University of Virginia Library

“And how, if it were lawful, I could pray for
greater trouble, for the greater comfort's sake.”
John Bunyan provided you and me with a morning's
discussion when he said that. Do you remember?
Because I am writing to you, and
because Nixy sits studying beside me, are reasons

sufficient why I should recall the words on this
particular occasion.

And so I made an affliction of that poor girl?
Jane, I suppose I did! In my theory she was
unbounded blessing! In my practice she was
bitter burden?

Exactly.

Before I get to heaven, I hope that the Lord
will give me time to become, not so much what I
seem to other people, — which is of small account,
— as what I seem to myself to be. “Men,” it has
been said, “judge of our hearts by our words;
God, of our words by our hearts”; “we,” it might
have been added, “of both our words and hearts
by our theories.” Jane Briggs! have a theory of
suffrage if you like, of soft soap if you prefer, but
have no theory of sin. There is one thing which
I should like to be, whatever the necessary discipline
of life thereunto required, — I should like
to be an honest Christian; and I am urging now
no higher motives than would induce me, if I had
occasion, to be an honest grocer, doctor, lawyer,
— merely the self-respect of the thing, you see.

All of which induces me to acknowledge that
while I thanked the Lord for Nixy, — and I

belive I did thank him, — I took her at first
very hard.

To begin with, she had lung fever.

Perhaps I should ask you, Will you hear of
her? Christina will keep you informed of dentist's
and doctor's bills, of her white flannel wrappers,
— extravagant, but so pretty! and I think
it works well for both the girls that Christina
should wear white when she can just as well as
not, — of the prices of beef and bombazine, of my
new hall carpet and Dickens's “last,” of fall sewing
and Harmonicum concerts, of house-cleaning
and the minister's salary, of preserves and prayer-meetings,
of colds and chickens.

Will you have Nixy? If I had gone into the
business of daguerreotyping for the rest of my
life, the paper would have smelled of ether, and
the pen would have told of silver-baths. As I
have chosen the business of saving one wicked
little girl from Thicket Street, are you prepared
for the details of “the trade”? You demand
“internal revenue”; can you bear with Nixy?

I bore with her at the first. I scarcely know
now whether it is I who bear with her, or she
who bears with me.

The business has become an exciting one, and
my interest therein grows. The capital was
small, and Heaven took the risks. The girl has
been under my roof a year next week, and I am
a rich woman on date.

But think of it, Jane! Lung fever! Right
there in my pretty gray room! For I had not the
time or the heart — I have forgotten which it
was — to move her.

She had kept about the house very quietly and
willingly, helping Ann, and just about half as
much in the way as we expected; she must have
kept up far beyond her strength, for she gave out
one afternoon, as Ann succinctly expressed it,
“all in a hape.” We found her crouched on the
foot of the gray bed, scarlet and shivering, picking
the counterpane with her little brown fingers.

“I tried,” she said, confusedly, “to get down
and set the table, ma'am; I got to the head of
the stairs three times, but I could n't get no
further. Haven't you got a poor-'us anywheres
near, as you could send me to be sick in? I
can't seem to get anywheres in the world that
I don't make trouble!”

Now, that did n't make it any easier that she

should have lung fever in my gray room; but it
had the effect of mortifying me, which was something
accomplished. I own I was mortified.
For, at the moment, I had felt so aggrieved, afflicted,
cross with the girl. Instead of going
straight upon my knees to thank Heaven that it
was n't small-pox!

Through her sickness — and she was very sick
— I really think that I obtained some new conceptions
of the healing department of our Lord's
ministry. I wondered whether he never regarded
it as a waste of his fine adaptedness to
finer uses, that he should give hours, days,
weeks, to that offensive branch of medical service,
— the diseases of the poor; whether the
cripples and paralytics sickened him; and how
he bore with — fits, for instance.

I made some mention of the name of Christ,
though not in this connection exactly, to Nixy,
one day during her convalescence. I have forgotten
what it was that I said, — something simple,
for she was too sick to be exhorted, — but I
remember perfectly her answer: —

“Christ? Jesus Christ? That 's him they
sang about in the 'sylum, and him they swears

by in Thicket Street. I always thought one
of 'em was as much gas as the other. Did n't
either of 'em make no odds to me. I never
swore and I never sang.”

