He rocks himself and replies, "If your heart was vexed would you go any
place? Would you not rather sit at home and nurse your sorrow?"
Mary learns that his only child has died and has been buried in the
house, and according to custom the family is sitting in filth, squalor,
and drunkenness. She talks to him of the resurrection, and he becomes
interested, and takes her into a room where the mother is sitting with
bowed head over the grave, the form of which can be seen distinctly
under a blue cloth that covers the ground. A bunch of dirty muslin is
hanging from the ceiling. It is a dismal scene. She reads part of John
xi., and speaks about life and death and the beyond.
"Well," remarked the man, "if God took the child I don't care so much--
but to think an enemy bewitched it!"
To the mother she says, "Do you not find comfort in these words?"
"No," is the sullen reply. "Why should I find comfort when my child is
gone?"
Mary pats her on the head, and tells her how her own mother has found
comfort in the thought of the reunion hereafter. The woman is touched
and weeps: the mother-heart is much the same all the world over.
A few slave-girls are all she finds in the next yard, the other inmates
having gone to work at the farms; but she speaks to them and they
listen respectfully. Another yard is crowded with women, some eating,
some sleeping, some dressing each other's hair, some lounging half-
naked on the ground gossiping--a picture of sheer animalism. Her advent
creates a welcome diversion, and they are willing to listen: it helps
to pass the time. They take her into an inner yard where a fine-looking
young woman is being fattened for her future husband. She flouts the
message, and is spoken to sternly and left half-crestfallen, half-
defiant. It is scenes like this which convince Mary that the women are
the greatest problem in the Mission Field. She does not wonder that the
men are as they are. If they are to be reached more must be done for
the women, and a prayer goes up that the Church at home may realise the
situation.
Farther on is a heathen house. The master is dead: the mistress is an
old woman, hardened and repulsive, the embodiment of all that is evil,
who is counting coppers in a room filled with bush, skulls, sacrifices,
and charms. A number of half-starved cowed women and girls covered with
dirt and sores are quarrelling over a pipe. The shrill voice and long
arms of the mistress settle the matter, and make them fly helter-
skelter. They call on Mary to speak, and after many interruptions she
subdues and controls them, and leaves them, for the moment, impressed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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