A Wayside Harvest [pp. 402-411]

A WAYSIDE HARVEST.
membered long. Poor, stunted, ill-used
Brother Cross! She had been kind to
him and he was grateful. He thought
her work had been good, and he did not
wish that it should die with her, even
though her methods had not always been
methods of wisdom. She was too zealous, too impatient, too extreme, but her
work had been in the right direction.
Moreover, he was not sorry for a chance
to free his mind from certain bitter
thoughts which had long been repressed,
-and what better time to deliver them
than now, behind the earth-works of Sister Hale?
"Brothers and Sisters, I have been
asked to preach Sister Hale's funeral sermon, and now that I am here I must say
that I am not prepared,-I cannot preach
a sermon. I stand in the presence of a
sermon symbolized, her life work, and I
-I cannot preach a sermon. But I will
quote to you some passages from hers.
"I called on Sister Hale a few days
before she died, and I said,' Have you
made your peace with God?' She answered,'No, we have always dwelt together in-peace.' And I said,' You seem
well assured. Beware lest your feet
stumble!' She replied,' He has always
been with me; not for a moment have I
been alone.' That was a strange assertion to make, for you and I - who have
so often been alone- know that Sister
Hale was not an orthodox woman. We
have often deplored this: we have made
her the special subject of prayer, and we
cannot say that in one single instance she
or the Lord answered our prayers. She
died unconverted, and I for one, am content to leave her account with Him who
could let her die thus and die at peace.
"You know that Sister Hale was
queer in other ways. We've often
talked about it. Some of us have criti cized her, some of us have disliked her.
Let us not deny it because she is gone,
we did not deny it while she was here.
But let us pause a moment and see why
this was so. She was a busy woman.
What did she do? Well, she gave part
of her house for a nursery and kindergarten where the women who work in
the canneries could leave their children
from morning till night and know that
they were safe and warm and fed. It
did n't cost us anything, and we approved of it, all of us. I'm afraid we
forgot to tell her so.
"She changed our poor-house, which
was a disgrace to the community, into
a comfortable home for the old and sick,
His sick, who had not where to lay their
heads. We did not altogether approve
of that. It increased our taxes and put
a premium on poverty. I remember a
committee waited on Sister Hale and
told her so; and 1 remember that Sister
Hale said things to that committee that
they did n't like. She believed that each
was to be his brother's keeper,- and not
keeper of swine,- and she told them
that poverty and sin had never provided
a more wretched pl'ace for the unfortunate than this County had for its poor,
and at last she had her way. We are
still paying for it!
"She had other notions. She believed
that the children ought to be given a
chance. You know she tried to start a
box factory here -just for our own
children -where they could work two
hours a day, study four, and play the
rest of the time; be paid for what they
did, and in return, pay for what they
got; and we were never, never to think
- we grown folks - that we were giving
more than we received, that we were
philanthropists, and that those little chil dren were living on charity. That was
her way of keeping our fine poor-house
empty. And she wanted each of us to
stop in our busy life and make friends
with those children, - or just stand
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