“But you understood,” I said, for I really did
not know what to say, — “you understood that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners?”

“I 'm not religious,” said Nixy, wearily turning
in bed.

From that day to this I have never “talked
religion” to her. The only further remarks offered
upon the subject that morning were made,
after pauses, by her.

“Are you religious?”

“Perhaps you had better wait and find out for
yourself whether I am or not. That will be fair
to both of us.”

“Mrs. Myrtle was,” she said.

From which I inferred, what I have since
learned, that Nixy had been in the service of
Mrs. Zerviah Myrtle. You remember Mrs. Zerviah
Myrtle?

With all respect for Mrs. Myrtle, — and I have
considerable; she is generous with her money,

and useful in prominent charities, — I am glad
that the Lord saved this little woman of ours
for me.

As I believe I have given you to understand
before, I have chosen yourself only as the sharer
with me of Nixy's confidence. In this town and
this house, no one but myself shall know, if I can
prevent it, the history of the girl. In this house
and in this town the girl shall command, if I can
control it, the trust and the respect that are due
to a spotless woman. I shall assume for her a
clean place in the world through which I have
undertaken to lead her. Whether I can gain it
or not remains to be proved. When I look
backward, my heart faileth; when I look forward,
fear taketh hold upon me.

At least, I do not mean ever to trip her by
doubt of mine. What is gone is gone; let the
past bury its own for Nixy and me. Whatever is
to be, I think, when I undertook the salvation of
the girl, that I prepared myself intelligently for.

Meantime, I am awake at my post.

I am growing a little fond of this “burden”
which I took upon my shoulders, — you could
not help it yourself, Jane Briggs, — and I anticipate,

with much personal pain, the possibilities
of a disclosure of her history to any one
whose heart broods less tenderly or less thoughtfully
than mine over her faults and her deserts.
At present, beyond the vague opinion of my
neighbors, that it was “very imprudent” in Mrs.
Purcell to shelter the little wanderer who had
been seen about our streets, no suspicion falls on
Nixy. She troubles nobody; nobody troubles
her. Faint gossip fades about her. She walks
down street with Christina; respectable people
salute her respectfully. Gower has doubts: “Is
she adopted, — or what?” but Gower is courteous.
Gower may be confused, but Gower will
be well-bred. Heaven preserve Nixy from Gower,
if what might be should ever be!

At present her life is still, and her life is growing.
At present, as you perceive, I have hardly
evolved her relations to me and mine from a chaos
of sympathy, sickness, and self-depreciation.

For the fact is, Jane Briggs, that the more interesting
this business of Nixy grows to me, the
less interesting I am growing to myself; but of
that another time.

I should have told you that the understanding

is exact between Nixy and myself on the subject
of Christina.

It came about in this way. I hardly knew
how to broach the subject delicately and suddenly,
and broached I was determined that the subject
should be before the girl had been twenty-four
hours a “permanency” under my roof. As
it chanced, on the very evening upon which I had
decided to take her into my family, I came across
her in the dining-room, where I had sent her to
do some light work for Ann, standing at the window
among my ivies, and looking, through the
thick green curtain that they made, upon something
in the yard below. The expression of her
face attracted my notice, and I stopped.

Christina — in her white woollen, in the dropping
dusk — was watering the geraniums below
us. I should have liked to cast her, just as she
stood, for a statue in a fancy fountain.

“You like the looks of her?” I said to Nixy.

“She 's so white!” said the girl in a whisper.

“All the world is as white to her as her own
dresses,” I made answer, as gently as I knew
how; “and I should like — that it should remain
so as long as it can.”

“Ma'am?” said Nixy.

She lifted to me, very pale from the tinting of
the ivy greens, a thoroughly puzzled face.

“I mean that I would rather you should not
tell my daughter — while you remain in my family
— of what has happened to you.”

“Oh!”

Her face dropped slowly.

“Yes, I understand. You would rather that
she should n't know about all that. Very well.
'T ain't likely as I should have troubled the young
lady, ma'am, if you had n't bid me not.”

Christina, looking up, nodded and smiled at us
through the delicate woven curtain that the ivies
had swept between the two young girls.

Poor Nixy! To whom “all that” had been
birthright and atmosphere! What was sin to
Nixy? What was purity to Christina? Where
did things begin and end? Who should say?
How condemn or acquit? How revere or
scorn?

