Miss Margaret by S. B. T.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 24, 1910

Miss Margaret

By S. B. T.

A YOUNG minister was traveling on horseback through a mountain district. One day he noticed groups of people coming from every direction, many of them having evidently walked a long distance. It was not Sunday, yet these people were dressed in Sunday garb, and everywhere was the deepest solemnity. To his inquiry if a protracted meeting were going on, a mountaineer answered:

“Naw, mister, but Miss Margaret’s dead.”

“Miss Margaret?” the stranger asked, inquiringly.

“You-uns don’t know Miss Margaret? She was the ‘best woman ever lived, an’ she’s dead!” There were tears in the man’s eyes.

“Are all these people going to the funeral?”

“Deed they is, mister; it’ll be the biggest funeral ever seen in these parts.”

Deeply interested, the minister attached himself to one of the silent groups, and passed on with the long procession. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene.

The meeting-place was a plain, rough schoolhouse. The cheap, plain coffin, the poorly dressed throng, were all forgotten as the stranger gazed upon the still face of the girl lying in her last sleep. It was not a beautiful face, but it wore, even in death, a look of high resolve and self-forgetfulness that thrilled the looker-on to the depths of his soul. The throngs that gathered round beheld that face with streaming eyes.

Who was she? What was she? Only the teacher of that humble, mountain school. She had come, a stranger, among these rude, ignorant people. For the love of Christ she had labored in season and out of season to teach the children, and also their elders, the better ways they had never known. Before she had been among them six months, the houses were in better repair, and kept in a cleaner, more homelike fashion. The rough manners were softened; kindness and neighborly love were manifest as never before, and the Bible became a well-read, beloved Book. Many a soul had been led to Jesus by her simple words, and her beautiful, unselfish life.

And now she was dead, leaving her flock bereft. Not one in all that company was of kin to her, save as brother or sister in Christ Jesus. Never was queen more truly mourned, never granted truer honor, than this humble, quiet girl, who entering one of earth’s dark corners, made it glorious with the knowledge of him who is the “light of the world.”—S. B. T., in Christian Life.