Effie's Verses by Mrs. R. H. Fleming

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 19, 1883

Effie's Verses.

By Mrs. R. H. Fleming

"Effie! come up here, dear, a little while." And Effie, who was having such a good time reading the Schonberg-Cotta Family, shut up her book with an impatient "O dear! now I've got to stay with Aunt Lizzie ever so long." And then she went slowly along the hall and upstairs, with pouting lips and an ugly frown right between her blue eyes.

Aunt Lizzie had been very sick. She was getting better now, but still Effie had often to be told she was making too much noise, singing, or running up and down stairs. So often, indeed, that Effie used to feel impatient of the restraint, and wish Aunt Lizzie's head would not ache so easily, and wonder what dreadful thing a "nervous spell" could be. But the worst of all was having to sit with Aunt Lizzie while Effie's mother went out for a walk.

It was rather a cross for a little girl only nine years old to stay for an hour or so in a darkened room, and Aunt Lizzie was often rather fretful and hard to please, and wanted a drink of water, or her cologne bottle, or the camphor, or more covering on her feet or off of them, or the blind opened or shut a little more: So that little Effie was kept quite busy in two ways, and one was in keeping her temper.

Effie thought her mother stayed away a long time. Then she looked at Aunt Lizzie, who was lying quietly now, with her eyes shut. And as Effie noticed how pale she was, and how sunken were her eyes, and the thin hands which lay on the coverlet, the little girl felt a great pity come into her heart for her sick aunt, and also felt ashamed of the ungracious way in which she (Effie) had come upstairs. "I wish I could help her some way. I expect she came very near dying," thought Effie to herself, very penitently.

"O, I am so tired!" moaned Aunt Lizzie. "I wish night would come. And then I'll toss about and wish for morning again."

Effie sat very quietly, and at last said, softly, "I know some verses, Aunt Lizzie. Shall I say them to you?"

"I don't care," said Aunt Lizzie, wearily.

So Effie began to repeat her verses:— There is an Eye that never sleeps Beneath the wing of night; There is an Ear that never shuts When sink the beams of light. There is an Arm that never tires When human strength gives way; There is a Love, that never fails When earthly loves decay.

Aunt Lizzie lay so very still, with her eyes shut, that Effie thought she must be asleep, and, very well satisfied with the result of her recitation, was stealing very softly from the room; but Aunt Lizzie called her back and said, "Thank you dear. Kiss me, and you can go."

Effie wondered what made Aunt Lizzie's cheek wet; but when Mrs. Hilton came, Aunt Lizzie told her that Effie had been a "splendid little nurse," and Effie felt proud and happy that she had been of use in the sick-room.

How much use the little girl did not know, nor how, through the long, sleepless night, Aunt Lizzie recalled the sweet words, and rested her soul on that "Love that never fails," which sometimes, her tired sick heart had almost forgotten; and how thankful she felt for Effie's verses.—Mrs. R. H. Fleming, in Christian at Work.