OLD SAL by Mrs. Susan H. Barney

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 1, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 47.

OLD SAL.

By Mrs. Susan H. Barney

BY MRS. SUSAN H. BARNEY.

I REMEMBER very well in working in a certain city, the police said to me, "Well, if you could see one woman that comes in here three or four times a year—'Old Sal'!" They told me it always took four policemen to bring her into the cell, and usually they got their faces scratched. One morning these policemen stood there radiant, and then they said, "We have got her here this morning, and we would like to see you bring her in; if you can do that we will not oppose you any more." The chief said he would send two men to take care of me. I said, "I don't want you."

So they let me go. As I came to the cell door, I rapped with the key and opened the door, and there, in the long, dark, narrow, cell, crouched the woman, looking more like a wild beast than like a woman. She was just ready to spring, as she was expecting the policeman, and she cried out:—

"Who are you?"

"I am your friend."

"No, you are not; I haven't got any friends."

"I am," I said.

"I thought something was queer when somebody rapped on that door; I never had that done in all these times I have been here before. Who are you, anyway, a policeman?"

"No, I am a policewoman."

"Oh, I didn't know they had such things."

As I stood there beside her, I dropped my hands down upon her shoulders. Friends, I believe in the laying on of hands in more than a theological sense. I looked down into her eyes, and called her by her last name, with Mrs. before it.

"Who told you that? I have not heard it before for forty years."

I said, "You know you have got to go into court in a minute, and you are not fit to go." And I began to fix her hair. I took a pin out of my own hair. She hadn't a pin, or a button, or a fastening of any kind to her clothes. She sat there tugging and holding them together, and as I tried to fix them, she said:—

"Tell me what you're up to; tell me what you mean."

By and by, looking into her eyes, I said, "Do you remember the first time you were ever in a police station?"

"O God, don't I remember it!"

"How old were you?"

"I wasn't sixteen."

"How old are you now?"

"I am more than sixty."

"How many times have you been in these places?"

"Oh, I don't know, I guess God don't know, it is so often!"

"Look here, Sallie, if I had been there that first morning—do you remember how you felt?"

"Ah, I was almost scared to death; I cried all night!"

"Sallie, if I had been there then, and had taken my hand and wiped the tears off your face, if I had put your hair up, and put my hands on your shoulders, as I have now, what would it have meant to you?"

"Oh, I would never have got back again! But nobody ever cared."

"Now let me tell you, Sallie; I want you to do something for me; I want to get a woman to go into these places to care for the women in the way I want to care for you. Wouldn't you like to do it to help me?"

"I would do anything I could to help you," she said.

"Now, the policemen say I can't bring you into court this morning."

"They don't know what you can do."

"Will you go quietly with me?"

"I will do anything you say to me."

Then after a minute I said to her, "Sallie, do you remember your mother?"

"O God, don't talk about it! She's dead long ago. I suppose she died before I was seven years old."

"Was she a good mother to you, Sallie?"

"The best that a child ever had."

"Did she ever pray with you, Sallie?"

"Oh, don't! You will kill me if you talk about it."

"Sallie, I'm going to pray with you," and with my hand upon her poor head, stroking down the poor face, I lifted my voice to Him who is not willing that she should perish.

"Oh, how pleasant he seemed to us that morning! It seemed to me that, instead of my hands upon her tempted, tired head, there were hands that had the nail prints in them."

She said, "I feel like another woman."

"They are calling us now. We must go. You will remember, now, what you have promised."

"I will remember."

I said to her, "Shall you take my arm, or shall I take yours?"

She looked me over, and said, "Well, I am about three times as large as you; I guess you had better take mine."

So we went into the court. They said they would have cheered us if it had been proper. A policeman swore a round oath that I had bewitched Sallie, but someone keener than the policeman said, "She's got the touch of the Master."—The White Ribbon.