Part 1 (1/2)
Sight to the Blind.
by Lucy Furman.
Introduction
A more illuminating interpretation of the settlement idea than Miss Furman's stories ”Sight to the Blind” and ”Mothering on Perilous”
does not exist. Spreading what one has learned of cheerful, courageous, lawful living among those that need it has always been recognized as part of a man's work in the world. It is an obligation which has generally been discharged with more zeal than humanity. To convert at the point of a sword is hateful business.
To convert by promises of rewards, present or future, is hardly less hateful. And yet much of the altruistic work of the world has been done by one or a union of these methods.
That to which we have converted men has not always been more satisfactory than our way of going at it. It has often failed to make radical changes in thought or conduct. Our reliance has been on doctrines, conventions, the three R's. They are easily sterile--almost sure to be if the teacher's spirit is one of c.o.c.k-sure pride in the superiority of his religion and his cultivation.
The settlement in part at least is the outgrowth of a desire to find a place in which certain new notions of enlightening men and women could be freely tested and applied. The heart of the idea lies in its name. The modern bearers of good tidings instead of handing down principles and instructions at intervals from pulpit or desk _settle_ among those who need them. They keep open house the year around for all, and to all who will, give whatever they have learned of the art of life. They are neighbors and comrades, learners as well as teachers.
It would be hard to find on the globe a group of people who need more this sort of democratic hand-to-hand contact than those Miss Furman describes, or a group with whom it is a greater satisfaction to establish it. Tucked away on the tops and slopes of the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee are thousands of families, many of them descendants of the best of English stock.
Centuries of direful poverty combined with almost complete isolation from the life of the world has not been able to take from them their look of race, or corrupt their brave, loyal, proud hearts. Encircled as they are by the richest and most highly cultivated parts of this country, near as they are to us in blood, we have done less for their enlightenment than for that of the Orient, vastly less than we do for every new-come immigrant. On the religious side all that they have had is the occasional itinerant preacher, thundering at them of the wrath of G.o.d; and on the cultural what Aunt Dalmanutha calls the ”pindling” district school. In the teachings of both is an over-weight of sternness and superst.i.tion, little ”plain human kindness,” almost nothing that points the way to decent, happy, healthy living.
The results are both grotesque and pitiful. Is it strange that the feud should flourish in a land ruled by a ”G.o.d of wrath?” Is anything but sickness and death to be expected where both are looked on as visitations of an angry G.o.d?
Among these victims of our neglect and our blundering methods of teaching the settlement school has gone. It goes to stay. Not three months, but twelve months its teaching goes on; not one Sabbath in the month, but three hundred and sixty-five days in the year it preaches. Literally it is a new world which the settlement opens to the mountaineers, one ruled by cleanliness, thrift, knowledge and good-will. The beauty of it is that living day after day under this order they come to know that its principles are practical truths; that they work out. To be told that the baby is dying not because the Lord is angry with the family but because the milk is impure may seem little better than impiety at first, but save the baby by proper care and you have gone a long way to proving that pure milk is G.o.d's law and that all the prayers in the world will not change His ruling.
For distorted imaginings of the way the world is run the settlement is giving to the mountaineers something of the harmony and beauty of science.
New notions of heroism and honor are filtering into the country along with the notions of sanitation and health. That injuries can be honorably forgiven and forgotten is a hard doctrine to swallow in Eastern Kentucky, but when you see it practiced by those from the great world of which you have only dreamed it comes easier.
The contrast between the two ways of living--that in the settlement and that in their mountain homes--is not long in doing its work.
Decent living even in great poverty is possible if you know how, and the settlement shows what can be done with what you have. The relation of their poverty and ill-health to their lack of knowledge and their perpetual lawless warfare is quickly enough grasped by the young, and means a new generation with vastly improved morals, health, self-control.
What more fruitful and appealing world for work, particularly for women, do these United States offer? If there is an idle or lonely woman anywhere revolting against the dullness of life, wanting work with the flavor and virility of pioneering in it, let her look to these mountains. She 'll find it. And what material to work with will come under her hands! ”I often ask myself,” says the heroine of ”Mothering on Perilous,” one of Miss Furman stories of the settlement school, ”What other boys have such gifts to bring to their nation? Proud, self-reliant, the sons of heroes, bred in brave traditions, knowing nothing of the debasing greed for money, strengthened by a hand-to-hand struggle with nature from their very infancy (I have not known of one who did not begin at five or six to shoulder family responsibilities such as hoeing corn, tending stock, clearing new ground, grubbing, hunting, gathering the crops) they should bring to their country primal energy of body and spirit, unquenchable valor, and minds untainted by the l.u.s.t of wealth.”
IDA M. TARBELL
Sight to the Blind
One morning in early September, Miss s.h.i.+ppen, the trained nurse at the Settlement School on Perilous, set off for a day of district-visiting over on Clinch, accompanied by Miss Loring, another of the workers. After riding up Perilous Creek a short distance, they crossed Tudor Mountain, and then followed the headwaters of Clinch down to Skain's Fork, where in a forlorn little district-school-house the trained nurse gave a talk on the causes and prevention of tuberculosis, the spitting of tobacco-juice over the floor by teacher and pupils abating somewhat as she proceeded.
Two miles farther on she stopped at the Chilton home for a talk to half a dozen a.s.sembled mothers on the nursing and prevention of typhoid, of which there had been a severe epidemic along Clinch during the summer.
Afterward the school-women were invited to dinner by one of the visiting mothers. Mrs. Chilton at first objected to their going, but finally said:
”That 's right; take 'em along with you, Marthy. I allow it 'll pyeerten Aunt Dalmanuthy up to hear some new thing. She were powerful' low in her sperrits the last I seed.”
”Pore maw!” sighed Marthy, her soft voice vibrant with sympathy.
”It looks like things is harder for her all the time. Something new to ruminate on seems to lift her up a spell and make her forgit her blindness. She has heared tell of you school-women and your quare doings, and is sort of curious.”
”She is blind?” inquired the nurse.
”Blind as a bat these twelve year',” replied Mrs. Chilton; ”it fell on her as a judgment for rebelling when Evy, her onliest little gal, was took. She died of the breast-complaint; some calls it the galloping consumpt'.”
”I allus allowed if Uncle Joshuay and them other preachers had a-helt off and let maw alone a while in her grief,” broke in Marthy's gentle voice, ”she never would have gone so far. But Uncle Joshuay in especial were possessed to pester her, and inquire were she yet riconciled to the will of G.o.d, and warn her of judgment if she refused.”
”Doubtless Uncle Joshuay's high talk did agg her on,” said Mrs.