Kitabı oku: «The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 01, January, 1889», sayfa 5
MOUNTAIN WHITE WORK
BY MRS. A.A. MYERS
In my younger days I never remember looking at the forests that skirt the horizon without an indefinable questioning as to what lay beyond. It was easy to picture stretches of landscape and quiet homes like our own, but the query was ever the same, what is still beyond?
The first Sabbath I attended church in the mountains of Kentucky, having listened to the quaint singing before entering the rough-board building, seating myself on one of the slab benches near a box stove, which had but one length of pipe, out of which the smoke was pouring towards an opening in the roof, glancing around on the women in their sun bonnets, the babies in their little calico caps and the men in homespun, then out of the open door into a ravine where the tops of the tall trees were beneath us, I said to myself, I've reached "that beyond." The undefined has taken shape and I have reached the place of which I could never formulate a picture. Seven years' acquaintance in this mountain country has not changed my opinion. We are in another world, and if I could describe that world so you could see it as it is, could feel its needs as we feel them day by day, it is all I could ask.
Philosophers might describe it as the dead centre of motion; at least it has remained seemingly unmoved, while all the world around it has been moving forward.
Here in these mountains live over two million people, two-thirds of whom have never written nor received a letter, could not read one if printed and sent them. They take no newspapers, and the great events of nations or discoveries of science have been nothing to them. Questions of vital importance to our country have never troubled them. They knew there was a war, for contending armies met on their grounds. With few exceptions their sympathies were with the Union. Too poor to own slaves to any extent, they had no motive for seceding, and many of them joined our army and were faithful soldiers.
At the close of the war, they went back to their secluded homes, and between them and the world the curtain fell again. We very well know that mortals cannot rise above their surroundings only within defined limits. Alas! for the defeated manhood and blasted womanhood in our land, held down to earth by unfortunate surroundings. They are looking to you for help. You have done nobly in sustaining a work in their midst. Besides what you have done at Pleasant Hill, Grand View and other points, you have enabled us to organize eight churches and build one academy and eight houses of worship. You have sent among us most efficient teachers. Besides their school duties they have taken upon themselves to visit the homes, to pray with the sick, to distribute clothing among the needy, to go to the homes of the students, to share their humble fare and sleep in their crowded rooms. They have spared neither time nor strength to carry the uplifting word to those needy souls. From the better classes we have been fortunate enough to draw a nucleus for each of our churches. We have some Sunday-school superintendents that for zeal and tact are models in their work and many a Northern school might rejoice in the possession of such officers. They are not so well versed in Scripture as we could wish, but they spare neither time nor expense to prepare themselves for their work.
This class of people responds quickly to the new life that comes to them by the school, the railroad or the business man. If we could find as ready response in the masses as we find in the individuals, our work in the mountains would be quickly done. But, alas! what of these hundreds of thousands who seemingly have no more aspiration than the brute in their field? They are wedded to the customs of their ancestors, and they rebel at any innovation. Give them tobacco, and whiskey, and pistols, a little meal and bacon and coffee, a crude bed and a roof, and that, to them, is living. Oh, those purposeless lives! They exist simply because they are in the world and cannot help it. With the girls especially, marriage is the chief aim, and what should be the holy relation is entered upon almost in childhood. As soon as they begin to lisp they are talking of their lovers. A little wee girl came to a teacher's home, and after answering in monosyllables the common questions as to schools and Sunday-schools, there was a lull in the conversation, when she spoke up: "I hain't got no sweetheart." For all marriage is the chief aim, it is surprising how little preparation they make for it. No bridal trousseau is ever thought of; not even a new dress is made for the occasion. I have seen many a bride in calf-skin shoes, old calico dress, long apron, with no cuffs nor collar, and her hair falling from her comb, while the groom appeared with uncombed hair, stogy shoes, jean pants and in shirt sleeves.
We have no rollicking girls or boisterous boys; we never see a crowing, cooing baby. The children are born old. The babies have a sad and dejected look, as if this world were a "dreary wilderness of woe," and they grieve they were ever born. Poor little ones in the Southland! how many are gathered home ere a twelve months' stay on earth. Besides this weary, aged look of the children, we frequently find those who look like walking corpses. A little inquiry reveals the fact that they are clay eaters. We have them in our schools. In our Jellico school, we have children whose elder sisters had to sprinkle pepper around the hearthstones to keep them from digging out the clay and eating it. The habit once formed, it seems to last them during life; where it ever originated I don't know, but have no doubt it was from lack of proper nourishment.
