A Little History | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 19, 1882

A Little History.

SOME years ago a teacher in one of the Detroit public schools noticed a bright, colored girl among her scholars, who commended herself by her excellent demeanor and her ready facility in pursuing her studies. One day the teacher saw the girl's mother, a poor washer-woman and widow, and asked her how she would like to have her daughter receive a thorough education and become a teacher among the people in the South or in Africa. It was just what the mother would like, and then and there the purpose took definite shape under the kind encouragement of the child's teacher.

And then the years sped on. The mother toiled over her wash-tub and ironing-board, and the daughter pushed rapidly ahead in her studies, assisting her mother as she could. In time she graduated from the lower grades into the high-school. In time she stood among the graduating class in the high-school, honoring herself and her teachers by her studious habits, and her ability to acquire knowledge. By this time, so close had they lived, and so well managed, that the mother had $100 laid by. With this little capital, four years ago, the two went to Ann Arbor. Here a single room was hired which served as work room, living room, and sleeping room. The mother took in washing from the students during term time, earning $6 and $7 per week, and in the long vacations both mother and daughter went out to service in families to add to their small store. On these humble earnings they lived, paid tuition (fortunately small), and bought texts books, and thus the daughter was kept at the State University. There, too, she stood with the foremost in her classes, and in June last graduated with her fellows. The goal of years of such toil and self-sacrifice as few know or would have the heroism to encounter, was reached. But this was only a new starting point for fresh, even life-long labors and self-denials. During the four years' course at the University, pursued under what, to most of us, would have seemed insurmountable difficulties, both mother and daughter were upheld by the hope—paradoxical as it may seem—of a "life of self-sacrifice," if indeed the glad service in honor of Him whose whole life was sacrificial can be so called.

And when, after four years of study, the daughter's zeal for the mission cause, and her great longing to carry the light of the gospel to those that "sit in darkness," in the land of her fore-fathers, had but increased as the day of her graduation approached, the mother not only did not dissuade her from her purpose, but was ready also to go, trusting of the same Lord who had kept them while here, to give her, even on the far-off shore of the dark continent, her "daily bread."

We only add, that Mary Lucy Harding is now a regularly appointed missionary to Africa. Immediately after commencement she sent a written application through the Woman's Presbyterian Board of Missions of the Northwest, accompanied by many high testimonials, beside those of Dr. Steele, her pastor, and President Angell. So unqualified were these testimonials to her qualifications and worth that she was at once accepted and will probably sail for Africa with her noble-hearted mother, the coming autumn.

This is one of "the short and simple annals of the poor," a record of life among the lowly and unknown, that has been going on for years past, unnoted save by One whose eye rests with special favor upon such precious gifts of devotion and love. "And they shall be mine, saith the Lord, in the day when I make up my jewels."—Detroit Tribune.