In this chapter I will tell of God's leading. I say of my life, "This
is the Lord's doings and marvelous in our eyes." A Methodist conference
was held in Richmond, Texas, about the year 1884. I attended. The
minister read the sixty-second chapter of Isaiah. From the time he began
reading I was marvelously affected. Paul said it was not "lawful" or possible
to utter some things. There was a halo around the minister. I was
wrapt in ecstacy. My first impression was that an angel was talking and
that the house was ascending to heaven. I felt my natural heart expanding
to an enormous size. I looked to see what impression was made on
the people in the audience. I saw one man nodding. I was surprised, for
no one seemed at all astonished or delighted.
At the close of the meeting I tried to find out the meaning. No one
felt as I did. I went to a saintly woman, Mrs. Ruth Todd, and asked her
about the sermon. She had felt nothing remarkable. I had never been
taught that anyone but the Apostles in Jesus' time got the gift of the Holy
Ghost, or I would have understood this wonderful state. I then and there
openly consecrated myself to God, telling my friends that "from henceforth
all my time, means and efforts should be given to God." (Mr. Nation
in his petition for divorce said that up to this year I had been a good wife.)
I was often considered crazy, on the subject of religion. When I spoke
to people I would ask them, "if they loved God;" I could not refrain from
this; the servant in the kitchen, the guest, the merchant, the market man;
I felt impelled by divine love for the souls of men.
God had given me an intense love for souls, and one was as precious
as another to me. I now see what the enlarging of my heart meant. Once
an old colored man brought in the kitchen some eggs to sell. I said:
"Uncle, do you love God?" He turned to my cook Fannie and said:
"Hear dat". Fannie said: "Oh! Mrs. Nation knows the Lord." Uncle
said: "Thank God one white woman got ligen," clapped his hands and
praised God. It used to be and is now the sweetest music to have anyone
praise God. I am at church often, when I long to hear a loud shout of
praise go up to the giver of every good and perfect gift. It is torture to
attend the cold, dead service of most of the churches.
I was a teacher in the Methodist Sunday school and had given perfect
satisfaction up to this time; but things changed. The minister said from
the pulpit that the teachers should be Methodists, and spoke so pointedly
that all knew he meant me. The superintendent at the Episcopal Sunday
school asked me to teach in their Sunday school. (This was Judge Williams,
the husband of Lola, Mr. Nation's daughter.) I did so, and things
went smoothly for a while.
Father Denroach was the minister, and one morning he asked the
school questions out of the catechism. My class could not answer. I
arose and said: "Father Denroach, I do not teach my class the catechism,
I use only God's word." "What objection do you find to the
catechism?" he asked. I replied: "I cannot teach the Bible and catechism,
for one contradicts the other. The gospel is to be believed and
obeyed and a Christian is a follower of Christ. The catechism in the
first lesson asks this question: What is your name? `Bob, Tom or John.'
`When did you get that name?' `In my baptism, when I was made a Christian.'
"Baptism never did make a Christian. Infants cannot be made Christians,
they cannot follow Christ, cannot believe or obey the Gospel. Jesus
said: `Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven! Now if I teach my class that
the state of being a Christian is something they get without the exercise of
their will, I contradict what I have been teaching." The dear old man
walked up and down the aisle shaking his robes. I said: "A house
divided against itself cannot stand." You must have an Episcopalian
teacher to teach your doctrine." So I was shut out from teaching in the
only two churches in Richmond.
I could not be satisfied. I tried to get the Methodist church for
a Mission school in the afternoon, but failed. I got plank for seats and
after
dinner on Lord's Day I had my hotel dining-room seated and gathered all
the little ones I could. These were largely children who went to no
Sunday-School. I got five Catholic children to attend. We had an
attendance of from thirty to forty. We bought an organ, had our charts
and maps. One poor saloon keeper named Frost came several times and
always gave a dollar. He was killed in the fight between the Jaybirds
and Peckerwoods in Richmond. This work was a blessing to my soul and I
have seen happy results from that little school. I kept this up until I
left there for Kansas. The last Sunday we all went to the graveyard to
study our lesson. I wished by this to impress the little ones with the
purpose of the Gospel.
