MRS. PICKETT’S MISSIONARY BOX.
By Alice M. Eddy
Benefits at a Cent Apiece.
“THAT there missionary box,” said Mrs. Pickett, surveying it with her head on one side, as it stood in state on the best parlor mantel, “that there missionary box is worth its weight in gold two or three times over to me. You’d never believe it, Mis’ Malcolm, the things I’ve been a learnin’ of, ever sence Mary Pickett she brought it home, or rather the mate to it, an’ sot it out on the dinin’-room shelf, an’ told me she’d brought me a present from meetin’.” “Do tell me about it,” said the new minister’s wife, with girlish pleasure at the prospect of a story. “I’ve half a notion to,” replied her hostess. “You’ve got a real drawin’ out way with you, Mis’ Malcolm. Some way you make me think of Mary Pickett herself, that was the beginnin’ of it all, she that’s a missionary to Turkey now—my niece, you know. You’ve got jest her colored hair and you’re light-completed like her, and you laugh something like her, too. Mary Pickett always was a master hand for laughin’. I remember how she laughed that afternoon when she came in with them two boxes an’ sot mine on the shelf out there. She knowed I warn’t the missionary kind. I do’ no but she done it jest for a joke. It was five years ago, you know, an’ I was scrapin’ along with my boarders, an’ rents was high, an’ livin’ higher, an’ I had hard enough times to make both ends meet, I can tell you, tho it warn’t half as hard times as I thought it was. I was that down-hearted that everything looked criss-cross to me, an’ I’d got to have hard feelings against every one! looked ’s if they got along easier ’n me, an’ I most gave up goin’ to church at all, for all I was a professor, an’ I won’t say but what I had murmurings against providence—fact is, I know I had—if you be a minister’s wife. An’ so it was work, work, from one week’s end to another, an’ I never thought of nothin’ else. Then Mary Pickett she come home from school, where she’d ben ever sence she was fifteen, for she took all the money her pa left her, to get an education, so’s to teach; an’ she got a place in the grammar school an’ come to board with me, an’ she’d heard about missions to that school till she was full of ’em, an’ the very fust meetin’ day after she come, she walked out in the kitchen, an’ says she:— “Aunty, a’nt you comin’ to missionary meetin’, down to the church?” says she. “I’ll meet you there after school,” says she. “An’ if you’ll believe me, Mis’ Malcolm, I was that riled that I could have shook her. I says:— “Pretty doin’s ’twould be for me to go10traipsin’ off to meetin’ and leave the ir’nin’ an’ the cookin’ and set alongside o’ Lawyer Stapleton’s wife, hearin’ about—the land knows what! Folks had better stay to home and see to their work,’ says I. But, law! nothin’ ever made Mary Pickett answer back. She jest laughed and said, ‘Good-by,’ an’ I staid an’ puttered over the kitchen work till I was hot as fire, inside an’ out; an’ long about five o’clock back she came with them two boxes.” “I’ve brought you a present, Aunt Mirandy,” says she, settin’ of it down, an’ when I see what it was, I jest stood an’ stared. ’T warn’t that one there, ’twas one jest like it, an’ it had a motto written on to one end: ‘What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits to me?’ “Well, you’re smart!” says I, an’ Mary she jest dropped into a chair an’ laughed till I couldn’t help laughin’ too. “Great benefits I have,” says I, standin’ with my arms akimbo an’ lookin’ that box all over. “Guess the heathen won’t git much out o’ me at that rate.” “I s’pose that depends on how much you render,” says Mary; says she: “You might try at a cent apiece awhile, jest for the fun of it. Nobody knows who’s got this motto, you know, an’ even a few cents would be some help,” says she. “’Bout’s many as grapes off bean vines, I’d get,” says I, for I was more than usual low-spirited that night, an’ I jest made up my mind I would keep count, jest to show myself how little I did have. “Them few cents won’t break me,” I thought, an’ I really seemed to kinder enjoy thinkin’ over the hard times I had, while I was settin’ the table, with Mary helpin’, an’ I kep’ sayin’ little mean things, about how I s’posed she wanted me to put in a cent for the smoky stove, an’ for the bread that warn’t light, so’t I knew all the boarders would be grumblin’ at supper, an’ plenty more in that line, that she never took no notice of. Mis’ Stapleton said once that Mary was a girl of great tact, an’ I guess I know it better’n any one else. “Well, the box sot there all that week, an’ I used to say it must be kinder lonesome with nothin’ in it, for not a cent went in till next missionary meetin’ day. I was settin’ on the back steps gettin’ a breath of fresh air, when Mary came home, an’ I called out to her to know what them geese talked about to-day. That was the livin’ word I called ’em—‘them geese.’ Well, she come and set down along o’ me, an’ begun to tell me about the meetin’, an’ it was all about Injy an’ the widders there, poor creturs, an’ they bein’ abused an’ starved an’ not let to think for themselves—you know all about it better’n I do—an’ before I thought I up an’ said:— “Well, if I be a widder, I’m thankful I’m where I kin earn my own livin’, an’ no thanks to nobody an’ no one to interfere.” “Then Mary she laughed an’ said there was my fust benefit. Well, that sorter tickled me, for I thought a woman must be pretty hard up for benefits when she had to go clear off to Injy to find ’em, an’ I dropped in one cent, an’ it rattled round a few days without any company. I used to shake it every time I passed by the shelf, an’ the thought of them poor things in Injy kep’ a comin’ up before me, an’ I really was glad when I got a new boarder for my best room, an’ felt as if I’d oughter put in another. An’ next meetin’ Mary she told me about Japan, an’ I thought about that till I put in another, because I warn’t a Jap. An’ all the while I felt kinder proud of how little there was in that box. Then one day when I got a chance to turn a little penny sellin’ eggs, which I warn’t in the habit of, Mary brought the box in where I was countin’ of my money, an’ says:— “A penny for your benefit, Aunt Mirandy,” an’ I says:— “This a’n’t the Lord’s benefit”; an’ she answered:— “If ’ta’n’t his, whose is it?” an’ she begun to hum over something out of one of the poetry books that she was always a readin’ of:— ‘God’s grace is the only grace, And all grace is the grace of God.’” “Well, I dropped in the penny, an’ them words kep’ ringin’ in my ears, till I couldn’t help puttin’ more to it, on account of some other things I never thought of callin’ the Lord’s benefits before. An’ by that time, what with Mary’s tellin’ me about them meetin’s an’ me most always findin’ somethin’ to put in a penny for, to be thankful that I warn’t it, an’ what with gettin’ interested about it all, an’ sorter searchin’ round a little, now an’ then, to think of something or other to put in a cent for, there really came to be quite a few pennies in the box, an’ it didn’t rattle near so much when I shook it. An’ then one day Mary she brought me a little purplish pamphlet, an’ she says:— “Aunty, here’s a missionary magazine I’ve subscribed to for you, bein’ you’re so interested in missions.” “Me interested in missions! But when I come to think it over, I didn’t see but what I was, in a way, an’ I said it over to myself, kinder curious, to see how it sounded. It was jest what they said about Mis’ Stapleton, she’t was the president of the missionary society. An’ that night our new boarder he picked up the magazine, and said:— “Why, what’s this?” An’ I said, quite pleased, before I thought:— “That’s a magazine that my niece, Mary Pickett, she’s subscribed to for me, bein’ I’m so interested in missions.” “‘My mother used to take it,’ says he. He was a young man, not much more’n a boy, an’ homesick, I guess. ‘I’d like to look it over, if you don’t mind,’ he says. ‘It looks like home.’ So I was so pleased to hear him say that, for the boarders they don’t most generally say much, except to find fault, that when I went out in the dinin’-room, I jest put another cent in, for the magazine itself, part for what he’d said, an’ part for what I’d ben readin’ out of it that afternoon; an’ while I was a droppin’ of it in, Mary she come up behind me an’ give me a big hug. “‘You dear old inconsistent thing!’ she says, an’ then I knew she’d heard what I’d said in the parlor. “Well, it went on that way for quite a while, an’ it come to be a regular thing that a cent would get in there every time I heard about the meetin’. I thought Mary would a’ died laughin’ the time I put one in because I warn’t born a cannibal—an’ one day—I’ll never forget that day, Mis’ Malcolm—she was tellin’ me about Turkey, an’ she told how some missionaries heard a little girl sayin’ how the smallest thing in all the world wa’n't any smaller than the joy of her father when she was born. Them words went right through me. I was standin’ over the ir’nin’-board, an’ Mary was opposite to me, but all of a sudden, instead of her, I seemed to see my Liakim’s face, that had ben dead ten year, an’ him a leanin’ down over our little baby, that only lived two weeks, the only one I ever had. Seemed to me I couldn’t get over it, when that baby died. An’ I seemed to see Liakim smilin’ down at it, an’ it lyin’ there, all soft an’ white—she was a