Of the particulars of this girl's past life,
concerning which you questioned me in your
last, I have asked little and learned less. Indeed,
there do not seem to be any particulars to

learn. She remembers very sketchily. She talks
in outlines, vivid but crude. She seems not so
much to have “taken life,” as we say, hard or
easily, purely or illy; it is rather that life has
taken her; she dropped into it, drifted with it,
like Constance, “all stereles, God wot.” Sometimes,
as I sit watching her overcast young face,
wondering what transpires behind its muteness,
wondering what ambuscades await its helplessness,
the refrain of the old tale rings by me: —

God give the poor little sailor fair seas and
pleasant harboring! Who would not be cast
“stereles” upon the “see of Grece,” rather than
upon the tides of Thicket Street?

I have inquired once, and once only, of Nixy,
concerning the father of her child. The result
was such that I concluded, upon the spot, to let
the whole painful matter drop forever. The simplicity
and pathos of her story moved me much.
A few words of it I saved for you, — the only
words that I could well save.

“I saw him a little while ago. He said he was
sorry. I told him he 'd ought to thought of that
before.”

To come back to the year's chronicle, — you
know I never stay where I belong, — it was, perhaps,
the lung fever which lost me a kitchen-maid,
and gained me — what, exactly, whether
pupil, child, friend, or all, or neither, time must
prove.

At least, she was far too feeble to set at the
wash-tub. And somehow or other, what with
her pallor and my compassion, her quiet ways
and my unquiet heart, she slipped out of bread-making
into books. As I am so well used to the
harness of teaching Christina, I have found it
little extra trouble to overlook her studies. The
result has surpassed my expectations. Nixy is
no genius, but she is no dunce. She could teach
a common school now, if it were a very common
school, as well as half the district teachers in our
neighborhood. And since I can afford, for the
present, at least, and by means of a little contrivance,
in which Christina generously joins me,
— indeed, it was she who first proposed educating
the girl, — to meet the expense of her few wants,
I am well pleased that Nixy should “reform,”
though I dislike the word, in my parlor rather
than in my kitchen, in my personal atmosphere

rather than Biddy's. I should like, whatever
may be the result, to be able to feel that I have
done my best by her.

Just here I must admit that Nixy herself has
surprised me in rendering my course of treatment
a practicable one. I must admit that during
the entire year, which she has spent under a
supervision far more keen than she has ever suspected,
I have not been able to lay my finger
upon a thread of coarseness in that girl. Thicket
Street and sin seem to have slipped from her
like pre-existence. I cannot see that a taint remains.
I may be making a most egregious blunder,
but, until I see it, tainted she shall not be to
me or mine. Upon this I am determined. Other
than this would seem to me like slamming the
door of heaven upon a maimed soul just crawling
in the crack.

“Go ye rather into the highways and hedges,
and” — having found the halt — “compel them in.”

She seems, as I study her from day to day,
rather to have dropped in upon us and melted
among us like a snow-drift, than like a dust-heap.

I was prepared for dust. I took hold of her
with my eyes shut, to save the smart.

That seems now, you know, a great stupidity.
Yet I am constantly recommitting it. You know
me of old. I turn, like the sinner in the hymn-book,
“in devious paths.” I must feel my way,
if I go at all.

For instance, she has on a pink bow this morning.
Now, when one reflects upon it, there is no
reason why Nixy should not wear a pink bow.
The heart beneath it may be as white as a little
nun's, for all the pinkness. Nixy Trent has undoubtedly
the same moral right to pink ribbons
as Christina Purcell, — who blushes all over with
them this very morning, by the way, and sits in
the window with a curve like a moss rosebud to
her neck. It may be because I don't like to see
the two girls wear the same thing, for which,
again, I can plead no valid reason, but I don't
like it. It annoys me; Christina laughs at me
for it, which is not soothing. Two or three times
lately, Nixy has shown some faint awaking sense
of girlish pleasure in girlish things; has brightened
in the eyes, in the voice, in motions, moods;
chatters with Christina, runs in and out, laughs
about the house; once she tried a feather upon
her round straw hat; she was pretty in it too,

which struck me for the moment as an impropriety,
if you will believe it.

