Sight to the Blind Part 1

Sight to the Blind.

by Lucy Furman.

Introduction

A more illuminating interpretation of the settlement idea than Miss Furman's stories "Sight to the Blind" and "Mothering on Perilous"

does not exist. Spreading what one has learned of cheerful, courageous, lawful living among those that need it has always been recognized as part of a man's work in the world. It is an obligation which has generally been discharged with more zeal than humanity. To convert at the point of a sword is hateful business.

To convert by promises of rewards, present or future, is hardly less hateful. And yet much of the altruistic work of the world has been done by one or a union of these methods.

That to which we have converted men has not always been more satisfactory than our way of going at it. It has often failed to make radical changes in thought or conduct. Our reliance has been on doctrines, conventions, the three R's. They are easily sterile--almost sure to be if the teacher's spirit is one of c.o.c.k-sure pride in the superiority of his religion and his cultivation.

The settlement in part at least is the outgrowth of a desire to find a place in which certain new notions of enlightening men and women could be freely tested and applied. The heart of the idea lies in its name. The modern bearers of good tidings instead of handing down principles and instructions at intervals from pulpit or desk _settle_ among those who need them. They keep open house the year around for all, and to all who will, give whatever they have learned of the art of life. They are neighbors and comrades, learners as well as teachers.

It would be hard to find on the globe a group of people who need more this sort of democratic hand-to-hand contact than those Miss Furman describes, or a group with whom it is a greater satisfaction to establish it. Tucked away on the tops and slopes of the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee are thousands of families, many of them descendants of the best of English stock.

Centuries of direful poverty combined with almost complete isolation from the life of the world has not been able to take from them their look of race, or corrupt their brave, loyal, proud hearts. Encircled as they are by the richest and most highly cultivated parts of this country, near as they are to us in blood, we have done less for their enlightenment than for that of the Orient, vastly less than we do for every new-come immigrant. On the religious side all that they have had is the occasional itinerant preacher, thundering at them of the wrath of G.o.d; and on the cultural what Aunt Dalmanutha calls the "pindling" district school. In the teachings of both is an over-weight of sternness and superst.i.tion, little "plain human kindness," almost nothing that points the way to decent, happy, healthy living.

The results are both grotesque and pitiful. Is it strange that the feud should flourish in a land ruled by a "G.o.d of wrath?" Is anything but sickness and death to be expected where both are looked on as visitations of an angry G.o.d?

Among these victims of our neglect and our blundering methods of teaching the settlement school has gone. It goes to stay. Not three months, but twelve months its teaching goes on; not one Sabbath in the month, but three hundred and sixty-five days in the year it preaches. Literally it is a new world which the settlement opens to the mountaineers, one ruled by cleanliness, thrift, knowledge and good-will. The beauty of it is that living day after day under this order they come to know that its principles are practical truths; that they work out. To be told that the baby is dying not because the Lord is angry with the family but because the milk is impure may seem little better than impiety at first, but save the baby by proper care and you have gone a long way to proving that pure milk is G.o.d's law and that all the prayers in the world will not change His ruling.

For distorted imaginings of the way the world is run the settlement is giving to the mountaineers something of the harmony and beauty of science.

New notions of heroism and honor are filtering into the country along with the notions of sanitation and health. That injuries can be honorably forgiven and forgotten is a hard doctrine to swallow in Eastern Kentucky, but when you see it practiced by those from the great world of which you have only dreamed it comes easier.

The contrast between the two ways of living--that in the settlement and that in their mountain homes--is not long in doing its work.

Decent living even in great poverty is possible if you know how, and the settlement shows what can be done with what you have. The relation of their poverty and ill-health to their lack of knowledge and their perpetual lawless warfare is quickly enough grasped by the young, and means a new generation with vastly improved morals, health, self-control.

