Part 13 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: SEWING-CLa.s.s IN THE COURTYARD.]
Shortly afterwards Arulai found them in a state of great depression.
They told her they had promised to be good at the sewing-cla.s.s, but were afraid they would forget. Arulai's ideas are usually most original, and she sympathised with the children, but told them there was no need for them ever to forget. They asked eagerly what could be done to help them to remember. They had prayed, but even so had doubts. Was there anything to be done besides praying? Arulai said there was, and she expounded certain verses from the Book of Proverbs. ”Sometimes the best way to make a mark upon the mind is to make a mark upon the body,” she suggested, and asked the children if they would like this done. The children hesitated. They were aware that Arulai's ”marks” were likely to be emphatic, for Arulai never does things by halves. But their devotion to her and belief in her overcame all fears; and being genuinely anxious to reform, they one and all consented. So she sent a small girl off to look for a cane; and presently one was produced, ”thin and nice and suitable,” as I was afterwards informed. The younger children were invited to take the cane and look at it, and consider well how it would feel. This they did obediently, but still stuck undauntedly to their determination, in fact, were keen to go through with it. Then Arulai explained that when the King said, ”Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying,” he must have been thinking of a very little boy who had not the sense to know what was good for him. They had sense. The mark on the body would be waste punishment if it were not received willingly and gratefully; so if any child cried or pulled her hand away, she would stop. Then the children all stood up and held out their hands--what a moment for a photograph! Arulai's ”mark upon the body” was a genuine affair, but the cla.s.s received it with fort.i.tude and grat.i.tude.
When I heard this history, an hour or so after its occurrence, I rather demurred. The children had appeared to be sincerely sorry when I spoke to them, and if so, why proceed to extremities? But Arulai answered with wisdom and much a.s.surance: ”They have been talked to before and have been sorry, but they forgot and did it again. This time they will not forget.” And neither did they. As long as that cla.s.s continued, its behaviour was exemplary; and ”the mark upon the mind,” to judge by their demeanour, remained as fresh as it must have been on that memorable day when the ”mark” upon the body effected its creation. The story ought to end here; but most stories have a sequel, and this has two.
The first occurred a few weeks later. A little girl, one of the sewing-cla.s.s, had slipped into the habit of careless disobedience, followed too often by sulks. If we happened to come across her just when the thunder-clouds were gathering, we could usually divert her attention and avert the threatened trouble; but if we did not happen to meet her just at the right moment, she would plunge straight into the most outrageous naughtiness with a sort of purposeful directness that was difficult to deal with. Knowing the child well, we often let her choose her own punishments; and she did this so conscientiously that at last, as she herself mournfully remarked, ”they were all used up,” and there was nothing left but the most ancient--and perhaps in some cases most efficacious, which, the circ.u.mstances being what they were, I was naturally reluctant to try. But the child, trained to be perfectly honest with herself, apparently thought the thing over, and calmly made up her mind to accept the inevitable; for when, anxious she should not misunderstand, I began to explain matters to her, I was met by this somewhat astonis.h.i.+ng response: ”Yes, Amma, I know. I know you have tried everything else” (she said this almost sympathetically, as if appreciating my dilemma), ”and so you have to do it. I do not like it at all, but Arulai Accal says it is no use unless I take it willingly, so Amma, please give me a good caning.” (The idiom is the same in Tamil as in English, but there is a stronger word which she now proceeded to use with great deliberation.) ”Yes, Amma, a _hot_ caning--with my full mind I am willing. And I will not cry. Or if I do cry” (this was added in a serious, reflecting sort of way), ”let not your soul spare for my crying!”
The second is less abnormal. Esli, whose placid soul had been sadly stirred at the time of the infliction of the ”mark,” was so impressed by its salutary effect that she conceived a new respect for the methods of King Solomon. The application of ”morning glory” is a privilege reserved, as a rule, for ourselves; but one day, being doubtless hard pressed, Esli produced a stick--a very feeble one--and calling up the leader of all rebels, addressed herself to her. Ch.e.l.lalu, as might have been expected, was taken by surprise; and for one short moment Esli was permitted to follow the ways of the King. But only for a moment: for, suddenly apprehending the gravity of the situation, and realising that such precedent should not pa.s.s unchallenged, Ch.e.l.lalu, with a quick wriggle, stood forth free, seized the stick with a joyous shout, snapped it in two, and flourished round the room: then stopping before her afflicted Accal, she solemnly handed her one of the pieces, and with a bound and a scamper like a triumphant puppy, was off to the very end of her world with the other half of that stick.
