... Consecrated, affectionate women who are not afraid of work or of
filth of any kind, moral or material. Women who can nurse a baby or
teach a child to wash and comb as well as to read and write, women who
can tactfully smooth over a roughness and for Christ's sake bear a
snub, and take any place which may open. Women who can take everything
to Jesus and there get strength to smile and persevere and pull on
under any circumstances. If they can play Beethoven and paint and draw
and speak French and German so much the better, but we can want all
these latter accomplishments if they have only a loving heart, willing
hands, and common sense. Surely such women are not out of our reach.
There are thousands of them in our churches, and our home churches have
no monopoly of privilege in choosing to keep them. Spare us a few.
Induce them to come forward. If there be the call from the Holy Spirit
do not let mere accomplishments be a _sine qua non_. Help them to come
forward. Take them to your own homes and let them have the benefit of
all the conversation and refinement and beauty which fill these, and so
gently lead them out of their timidity and accustom them to society
that they may meet out in the world, and hand them on to us. Up in a
station like mine they want to teach the first principles of
everything, and they need to help in times of trouble in the home or in
the town palaver. They will not need fine English, for there is none to
admire it. No one knows other than native languages, and I would gladly
hail any warm-hearted woman from any sphere if she would come to me. I
cannot pretend to work this station: the school work is simply a
scramble at the thing, mostly by the girls of the house. I can't
overtake it. It is because I am not doing it efficiently that I am
grieved.
On her visits to Calabar she was an object of much interest. One who
knew her then says: "She had the power of attracting young men, and she
had great influence with them. Whether they were in Mission work, or
traders, or government men, they were sure to be attracted by her
vigorous character and by the large-hearted, understanding way she
would talk to them or listen to their talk of their work or other
interests. She loved to stir them to do great things."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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