There were also many among them who were improvident and wasteful. Still some of this class were teachable. I remember a widow with three little daughters who came up from Arkansas. She had there some real estate, but being a Unionist, she had been compelled by the violence of her secession neighbors to leave in hot haste. Having had neither time nor opportunity to convert her holdings into money, on her arrival in St. Louis, she found herself in want, and was forced, for a time, to depend on charity for the bare necessities of life. She could neither read nor write, but was a sincere Christian, and anxious to do her best. She and her children were decent in appearance. She united with my church and as often as she could attended the public services. The good women of my congregation took her under their care and generously provided for her. Among other things they gave her a boiled ham, and were greatly disheartened by finding, two or three days after, that when she and her children had eaten a part of it, she had thrown the rest of it out of the window. In the heat of the moment they declared that they would never help her any more. But I pleaded for her. I told them that what seemed to them inexcusable wastefulness was simply her habit of life, and that they must talk kindly with her about it, and if possible, lead her to live reasonably and economically. They did so. She received their instructions with hearty thanks, declaring that she had done only what she had been accustomed to do at her home in Arkansas, but that she would now act according to their wishes and directions. Soon there was manifest improvement in her humble home, and in the personal appearance of herself and her little daughters. She sent them to the public school. They soon learned to read. Great was her joy when they could read to her their Sunday-school books and the New Testament. At the close of the war she sold her property in Arkansas, and bought a place a few miles from St. Louis in Illinois. The last time I saw her was at the depot, across the river, whither she had gone with her children, to take the cars for her new home. They were plainly but neatly dressed. They had been transformed by the patient, kindly work of intelligent Christian women. They had found a new life and were radiant with joy. So to me, the curtain fell on that scene. With renewed confidence I went back to the city and to my labors, feeling how richly it paid to work for poor white refugees.