Brave Aunt Katy | AdventAI

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

Brave Aunt Katy.

THERE is a true story which I never weary of telling whenever the opportunity offers by which its recital can “point a moral.” Thus it runs:—

It was Ned Thornton’s eighteenth birth-day. A year previous, when he had received the merry congratulations of his friends upon a similar event, he was as frolicking, fun-loving, clean-hearted, and popular a boy as ever handled a bat or tossed a snow-ball. Within the twelve months that lay folded between that memorable day and this one, he had fallen from his high estate and become that saddest of earthly sights to pure eyes, “a fast young man.”

As he lounged carelessly over the counter of a drinking saloon, waiting for the glass of beer just ordered, and wondering why “the fellows” whom he was to have met there by appointment were so “slow,” he seemed as impervious to any tender emotion as though his handsome face and form had been carved out of granite.

As he stood tapping on the smooth marble, and thinking of the wild debauch which had been planned for the coming evening out of compliment to him, a glass door in the rear opened; he heard a sigh, and turning, confronted an old, wrinkled, black woman.

With a scrubbing brush in one hand, and a small pot of sand in the other, she stood an instant, steadily scanning him from head to foot.

“Hallo, Aunty! have you an idea of scouring me?” he asked.

“De outside is peart and smart lookin’ enuff, sir; it’s inside whar de great stain is dat I can’t tech,” she replied, never removing her gaze.

The blood mounted to Ned’s forehead until his eyes flashed at what he considered her insolence.

“What do you mean, you old fool? I’ll teach you the proper way to address me; I’ll”—

“Stop, stop, honey!” she exclaimed, laying the back of the brush, with her hand still clasping it, upon his coat sleeve. “I’se already drest you more times dan you kin count. ’Twon’t help you none to ’buse and scarify old Katy. I’se long wanted a chance at you, and now I’ll speak my mind. You is mos’ a man now, you is; but, honey, it ’pears to me no time since your two-year-old birf-day, when dese arms kerried you on a pillar night an’ day for mos’ a week. Your mother was worn out nussin’ you, for you was dreful sick. One day, when you laid on my lap jis’ as white an’ limysey as a wet clof, she leaned ober you, a prayin’ an’ a cryin’ an’ said:—

“‘Jis let my precious boy lib, dear Lord, an’ I g’b him to your service forebber an’ ebber.’”

“He, de good Marster, took her soon arter dat, and I russed you a year longer, ’cordin’ to my promise to her. De Lord heard dat prayer, an’ you is mos’ a man. Whose strenf you wastin’ now, y’urs or de Lord’s? Who you ’long to, yourself or he? Why is you bringin’ disgrace on de name ob your angel mother? Who is you scandalizin, an’ reproachin’ all de time? De dear Lord, your bes’ frien’. Oh! Neddy, ole mistus’ little boy, Neddy!”

At that instant the bar-tender, who had been providentially detained, approached with the foaming “bitters,” and at the same moment in rushed, laughing and shouting, three of the wildest lads in town. Old Katy vanished as they came near.

“Been treating old Fifteenth, Ned?” said Max Murray, the ring-leader of the “Fearless Four,” as Ned had dubbed his party of intimates. “You look as sober as though you had swallowed her. Four slings, Pete,” nodding to the waiter, “and make them as stiff as a bristle. What the mischief is wrong; Ned? I can’t understand you,” he continued, as Ned, with hands thrust into the depths of his pockets, and grave face from which all color had fled, stood just where Aunt Katy had left him.

None but the tender, pitying Christ knew the nature of the struggle which had commenced so suddenly, yet violently in Ned’s heart, nor the flood of beautiful memories which were pouring in upon his awakened soul. Words can no more convey an idea of their power and swiftness than they could show to a blind man the soft blue of a summer’s sky.

“Lord help me!” he breathed, and already the giant’s grip seemed loosening.

“None for me, Max,” as his astonished friend held the tempting glass to his very lips.

“Are you sick, Ned? You’re gray as ashes,” said Hugh Brown.

“Yes, boys, I am sick of myself;” and covering his face with his cap, he wept—like the boy that he was, notwithstanding his attempts at bravado.

A few weeks after this occurrence, at a Sabbath afternoon prayer-meeting, there entered, two by two, a well-known Bible class of young men, and bringing up the rear, with heads erect, and firm, ringing footsteps, came the “Fearless Four,” led by Ned Thornton.

Aunt Katy, brave old missionary Aunt Katy, had done her work well. Love for a perishing soul had prompted her desire to rescue it, and unquestioning faith in the God she served had given her the needed courage.—Exchange.