Our women! how shall I describe them? I wish I might picture them before you as they ride into town with their babies in their arms and a child or two on their horses with them, or as they walk in with heavy, dragging gait, loaded with some produce for sale, or as they stand for hours open-eyed and open-mouthed around the counters of some country store. I wish you could see them in their cabin homes, as bare of comfort as a wild desert waste, or at work in the field with the family, but always and everywhere with a chew of tobacco or a snuff stick in their mouths. They never express a desire for what they have not, nor a murmur at what they have, but their very movements are a complaint—a wail. On their face is ever seen that weary, resigned, passionless look. They never lighten with joy or surprise. If you could manage to fire a Vesuvius before their eyes you would never know by any outward expression but that they had seen volcanoes every day of their lives. There is no imagery, no ideality. The world to them is a humdrum routine, a common-place affair. They have no heroes, and they look upon all men, not as protectors, but seducers, not as beings formed in the image of a pure and holy God, but in the image of a God of lust and debauchery.
When first going among these people, the ludicrous or comical keeps presenting itself, but as you stay year by year the terrible reality of their lives presses sore upon you. You are cramped by their narrowness; you are depressed by their lack of buoyancy; you grow distrustful because of their perfidy; you become sharer of their woes, but they have no joys to share.
Our work among them was begun none too soon. The eye of the speculator is being turned to our mineral and timber resources, and with unscrupulous money-makers for a centre and a demoralized people to gather round them, and no Christ in their midst, what strongholds of Satan would be formed. When we commenced our work seven years ago the field was open to the Congregationalists. If we could have had means to have secured helpers we could have planted ourselves largely, for we had continuous calls to come and organize churches. The people of better minds are sick and tired of the church life around them; they cannot indorse it and so are called infidels. But we have found no infidels there; still it takes no prophet to see that the reaction from this demoralized church life all through the mountains is going to create a great wave of infidelity unless real Christians come to the rescue very soon.
How these things nerve us to increased efforts to save the children and youth from these ways of death. Our hope for the land is in saving them, and our work is largely for them. We have many Sunday-schools connected with our churches and many others where we furnish some helps and where our students teach. Our Bands of Hope are encouraging. Our Christian Endeavor Society has a large membership, and is a power for good. But while we rejoice over these places that have these helps we think of the hundreds of counties along this mountain range that have no such helps. Senator Plumb has stated that the assessment in Alabama for pistols, guns and dirks is four times that on farming implements, and Kentucky's record of crime is far worse than Alabama's. Who of us can say that he is innocent of this shed blood, unless he is doing something toward sending the only cure—a Christian civilization? Because the work has many discouragements, are we excused? Because the people are prejudiced against us and our principles, shall we withdraw, and let them sink lower and lower?
But the question is asked: "Have you no public schools or churches in this large section of the country?" Yes, schools for a few months in the year, taught in little log school houses, some with floors and some with none; some with a tiny window and some without; some have doors and some haven't. Very few have desks; in most there are but slab benches. But worse than the school house and its surroundings is the illiterate, immoral teacher who attempts to teach the children. As for church organizations they are numerous, and a large majority are church members; but alas for the Christianity taught and practiced. Religion and morality are divorced. With most of them, religion is the thing of a moment and not of a life. Meetings once a month during the summer, and that is all the Christian institution the people have, and we call it instruction. We are inclined to smile at the thought of a preacher prefacing his sermon with the boast that he has no learning; that his "jeens" coat has never brushed the chalk off college walls, and what he has to say is "no fixup" of his own, but direct from "sac-rid writ" or an "inspiration of the Speret." But our smiles end with a sigh when we see that there is not only ignorance, but "the poison of asps is under their lips." Their hatred for all other churches than their own is intense. They have no charity for any religion outside of their own church. The excitement and strife for membership is unequalled even in the craze of their political wars. They are bigoted and intolerant, they have no idea of practical Christianity. They have no prayer-meeting, no family prayers, no Sunday-schools. One minister living near where we have recently planted some Sunday-schools gave a whole sermon to talking against them, and said if any one would show him from the Bible where Sunday-schools were taught he'd believe they were right; but a few weeks later, pressed by seeing our schools drawing so largely from the community, he thought something must be done, so with a few of his leading members they announced the organization of a school near ours. They sent to Jellico on Saturday and bought two gallons of whiskey in order to draw the crowd. Of course, such a school lasted but a few days, but their hatred doesn't die so easily. We could help many churches if it were not for this jealousy among their ministers. The people are our friends, and our growing churches are a stimulant to them. Paul said: "What matter if Christ were preached through envy, only so he were preached," and if we can provoke them to good works, will not the children be blessed? Whatever cause prompts them to church building, to prayer or outward Christian living, they must be bettered by it.
And so, slowly, but steadily, this great mass is going to be leavened. It may not come in your day or mine, but come it will, and happy will we be in that far-off time to know that we had something to do in bringing about such needed results. We are confident of success. Right must win "since God is God," and the day is coming when the great "I Am" will dwell in all these churches. Then the bigot will say, "my brother;" the intolerant will grasp hands in loyal fellowship, and Christian hearts will pulsate in one common rhythm. Then will our mountains and hills break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
