What Devotion Can Do

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 9, 1879

What Devotion Can Do.

Some time ago, a lady in London was trying to get a girl to help her in doing housework. Her name was Mrs. Levy. One day while walking in the street she met a friend, and asked if she knew of any good girl that she could get. Said her friend, "Why don't you get one of Aunt Betsy's children?"

"Aunt Betsy's children? Pray who is Aunt Betsy?"

"She is an old Scotch woman who lives in Bird's Alley. She adopts poor, homeless children; teaches them, takes care of them, gets them into good habits, and then puts them out in good places. I have had one of her children a good while, and she is the best girl I ever had."

"That is very singular," said Mrs. L. "This woman must be a curiosity. I would like to see her for her own sake. I'll go."

The next day Mrs. Levy went to Bird's Alley to find Aunt Betsy's home. As soon as she entered it, she saw a large, tidy looking room. The floor was as clean as hands could make it. She saw eight or nine girls from three years old to fifteen. They were all busy. Some of the girls were ironing clothes, others were sewing or knitting, and the youngest were twisting up slips of paper to make lamplighters.

While she was looking at them, an elderly Scotch woman came in. She wore a plain gingham dress, with a white apron, and a large broad frilled cap. She made a courtesy to the lady, and her face lighted up with a smile that made it look quite beautiful.

"I am looking for a girl, my friend," said Mrs. Levy, "and your home has been recommended to me as a good place to get one. Are these your children?"

"Oh, no! ma'am, I'm not so rich as that. But let me see; there's Lizzie, she's been here long enough for a recommend. She's a strong hearty girl, ma'am, and never will trouble you with any mean, low ways. Come here Lizzie. Now look in her face, ma'am. That's how I choose my children."

"Then, are none of them yours?"

"Never had one in my life, ma'am," said Aunt Betsy with a smile.

"You are paid, then, for taking care of these children, and providing them with a home?"

"Not a stiver, ma'am; who's to pay me? They are all poor orphans; not one of them has a father or mother except me, and I am both to them, they think," she said, as she looked around affectionately at them. "Sometimes I feel half sorry that I took the wee things, but what could I do? They had honest parents as was taken off with heavy sickness, and I couldn't see them suffer. True, its but little I do, for there are thousands of such poor creatures in the world, but I'll do what I can. I've put thirty-one into good places."

"What!" cried Mrs. Levy, "do you mean to say that you have taken care of and provided for thirty-one children besides these that are here now?"

"Yes'm, and the Lord's blessed me to do it with my own hands, for more than fifteen years back. I've never wanted, neither have they; and whether its knack in me or goodness in them, I don't know; but they'll all mind me, that they will, ma'am, with lifting up a finger."

What a beautiful sheltering cloud Aunt Betsy was! She was working for Jesus, all alone in that little alley, while nobody in the busy world knew what she was doing. But God knew it all. Without husband or children of her own, without any church or committee to help her, without any means but what she earned with her own hands, she had been a bright, sheltering cloud to thirty-one poor children, besides the eight or nine then in her house. She had clothed them, and fed them, and taught them the best she knew how, and then had found good homes for them where they could be useful and happy.—Sel.