Why should n't she be as pretty as she can?
— as pretty as my child, for instance? Why
not wear feathers and ribbons? Who should
laugh about a house if she should n't? Why
am I not as glad of it at the instant as I become
upon several hours' serious reflection?

“Go,” said He who was wise in these matters,
“and sin no more.” Nixy went, and Nixy sinned
no more, and Nixy is just sixteen. Shall I cork
up all the sparkle of her new young life? Why
is it — can you tell me? — that I should, on a
species of stupid instinct, look more confidently
for the salvation of the girl's soul if she wore
brown dresses and green veils, and were the
least bit uglier than she is?

Once, and once only, she asked me if she
might have a white jacket like Christina's. I
gave her a peremptory negative, for which I
was afterwards very much ashamed; and she
has never since alluded to the subject in any
way.

This brings me to say a word or so, in closing,
about the relation between the two girls. I have

left it till the last thing, because it is a subject
upon which I feel some anxiety, but in regard to
which I feel myself at my wits' end.

My daughter Christina has taken an astounding
fancy to poor little Nixy Trent. I cannot
shut my eyes to the fact, if I would. I am not
at all sure that I would, — but there is the fact.
It seems to have been, throughout, the most
genuine, hearty, straightforward, natural thing;
just Christina all over.

As I told you, of Nixy's history she knows
nothing. As I told you, Nixy's conduct in this
house has been as pure as her own.

I am convinced, that, in strict obedience to
my commands, Christina has never investigated,
Nixy has never revealed, the particulars of her
life in Thicket Street.

She was a stranger, and I took her in, — that
satisfied Christina. She is a good girl, and I am
fond of her, — that is evident to Christina. She
is not a servant. She sits in the parlor. She
adds my accounts, which overpower Christina;
she reads John Milton, of whom Christina stands
very much in awe. She is very winning company,
and Christina is very much alone. You

see? The consequence, whether inevitable or
not, arrived.

I see the two girls arm in arm, hand in hand,
in and out together, here and there, — like any
other two girls.

The first time that I saw Christina kiss that
girl, Jane Briggs, I believe I could have sent
her back to Thicket Street without a spasm of
compunction. If I had dared, I should have taken
my daughter up stairs and washed her face.

I have become used to it now; whether that
is Christianity or stupidity, I am at loss at times
to tell.

Sometimes, all that I feared for my own child,
in the experiment of saving the child of sin,
rushes over me with a sudden sense of terror that
makes me fairly sick at heart. Sometimes, all
that I hope for Nixy stands like an angel folding
in my daughter with a mighty wing. Generally,
my assurance that I have done the best
I knew how for the Lord — and therefore for
Christina and myself — keeps me still.

To be sure, if I have behaved like a fool, the
Lord is not responsible for it; but I am not as
yet convinced that I have.

I believed, that, when Nixy entered my door,
the Master without, in the dark, cried, “Open to
Me.” Thus believing, I have “experimented.”
Still so believing, I am prepared, if necessary,
to run further risks.

One thing I should add: I told you that I had
never “talked religion” to the girl. But one
tries, you know, to live it. I fancy that Nixy has
familiarized herself with it, in a certain way,
as she has with fresh air and pictures. She
breathes and watches. It has not perhaps struck
her yet, that to be a Christian is so much an experience
as an atmosphere. The lungs may move
for years before we are conscious of possessing a
windpipe. I enrich and purify the air for her
as well as I may, and leave the Lord his own
chances. Whether his coming be in the strong
wind, or in the still, small voice, who knoweth?
Nixy drinks him in, and grows.

I think I shall not entirely forget the words
which this poor child so trustfully dropped of me,
before ever she had tested what manner of woman
I was. It would go hard with me to find that I
had marred beyond restoration her simple fancy
of the Lord's “folks.” It would be rather nature

than grace, that she could come at him through
me, and what he has empowered me to do for
her. I would not so much deceive her as undeceive
myself; not manage her, but be guided
by her; become what she deems me, rather than
tell her what I am not. Which is why I have
found myself of late to be so uninteresting a
study, as I hinted. Which is why I am in doubt
whether it is I who bear with Nixy, or she who
bears with me.

But what would happen to us all, if the Nixys
of the world “comprehended” “God's folks” as
God's folks, — whether justifiably or not, who can
say? — fancy that they comprehend Nixy? But
whatever I am to her it is time that I should be