When the Elf came to us on March 6, 1901, and we began to know some of the secrets of the Temple, we tried to save several little children, but we failed. The thought of those first children with whom we came into touch, but for whom all our efforts were unavailing, is unforgettable. We see them still, little children--lost. But we partly understand why we had to wait so long; we had not the workers then to help us to take care of them. We had only some of the older Accals, who could not have done it alone. These convert-girls, who now help us so much, were in Hindu homes; some of them had not even heard of Christ, whose love alone makes this work possible. For India is not England in its view of such work. There is absolutely nothing attractive about it.
It is not ”honourable work,” like preaching and teaching. No money would have drawn these workers to us. Work which has no clear ending, but drifts on into the night if babies are young or troublesome--such work makes demands upon devotion and practical unselfishness which appeal to none but those who are prepared to love with the tireless love of the mother. ”I do not want people who come to me under certain reservations.
In battle you need soldiers who fear nothing.” So wrote the heroic Pere Didon; and, though it may sound presumptuous to do so, we say the same.
We want as comrades those who come to us without reservations. But such workers have to be prepared, and such preparation takes time. ”Tarry ye the Lord's leisure,” is a word that unfolds as we go on.
Yet we find that the work, though so demanding, is full of compensations. The convert in her loneliness is welcomed into a family where little children need her and will soon love her dearly. The uncomforted places in her heart become healed, for the touch of a little child is very healing. If she is willing to forget herself and live for that little child, something new springs up within her; she does not understand it, but those who watch her know that all is well. Sometimes long afterwards she reads her own heart's story and opens it to us. ”I was torn with longing for my home. I dreamed night after night about it, and I used to waken just wild to run back. And yet I knew if I had, it would have been destruction to my soul. And then the baby came, and you put her into my arms, and she grew into my heart, and she took away all that feeling, till I forgot I ever had it.” This was the story of one, a young wife, for whom the natural joys of home can never be. But if there is selfishness or slackness or a weak desire to drift along in easiness, taking all and giving nothing, things are otherwise. For such the nurseries hold nothing but noise and interruptions. We ask to be spared from such as these. Or if they come, may they be inspired by the constraining love of Christ and ”The Glory of the Usual.”
FOOTNOTE:
[E] _Overweights of Joy_, ch. xxiii. Suhinie left the nursery for a few hours' rest at noon on February 2, 1910. She fell asleep, to awaken in heaven.
CHAPTER XXV
The Little Accals
But Thou didst reckon, when at first Thy word our hearts and hands did crave, What it would come to at the worst To save.
Perpetual knockings at Thy door, Tears sullying Thy transparent rooms.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THREE LITTLE ACCALS.]
THESE lines come with insistence as I look at the little Accals, who follow in order after the Accals, convert children, most of them, now growing up to helpfulness. If part of the story of one such young girl is told, it may help those to whom such tales are unfamiliar to understand and to care.
December 16, 1903, was spent by three of us in a rest-house on the outskirts of a Hindu town. We were on our way to Dohnavur from Madras, where we had seen Mr. and Mrs. Walker off for England. The two days'
journey had left us somewhat weary; and yet we were strong in hope that day, for we knew there was special thought for us on board s.h.i.+p and at home, and something special was being asked as a birthday gift of joy.
Arulai (Star) and Preena (the Elf), the two who were with me, were full of expectation. The day had often been marked by that joy of joys, a lost sheep found; and as we looked out at the heathen town with its many people so unconscious of our thoughts about them, we wondered where we should find the one our thoughts had singled from among the crowd, and we went out to look for her.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PREENA AND PREEYA
(To left and right) getting ready for a Coming-Day Feast.]
Up and down the long white streets we looked for her; on the little narrow verandahs, in the courtyards of the houses, in their dark inner rooms when we were invited within, out again into the suns.h.i.+ne--but we could not find her. That evening I remember, though we did not say so to each other, we felt a little disappointed. We had not met one who even remotely cared for the things we had come to bring.
No one had responded. There was not, so far as we knew it, even a little blade to point to, much less a sheaf to lay at His feet. After nightfall a woman came to see us. But she was a Christian, and beyond trying to cheer her to more earnest service among the heathen, there was nothing to be done for her. She left us, she told us afterwards, warmed to hope; and she talked to a child next morning, a little relative of her own, whose heart the Lord opened.
For three months we heard nothing; then unexpectedly a letter came. ”The child is much in earnest, and she has made up her mind to join your Starry Cl.u.s.ter” (a name given by the people to our band, which at that time was itinerating in the district), ”so I purpose sending her at once.” The parents, for reasons of their own, agreed to the arrangement, and the little girl came to Dohnavur. It was wonderful to watch her learning. She is not intellectually brilliant, but the soul awakened at once, and there was that tenderness of response which refreshes the heart of the teacher. She seemed to come straight to our Lord Jesus and know Him as her Saviour, child though she was; and soon the longing to win others possessed her, and a younger child, who was her special charge among the nursery children, was influenced so gently and so willingly, that we do not know the time when, led by her little Accal, she too came to the Lover of children.