The White Queen of Okoyong: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism and FaithLivingstone, W. P. (William Pringle)
Religion
The White Queen of Okoyong: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism and Faith
Livingstone, W. P. (William Pringle)
Missionaries -- Nigeria -- Biography; Slessor, Mary Mitchell, 1848-1915; Women missionaries -- Biography
"Nae wonder," she said, laughing, "look at my face!" It was dark and
withered and wrinkled, though her eyes were as bright and merry as ever
and full of changing lights.
One day she went to pay a visit to Mrs. Scott, the lady of the manse at
Bonkle, in Lanarkshire. They had written to one another for years, but
had never met. There were young people there, and all were greatly
excited, for the black boy was also expected. Everything that love
could think of was done for the comfort of the guest. At last the cab
appeared at the bend of the road, and all hurried to the gate. Down
jumped Dan smiling, sure of his welcome. Then was helped out a frail and
delicate lady, who looked round shyly and brightly answered all the
greetings. She walked slowly up the garden path, gazing at the green
lawns and the flower-beds and the borders of shady trees, and drinking
in the goodness of it all.
"All this," she said, "and for me!"
She was so weak and ill that she was glad to sink into a cushiony chair
placed for her in the sunniest corner of the sunny room. The young girls
followed her in. Stretching out her hands towards them, she cried:
"Oh! how many of you lassies am I to get?"
And, glad to tell, she did get one, Miss Young, who went out to Calabar
and became to her like a daughter, and was afterwards picked out by the
Church as the one best fitted to carry on the work that lay closest to
her heart after she herself was done with it all.
It was times like these that made Ma young again. She just wandered
quietly about in the woods and meadows, or went and listened to the
music practices in the church. She was delighted with the singing, and
before leaving thanked the precentor for the pleasure she had got, and
he gave her his tuning-fork, which he valued, and she kept it as one of
her treasures to the end.
Coming out one night after the service, she looked up to the starry sky,
and said, "These stars are shining upon my bairns--I wonder how they
are"; and once, when "_Peace, perfect peace? with loved ones far away!_"
was sung, she said: "I was thinking all the time of my children out
there."
She missed them more and more as the months went on. One afternoon, when
she was sitting down to tea in a house in Perthshire, she begged to be
allowed to hold a red-cheeked baby-boy on her knee. "It is more homely,"
she said, "and I have been so used to them all these years."
Then she made up her mind. "I cannot stay longer, I am growing anxious
about my children. I am sure they need me." Her friends tried to keep
her, but no, she must go. They bade her farewell at one or two large
meetings, where her figure, little and fragile, and worn by long toil in
the African sun, brought tears to many eyes. The meetings were very
solemn ones. As she spoke of the needs of Africa, one who listened said:
"It is not Mary Slessor who is speaking, but God."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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