I have had visions and dreams that I know were sent to me by my
Heavenly Father to warn or comfort or instruct me. I notice my dreams,
not all, but I can tell the significant ones, usually by the impression they
make on me. The dream that comes to me just before waking up generally
means something to me. To dream of snakes has always been a
bad omen to me. When I first started out smashing, while in Wichita
jail, I dreamed of two enormous snakes, one on one side of a road, the
other on the other; one raised to strike me, the other made no move. I
was impressed that the one that was the most venomous and in the attitude
of striking me with its fangs was the Republican party, and this
has been my deadly foe.
I will here relate a vision I had. One cold night in March, 1889, I
heard a groan across the hall. It was about three o'clock in the morning.
I found the sufferer to be an old gentleman who was having very severe
cramps, so I went down to the kitchen to make a mustard plaster. The
hotel was a number of frame buildings, one having twenty-one rooms, and
about five or six cottages around the main building. We carried no insurance,
and so many would say we had a "firetrap" there. We had a mortgage
on the place, and I was kept in terror constantly for fear of fire, and
would often spring out of bed at night in my sleep, expecting to see a fire.
I lit a candle, went down stairs through several dark halls. Then
I went upstairs again and gave the old man the plaster; afterwards returned
to the kitchen, thinking probably I left the candle burning. Things
were all dark, but when I started up the stairs, there seemed to be
a light shining behind me, which would come and go in flashes, as I
ascended. I looked everywhere to see where it came from, but discovered
it to be an, unnatural manifestation, for I could not see to step nor
move by it. It followed me until I got to my room door. It did not alarm
me. I felt the sweet, peaceful presence of God, I prayed to him and I
could think of no reason for having this blessing from God, except that
I had gotten up in the cold to relieve this suffering man. I stood by my
bed for a short time praying to God, and thanking him for his goodness to
me. I thought Mr. Nation was asleep, but he afterwards told me that he
heard me whispering. I slept until late, and when I did go down to breakfast,
Mr. Nation and Alex, my son-in-law, were at the table. I told them
I had a warning last night, and if I had a Daniel or Joseph they could
interpret a vision I had. The peculiar vision of the light was repeated to
them, but they paid very little attention to it; being very busy I thought
no more of it that day.
Just about three o'clock the next morning, I was awakened by the
cry of fire. Charlien screamed from the next room: "Mamma, the town is
on fire." I ran out and the whole heavens seemed to be on fire. It had
originated in a drugstore and was sweeping towards the hotel. I
immediately ran upstairs and began to pray. I told God "There wasn't a
dishonest dollar so, far as I knew in the house, and that He told me "to
call on Him in a day of trouble," and said, "this is my day of trouble,
and begged He would hear me. Many of the guests passed by, some of them
with baggage in their hands and some still dressing. I prayed until I
seemed to get an answer of security. One lady, Mrs. Moore, the wife of a
physician, who had boarded with me a long time, had a very elegant set
of furniture, and she called to me several times to take my things out
of the hotel. She had two colored men moving her furniture I heard her
say to several persons: "That woman has lost her mind." All the
boarders had their trunks out and everyone was saying to me: "Why don't
you try to save your furniture?" I would take hold of some things to
take out, but it seemed something would intimate, "Let it be." I walked
down the street and Mr. Blakely, one of the men who was killed in the
Jaybird and Peckerwood battle in Richmond said: "Are you insured?"
I said: "Yes, up there," pointing to Heaven.
All fear was gone, and now in the time of almost certain danger I
was confident of deliverance, when before I had been nervous, in time when
all was secure. At last the cry came in: "You are saved." I went in the
hotel office, sat down by the stove and Alex, my son-in-law, was by me. I
said to him: "Oh, Alex, my vision!" He looked almost paralyzed, for
I had told him it was a warning and all the circumstances. From that
day to this I have never had any fear of fire.
