The Washerwoman's Plaint.
“So let your lips and lives express
The holy gospel we profess.” SHE was a jolly soul, and everybody liked her—and liked her ironing, too, for that matter. Many a party dress came out of her little cottage looking as if fresh from the dressmaker. And she was always so good-natured and obliging that one lady called her a “sunbeam,” and thereupon we had a merry war of words: “A black sunbeam!” “But then so cheery and bright!” “And then so old!” “How much older than the sun?” and I gave it up. “Mother isn’t well enough to do your washing,” came to me one day. I put my hat on at once, whether from pure benevolence or—well, motives are mixed, and soiled clothing is not lovely. I found her quite sick, and in trouble, too. And I spoke to her of God—a present help and an eternal refuge. She smiled. I was pained at her levity, and not willing to go on with the subject, nor yet willing to give it up entirely, I said: “Where do you go to church?” Then she laughed outright, and in her merriest tones said:— “I’ve done your washing nigh upon fifteen years, and you always liked me, and you’ve spoke to me a thousand times, and this is the first time you ever said church to me!” Then she laughed again. I was silent. How silent we shall all be that day of days! “I’ve washed for the best folks in town, one time and another. Good folks, pious folks, but only one of ’em ever said ‘God’ to me. It ’pears like they think colored folks haven’t any souls.” “Why,” I said, “think what the country has done for your race!” “That’s so. I’ve heard ’em talk down to Town Hall; but that’s for colored folks somewhere else. I tell you it’s splendid to repent of other folks’ sins—’taint quite so nice when it comes home. When I hear ’em tell of money taking up for the churches and Sunday-schools ’way off, I think of my boys growing up heathen, and one of ’em getting bad, and I an honest, hard-working woman.” “But, my good woman, every church and Sunday-school here is open to you and your boys.” “That’s the talk. I’ll tell you how it works. First, you see, I was brought up in a minister’s family. You know about Mr. ——?” “Well, in his family I went to Sunday-school with his girls, and when I joined church I stood right next to his oldest daughter, and drank out o’ the same cup,” and her voice grew very soft and gentle, and there was a far-off sound in it as she added slowly, “They just lived religion in that house!” After a moment, with her old cheery voice, she said: “Well, I got married and come here. First Sunday I said, ‘Where do you go to meeting?’ ‘We never go to meeting.’ I stayed to home that day, but I knew ’twant right, no ways. Next Sunday I went alone to the ——, where I s’posed I belonged. I stood in the entry. One after another went along, looked at me; not one smiled. I’ze a stranger, I know; but if I’d been a white lady, all dressed up, guess somebody’d seen I had a seat. I stayed till the sexton had done ringing the bell. Then he looked at me, I looked at him; and he went off into the meeting-house and left me! Next Sunday I went somewhere else. Just about the same everywhere. So I thought I’d be a better Christian at home, reading my Bible, than going where it made me so wicked. You see from that, getting provoked at Christians, I felt kind o’ provoked at God for giving me a black skin. I wonder what he made folks so different for? Well, I got to staying home; ’twant no way to do; I didn’t like it. And when my boys came, I wanted ’em to go to Sunday-school, and not loaf round all day Sunday. So when Jim—that’s my oldest, you know—was going on eight years old, I spent a heap of time fixing him up real pretty, and I fixed up my best things—ironed ’em myself, you know.” “And I know they were ironed faultlessly.” “You may believe that. Then I took my boy and went to meeting. ‘Folks know me,’ I said, ‘and I’ll get a seat somewhere,’ and put my Jimmy into the infant class. I went early. Mrs. A. came along—nice woman; one of the salt of the earth—she came along, bowed, smiled, and went in. So they kept on coming, and bowing, and smiling to me, and one said, ‘How nice your little boy looks,’ but not one of ’em ‘Have you got a seat?’ And the same old sexton rang his bell and went off into church. But I wasn’t going to be put off so that time, and I just walked in and sat down in the back seat. I sat there while they opened the Sunday-school (directly after morning service), and the Superintendent came smiling along down the aisle and took a pretty little girl by the hand and found her a class; but nobody came after my boy; so I went home, and he laughed fit to kill himself, and said, ‘I told you our boy ain’t wanted along side o’ rich folks.’ “But seven or eight years ago they went round—there’d been a revival, you know—getting children into Sunday-school. And one came here and talked to me, and I was glad enough. But ’twas winter, and the boys hadn’t good overcoats, and was all off the notion of going. So I had to tell her. She said she’d see to that, and the ladies got ’em good ones, and the boys felt nice. I was real thankful, and he was pleased as could be, and it was a lively time in our house that Sunday morning, and when they came home with their picture papers and cards, and wanted me to help ’em get their lessons, it seemed like old times, and I don’t know when I have had such a good Sunday. That night I went down to prayer-meeting and took both the boys, and he went as far as the door, and was most a good mind to go in. The seats were just crowded, and they brought in chairs, and don’t you think, not a living soul came into the seat where me and my boys sat! I’ze glad enough he didn’t go in. Next Sunday my boys had their lessons and were fixed up nice. The white boys nudged each other and hitched off a little; but the teacher smiled and called ’em good boys, and said they had good lessons, so they didn’t care so much. But next Sunday she just smiled and said, ‘I’d like to have you come and sit in the seat with me,’ and they did, and the other boys kind of chuckled. Next Sunday they cried; he said they needn’t go, and so it ’twant no use for me trying to make ’em. And the boys to school twitted ’em of going to Sunday-school to get some new coats, and one of ’em said his mother said she hadn’t faith when she gave her fifty cents, for we’s a bad lot; and he just sent fifty cents to her, and told her. ‘There’s plenty of colored folks with souls whiter’n hers.’” “I am very sorry, but will our sins excuse yours?” “Some they do and some they don’t. Can’t you see if they had done as James tells ’em to in his second chapter, I’d got him to meeting pretty soon, my boys would have grown up different as could be, and he wouldn’t have died as he did, and I shouldn’t have backslidden down—well most down to the bottom of the hill, I guess. Smiles don’t cost much; and they are worth a good deal sometimes.” “We haven’t realized their value, that is all.” “Haven’t you? When any of you want some extra nice work done, and I’ve got more than I can do without sitting up nights, then don’t you smile and coax and flatter me? If all the Christians in this town put together had said as much to us about our souls, teased us as hard to go to meeting as any one of the girls will tease to have a dress done up when I hadn’t time to do it, we’d all been members of the church before this. Now that’s so. But the boys were just like he was—an infidel. I guess I’d be, if I hadn’t lived with those dear old saints. I tell you, Christians makes heaps of infidels. Ain’t they half of ’em kind of infidels themselves? Now if they’d believed that God is father of us all; his house our home; the poor his heirs; we are one in Christ; that we must love our brothers as ourselves—as my minister used to preach—they wouldn’t left me stand out there all alone. And how many do you s’pose of all that church, when they was praying for everybody and feeling so good and pious, believed that as they had ‘respect to persons,’ they were ‘convinced of the law as transgressors?’ I thought when I was going home, so sorry, that first Sunday, that Christ was pitying of me;” and tears came into her eyes. “And he was. And you looked fairer to him than any of us that day. But I am afraid that since you have lived on the faults of Christians—a very poor food.” “’Tain’t very good food, but it gives folks enough to eat, so they don’t hunger much after righteousness. When a tree bears apples, folks don’t tap it to get maple sugar. I know you think I am awful wicked to talk against Christians. I s’pose I am, but now ain’t it awful for Christians to let their lives talk against Christ?”—N. Y. Observer.