The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1894-09-26
NObly Done.

About ten years ago a gentleman
living in New York took his family
to the mountains of North Carolina
to spend the summer. The Northern
visitors at the hotel where he and his
family stayed were in the habit of in
specting the mountaineers in their
cabins with amused curiosity, as they
might have looked at wild beasts in a
menagerie.
The women of the mountains could
not read, write nor sew they knew
how to cook nothing but the coarsest
food. Many of them had never been
inside of church. A prayer-meet-
ing held once or twice year in the
hills was the only religious service
which they had ever known.
The city visitors were interested in
them for day or two 4; talked Of them
with pity, or with contempt, and Won
dered how such ignorance could exist
anywhere in the United States. Then
thew turned to the scenery, or their
huting and fishing, and thoug ht moth
ing more of the people with whom
they had so little in common.
But the daughter of the New YORK
merchant, a girl of seventeen, went
often to their cabins, and made TRENDS
with them. She found them anxions
to be "like the women from town."
She wished to help them, but felt in
incapable of doing 80.
That winter, at home, she went into
the kitchen of her fathers house and
learned to make bread and to cook
meats. She learned also, from her
dressmaker, how to cut out, fit and
make simple gown.
Her father the next spring built a
cottage in the mountains, 80 that the
family could remain all summer. She
invited several of the mountain girls
of her own age to form sewing and
cooking club. They met twice each
week at the cottage, when she taught
them what she herself had learned.
The club increased; many middle
aged women Joined it, eager 10 LEARN
town ways"
Not only were they taught to sew
and cook, but unconsciously they
learned from their young teacher
many comely and healthful habits
hitherto unknown to them. The men
of their ia miles highly approved the
work which brought comfort into
their cabins.
The next summer the city girls
classes were larger. She opened a
school in the cabins among the hills,
and taught the women to read and
write, as we'll as to sew and work.
Her family and even some of her
pupils regarded her work as girldish
frolic, but came to a different con-
clusion as she persisted in ityear after
year, and it's good results became
The ambition to be clean, to wear
decent gowns, to bake good bread,
and to be able TO read spread from
cabin to cabin. When she taught q
class in the farther ranges, where even
the intinerant preacher never came
to hold "pra-ar," she read from the
Bible, or sang a hymn with her pupils,
doing it as simply and naturally as
she taught them to make bread.
Naturally the girl became pet
among these lonely mountaineers.
They taught her, in turn, to fish, to
shoot, and to ride their shaggy ponies.
As time passed they built one or two
schoolhouses at her suggestion, and
then church.
What wss the result? Religion and
civilization have now spread through
two counties of that state. But the
people, as a whole, were probably
never conscious that they owed their
first push forward to the hand of their
young Northern visitor.
She died year ago. Her name will
never be enrolled among the mission
aries of any church, yet she was one
of Gods messengers.
Neither age, nor ordination, nor
ceremony of any kind is necessary to
set us apart for this work. We can
begin to-day in the simplest, home
liest way which offers itself to bring
the brother who is more needy or ig-
norant than ourselves up to a higher
plane of life.