What more fruitful and appealing world for work, particularly for women, do these United States offer? If there is an idle or lonely woman anywhere revolting against the dullness of life, wanting work with the flavor and virility of pioneering in it, let her look to these mountains. She 'll find it. And what material to work with will come under her hands! "I often ask myself," says the heroine of "Mothering on Perilous," one of Miss Furman stories of the settlement school, "What other boys have such gifts to bring to their nation? Proud, self-reliant, the sons of heroes, bred in brave traditions, knowing nothing of the debasing greed for money, strengthened by a hand-to-hand struggle with nature from their very infancy (I have not known of one who did not begin at five or six to shoulder family responsibilities such as hoeing corn, tending stock, clearing new ground, grubbing, hunting, gathering the crops) they should bring to their country primal energy of body and spirit, unquenchable valor, and minds untainted by the l.u.s.t of wealth."

IDA M. TARBELL

Sight to the Blind

One morning in early September, Miss s.h.i.+ppen, the trained nurse at the Settlement School on Perilous, set off for a day of district-visiting over on Clinch, accompanied by Miss Loring, another of the workers. After riding up Perilous Creek a short distance, they crossed Tudor Mountain, and then followed the headwaters of Clinch down to Skain's Fork, where in a forlorn little district-school-house the trained nurse gave a talk on the causes and prevention of tuberculosis, the spitting of tobacco-juice over the floor by teacher and pupils abating somewhat as she proceeded.

Two miles farther on she stopped at the Chilton home for a talk to half a dozen a.s.sembled mothers on the nursing and prevention of typhoid, of which there had been a severe epidemic along Clinch during the summer.

Afterward the school-women were invited to dinner by one of the visiting mothers. Mrs. Chilton at first objected to their going, but finally said:

"That 's right; take 'em along with you, Marthy. I allow it 'll pyeerten Aunt Dalmanuthy up to hear some new thing. She were powerful' low in her sperrits the last I seed."

"Pore maw!" sighed Marthy, her soft voice vibrant with sympathy.

"It looks like things is harder for her all the time. Something new to ruminate on seems to lift her up a spell and make her forgit her blindness. She has heared tell of you school-women and your quare doings, and is sort of curious."

"She is blind?" inquired the nurse.

"Blind as a bat these twelve year'," replied Mrs. Chilton; "it fell on her as a judgment for rebelling when Evy, her onliest little gal, was took. She died of the breast-complaint; some calls it the galloping consumpt'."

"I allus allowed if Uncle Joshuay and them other preachers had a-helt off and let maw alone a while in her grief," broke in Marthy's gentle voice, "she never would have gone so far. But Uncle Joshuay in especial were possessed to pester her, and inquire were she yet riconciled to the will of G.o.d, and warn her of judgment if she refused."

"Doubtless Uncle Joshuay's high talk did agg her on," said Mrs.

Chilton, impartially, "but she need n't to have blasphemed like she done at Evy's funeral occasion."

Marthy covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, that day!" she exclaimed, shuddering. "Will I ever forgit it?

John and me had got married just a month before Evy died in October, and gone to live up the hollow a small piece from maw, and even then she were complaining of a leetle sc.u.m over her eyes. Losing Evy, and rebelling like she done atterward, and Uncle Joshuay's talk, holp it along fast, and it were plain to all before winter were over that he had prophesied right, and her sight were a-going. I would come down the branch of a morning and beg her to let me milk the cow and feed the property and red up the house and the like, but she would refuse in anger, and stumble round over chairs and table and bean-pot and wash-kittle, and maintain all spring and summer her sight were as good as ever. Never till that day of the funeral occasion, one year atter Evy died, did she ever give in."

Here Marthy again covered her face with her hands, and Mrs. Chilton took up the tale:

"I can see her now, up thar on the hill-shoulder, betwixt you and John on the front log, by Evy's grave-house, and Uncle Joshuay a-hollering and weeping and denouncing like he does, and her setting through it like a rock. Then finally Uncle Joshuay he thundered at her the third time, 'Hain't it the truth, Sister Dalmanuthy, that the judgment and the curse of G.o.d has fell on you for your rebelliousness, like I prophesied, and that you hain't able to see John thar or Marthy thar or the hand thar before your face thar?'

when Aunt Dalmanuthy riz up sudden, and clinched her hands, and says slow and fierce: 'Man, it _is_ the truth you speak. The curse _has_ fell; and I hain't able to see John here or Marthy here or the hand here before my face here. But listen what I got to say about it.

