can cast out all fear.
Tremblingly she waited for the answer
to her letter to the Mission Board of the United Presbyterian
Church in Edinburgh. When it arrived she rushed
to her mother.
“I’m accepted! I’m
going to Calabar as a teacher.” And then,
strange to say, she burst into tears.
So she who had waited so long and
so patiently, working within the walls of a factory,
weaving the warp and woof in the loom, was now going
to one of the wildest parts of Africa to weave there
the lives of the people into new and beautiful patterns.