An Indoor Tragedy

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1873

An Indoor Tragedy.

WELL nigh half a century ago a newly married couple settled in one of the western counties of Pennsylvania. They had what their neighbors deemed a fair capital to begin life—a well stocked though small farm, sound health, good common sense, and a more than average amount of shrewd intelligence and culture. Under all this was a sincere trust in God, and a jealous, sensitive love for each other, neither of which their neighbors knew much about. American backwoods farmers take a pride in covering their emotions under a hide as tough as that of their own beeves. They had three or four children, and night after night, over the kitchen fire, the problem they set themselves to answer was, what is the best thing we can do with them, and for them; the question asked daily with such a wrenching of hearts in myriads of homes, and answered so differently. The fear of God seemed to Jacob and his wife the best heritage to give them; the next best, plenty of money. To give them the first, they began by hedging the children’s lives with a system of rules, borrowed half from the Jewish laws, half from the theory of their sect. Strict morality, the keeping of Sunday as a periodical day of penitence and wretchedness, the learning, under penalty of dark closets and thrashings, of the chief duty of men—therein was their religion. Life, they were shown as a strait and hard path through a dark valley, with the terrors of Sinai behind, and the traps and pitfalls of a flaming hell on either side. Even Jacob’s wife, Mary, holding her darlings to her breast, than which no mother’s ever ached or throbbed with more tenderness, had no other sermon to preach to them. It never occurred to her or her husband that it was into just such fields of grain as those about them, under just such towering cedars, that Jesus led his disciples and taught them, by the sunshine and the rain, the tender mercies of God. The world grew green around them, faded again and wrapped itself in snow, year after year; the river sang its mysterious songs to the woods at their very door; and overhead the stars that had declared to the patriarchs of the old world the infinite secrets of Jehovah, blazoned them forth still, unregarded. Day unto day uttered speech, and night unto night showed forth knowledge of Him, but both farmer and wife were deaf and blind. God was to be approached only through a dog-eared catechism, and fields and rivers were worth only so much fish and wheat per year.

The children’s salvation being thus provided for, the next thing to be insured was money. Husband and wife worked and stinted as only a Scotch-Irish farmer’s family can work or stint. All produce that was salable went to the market; the children were reared on the refuse, the skim-milk, the poorest bacon, and water potatoes. Their clothes were coarse and patched, their feet bare and chilblained. The house grew barer year by year, the father’s back more bent, his face harder, but the balance in bank increased dollar by dollar. As for the plump, bonny Mary, she had long ago joined that sisterhood of lean, yellow-skinned, toothless women, who, with dirty calico dresses and wisps of hair twisted up behind, are sometimes found in farm-houses like ghastly megrims, or daylight specters of wasted life. When churning and scrubbing were done she would sit up until near morning, washing and darning their clothes, that they might look more “genteel” than she, dragging her aching body to look at them when they slept, praying for them with a fierce longing to have power to be God himself—to be able to protect and care for them. The boys had certain strong animal propensities and physical tendencies which required skill and knowledge to guide or restrain. One had a morbid imagination; another, a tendency to alcoholic poisoning, against which his diet and training from infancy should have defended him. The girls, left to themselves, were filling their brains with sickly false fancies of life and their work in it. But what time had Mary to read or acquire in any way the power to comprehend or help her children? There was the scrubbing and churning to be done, the money to be saved. Boys and girls were sent to colleges and seminaries; every advantage that education could give them was theirs; the only mistake Jacob and his wife made in this respect was not to educate themselves as well. The children went forward; they sat down and grubbed.

What is the end of it all? The daughters grew up dyspeptic and sickly for the lack of early proper food; they married and died before middle age, brilliant, hard women, and neither of them in any sense religious. One son went into politics, was successful, is now a member of Congress, one of the most influential of his party. Jacob and Mary read of his life at Washington, his wife’s receptions, his popularity. But long ago he was a stranger to them. It is years since he crossed the old threshold. What is there in common between him and the ignorant, boorish farmer and his wife? A few weeks ago the last of the sons came home to die; the one of all the children who had real power of intellect; the only one who was not ashamed to talk of “mother” fondly to the last. He died in her arms, a drunken, worthless sot. The thin, haggard woman closed his eyes without a tear. “I have lost all my children,” she said. “I must have made a mistake somewhere in the beginning, God knows.” Is no other mother making this mistake?—N. Y. Tribune.