I'm able to hate and to curse as good as G.o.d. And I do! I hate and curse the Hand that, after taking all else I loved, s.n.a.t.c.hed from my bosom the one little yoe lamb I treasured thar; I hate and curse Him that expected me to set down tame and quiet under such cruelty and onjestice; I hate and curse and defy the Power that hated and spited me enough, atter darkening the light of my life, to put out the sight of my eyes! Now,' she says, 'you lay claim to being mighty familiar with the Lord; take that message to Him!' she says.

"Women, that whole funeral meeting kotch its breath at them awful words, and sot there rooted and grounded; and she turnt and looked around defiant-like with them sightless eyes, and strode off down the hill, John and Marthy follering."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Aunt Dalmanuthy riz up sudden, and clinched her hands"]

After a somewhat protracted silence, Marthy's gentle voice resumed:

"And from that day to this John and me hain't left her sence. We shet up our house and moved down to hern; and she tuck to setting by the fire or out on the porch, allus a-knitting, and seldom speaking a word in all them years about Evy or her sorrow or her curse. When my first little gal come along, I named it Evy, thinking to give her some eas.e.m.e.nt or pleasure; but small notice has she ever showed.

'Pears like my young uns don't do much but bother her, her hearing and scent being so powerful' keen. I have allus allowed if she could git her feelings turnt loose one time, and bile over good and strong, it might benefit her; but thar she sets, day in, day out, proud and restless, a-bottling it all up inside."

"She biles over a right smart on you, Marthy, I should say,"

remarked the hostess.

"No, now, Susan, she don't, neither, considering her provocations.

She were the smartest, most managing woman in these parts, and I never did have no faculty, and don't run her house like I ought; and John is a puny man and not able to do all her bidding; and the young uns they gits terrible noisy and feisty at times, all but Evy."

"The women" rode with Marthy a mile farther, stopping before a lonely log-house, with corn-fields climbing to meet the timber half-way up the mountain in the rear. Marthy ushered her guests into the porch with the words, "Here 's the fotch-on women, Maw."

The tall, gaunt, forbidding-looking old woman sitting there turned sightless eyes toward them, putting forth a strong hand.

"Howdy, women," she said grimly. "Git cheers for 'em, Evy."

They seated themselves, and Aunt Dalmanutha resumed her knitting, swiftly and fiercely, all the pent-up force of a strong nature thrown into the simple act. Instead of the repose that characterizes the faces of the blind, her eaglelike countenance bore the marks of fretful, sullen, caged, almost savage energy.

"Go quick and take a look that 'ere pot of beans, Marthy," she ordered. "Evy declar's they hain't scorching, but my nose informs me different'. Take the women's bonnets, Evy, and lay 'em on my 'stead; and round up all the young uns back in the corn-crib, so 's I can git the benefit of the talk. Now, women," she continued peremptorily, "I been hearing a whole pa.s.sel about your doings and goings and comings these four or five year' gone, and I 'm right smart curious to know what it 's all about. What air you in these parts for, anyhow, and how come you to come?"

"We are here," began Miss s.h.i.+ppen, quietly, "first and foremost because we want to educate the children who have never had the chance they deserve--"

"That 's so; they hain't, more shame to the State," interrupted Aunt Dalmanutha. "Take me, now; I were raised forty-five mile' from a school-house or church-house, and never had no chance to l'arn 'a'

from 'izard.' And these few pindling present-day district-schools scattered here and yan they only spiles the young uns for work, and hain't no improvement on nothing."

"Next," proceeded the trained nurse, "we want to be friendly and helpful to the grown-up people who need it, especially to the sick and suffering."

"I heared of the nursing you done in these parts in the typhoid last summer," said Aunt Dalmanutha, "and certainly it sounded good. But, women, one more question I crave to put to you. Do you mix in religion and preachifying as you go along?"