white little baby—such a pretty baby—an’ before I knew it, I was droppin’ tears all over the starched clothes, an’ I turned round an’ went an’ put another cent in that box, for the look on Liakim’s face when he held her that time. An’ Mary she see somethin’ was the matter, I guess, for she walked off an’ never asked me no questions. But all the rest of the day I kep’ seein’ that little face before me, an’ thinkin’ how I’d had her for my own—an’ before I went to bed I went out in the dinin’-room, an’ I put in a little bright five-cent piece for my baby, because I couldn’t bear to count her jest like everythin’ else, an’ I found myself cryin’ because I hadn’t money enough jest then to spare anythin’ bigger. I suppose it was from thinkin’ about her so much that that night I dreamed about mother. I could see her as plain, an’ father with her, an’ we was back on the old farm, an’ while I was kissin’ of ’em both, I heard some one sayin’, ‘As one whom his mother comforteth.’ An’ I woke up, an’ I was sayin’, ‘O Lord, I am a wicked, ungrateful woman!’” “Mis’ Malcolm, I don’t suppose you could understand—you that’s a minister’s wife, an’ thankful to the Lord, in course—what I thought that night. I laid awake, thinkin’ an’ cryin’, an’ yet not all sorry, for half the night. I kep’ thinkin’ of all the things the Lord had ever done for me, an’ the more I thought of mother an’ the old home, the softer my heart seemed to grow, an’ I jest prayed with all my might an’ main, an’ that there box weighed on my mind like lead. ‘A cent apiece!’ I kep’ sayin’, ‘A cent apiece for all His benefits!’ Why, they come over me that night, while I laid there prayin’, till they was like crowds an’ crowds of angels all round me. In the mornin’ I went up to the box feelin’ meaner than dirt, an’ I put in a cent for mother, an’ a cent for father, an’ one for the old farm, an’ the rose-bush in front of my window, an’ for my little pet lamb, that made me so happy when I was a girl, an’ for heaps of other things that I’d ben forgettin’ in them hard times. An’ when I couldn’t spare no more, I went to work, an’ do believe I was a different woman after that. For there was the verses in the Bible, that I used to get up early to read them mornin’s, an’ there was the love of God, that I’d never rightly understood, an’ there was church, that I couldn’t bear to miss now, an’ there was the daily bread, that I’d never thought of bein’ thankful for till after that night, when I found out how much I’d had in my life, an’ begun to look about me for what I had now. An’ so it went on, till the box grew heavier an’ heavier, an’ before the day come for it to be opened, three months from the time I’d had it, it was all full, an’ I stuck in one cent into the slit at the top, an’ said:— “That’s for you, Mary Pickett, for if ever I had a benefit from the Lord, you’re one.” An’ Mary she cried when I said it. “So, when the day come, I said I was goin’ too, an’ I left the ir’nin’ an’ we went off together, an’ there was singin’ an’ everythin’, jest as there always is, only it was all new to me, an’ every one seemed as glad to see me as if I’d ben as rich as any of ’em, an’ at last it come time to open our boxes. An’ I brought mine an’ I says:— “Mis’ Stapleton,” I says, “if ever there was a mean-feelin’ woman come to missionary meetin’ I’m the one; for I’ve ben a keepin’ count of my mercies at a cent apiece,” I says. “It’s all cents in there, ’cept one five-cent piece, that means somethin’ special to me. An’ I wouldn’t let myself put in more,” I says, beginnin’ to cry, “for when I begun to find out what I had to be thankful for, I says to myself, ‘Mean you’d oughter feel, an’ mean you shall feel. You’ll jest finish up this here box the way you begun.’ An’ here ’tis,” I says, “an’ every cent is one of the Lord’s mercies.” “So I set down cryin’ like a baby, an’ Mis’ Stapleton she begun to count, with the tears a runnin’ down her own cheeks, an’ before she got through we was all cryin’ together, for there was three hundred and fifty blessed cents in that box, not countin’ the little five-cent piece, that nobody knew what it meant. “An’ now,” says I, “give me another box, but, for mercy’s sake, don’t let it have that motto on it, for I believe it’ll break my heart!” “So they give me this one, with, ‘The love of Christ constraineth us,’ on it, an’ Mis’ Barnes, that was the minister’s wife then, she prayed for us all, about havin’ thankful hearts, an’ lovin’ the Lord for what he’s done for us, an’ I went home with the new box that’s standin’ there on the shelf, an’ life’s ben a different thing to me sence that day, Mis’ Malcolm, my dear, an’ that’s why that missionary box is worth its weight in gold.”—A Little Tract.