A CHILD OF SHADOWS

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 27, 1876

A CHILD OF SHADOWS.

Months ago a Detroiter was sent to the House of Correction for habitual drunkenness. The wife, a hard-working woman, and sorely afflicted in health, managed to provide food and fuel for herself and child until the other day, when death came to end the struggle. The little girl, hardly eight years old, was all alone in the house when her mother died. The event occurred at dark, and at midnight the child was heard singing in the darkness. A pedestrian who halted heard her say:—

“Mother, wont you wake up and light the lamp? If you will I will sing some more!”

Suspecting what had happened, he roused some of the neighbors, and as they went to the child sat in the darkness, holding its mother’s cold hand and singing:—

“The Lord will lead a little child, And teach me how to pray.”

A dark room, death on the bed, poverty, hunger and cold to make her situation more desolate, and yet the child of shadows was not afraid. She said:—

“I kept still a long while to let mother sleep. Then I sang all my songs to keep me awake. Then I looked out of the window and didn’t move so that the angels wouldn’t be afraid to come and talk to her and make her smile! I wish God had made more daylight for poor folks.”—Detroit Free Press.