Chapter XIII: Part 13

Her own small financial affairs had been in the hands of her old friend Mr. Logic, Dundee, whose death in 1910 sent her into silence and darkness for weeks. He had been like a father to her; to him, indeed, she chiefly owed the realisation of her dream to be a missionary. She did not know for a time how she stood, and as her purse was nearly empty, she was growing anxious, when a small amount arrived from a friend, to whom she wrote: "I have been praying for a fortnight for money to come from somewhere, as I have been living on 7s. given to the children by a merchant here who is a great friend of our household. So your gift is a direct answer to prayer. '_Before they call I will answer_.'" She applied to Mr. Slight, another tried friend, who had been Treasurer of the United Presbyterian Church, and took a warm personal interest in all the missionaries, and after the Union was the accountant of the United Free Church. He made matters simple and clear to her understanding and set her fears at rest--she had no debts of any kind save debts of gratitude. Mr. Slight's death in 1912 again made her feel orphaned. "I had no idea how much I leant on him till he was removed, and it seems now that my last link with the old Church has snapped. What he has done for me through a score of years I can never acknowledge warmly enough." In later years her affairs at home were managed by Miss Adam.

Congregations continued to send her boxes of goods, whilst her own friends were unceasing in their thought for her. "I should never mention a want," she told them, "because you just take it up and bear the burden yourselves, and it makes me ashamed. Here are all my needs in clothing for the children and myself anticipated, and here are luxuries of food and good things, and all steeped and folded in the most delicate and tender sympathy and love. Surely no one has so many mercies as I have." She saw few pretty things, and had never the opportunity of looking into a shop window, so that the arrival of these boxes was an occasion of much pleasurable excitement to her and to the girls. Her only trouble was that she could not hand on some of the food to others; "When you have a good thing, or read a good thing, or see a humorous thing, and can't share it, it is worse than having to bear a trial alone." She was particularly grateful for a box of Christmas goods that came in 1911. She had been much upset by the local food, and she ate nothing but shortbread and bun for a week, and that made her better!

The people about her, too, were kind. Women would bring her presents of produce; one, for instance, gave her fifteen large yams and a half- crown bag of rice, and a large quantity of shrimps. "You are a stranger in these markets," she said, "and the children may be hungry."

V. WEAK BUT STRONG

She met with a severe disappointment early in 1912. The Calabar Council was willing to send two ladies to Ikpe, but thought it right to obtain a medical report on the site which had been given for the house. This was unfavourable; the Creek overflowed its banks for four hundred paces on one side and thirty on the other, and the surroundings of the house would be muddy and damp. She would not, however, acquiesce in the judgment thus passed, and remained on, and prosecuted the work as usual. The Council was very anxious for her to take a furlough, and her friends, personal and official, in Scotland were also urging her to come for a rest. She had now never an hour of real health or strength, and was growing deaf, and felt like "a spluttering candle," and she began to think it would be the wisest thing to do. As the idea took definite shape in her mind, she looked forward with zest to the renewal of old friendships. "We shall have our fill of talk and the silences which are the music of friendship." The East Coast of Scotland was now barred to her by medical opinion, but she had visions of the lonely hills of the south, and of Yarrow, and all that Border country where she had spent so many happy days, and would go there, away from the crowds and the rush.

Discerning a note of pity in the letters from Scotland, she bade her friends not to waste their sympathy upon her. "I am just surrounded with love," she wrote. It was to the children she referred. "I wake up in the early dusk of the dawn and call them, and before I can see to take my Bible, the hot cup of tea is there, and a kiddie to kiss me 'Good-morning' and ask, 'Ma, did you sleep?'" It was not wonderful that she loved those black girls. They had been with her from their birth. She had nursed them and brought them up and taught them all they knew, and they had been faithful to her with the faithfulness which is one of the most remarkable traits in the African nature. Mary could never abide the superior folk who referred slightingly to them because of their black skin, and she was too proud to justify her feelings towards them. Alice, the "princess," had now grown into a fine womanly girl, quiet and steady and thoughtful. One night in the dark she crept to "Ma's" side and shyly told her that some months before she had given her heart to Christ. It was a moment of rare joy. As neither Alice nor Maggie was betrothed-though often sought after-and they had no legal protector against insult, she decided to send them for training to the Edgerley Memorial School, where they would be under the influence and care of Miss Young, another capable agent whom she had led to become a missionary and with whom she had a very close and tender friendship. She regarded her as an ideal worker, for she had been thoroughly trained in domestic science. "I would have liked that sort of training better than the Normal training I got at Moray House," she said.

Meanwhile, as she was forbidden to cycle, her thoughts harked back to her old plan of a "box on wheels." She had never been reconciled to a hammock. "I feel a brute in it, it seems so selfish to be lying there, while four boys sweat like beasts of burden. To push a little carriage is like skilled labour and no degradation." She, therefore, wrote to Miss Adam, whom she called the "joint-pastor" of her people, to send out a catalogue of "these things." Miss Adam was, however, unwell, and the ladles of Wellington Street Church, Glasgow, hearing of the request, promptly despatched what was called a Cape cart, a kind of basket-chair, capable of being wheeled by two boys or girls. The gift sent her whole being thrilling with gratitude, as well as with shame for being so unworthy of so much kindness, but her comfort was that it was for God's work, and she took it as from Him.

The vehicle proved a success, but the success proved the undoing of her furlough. "Instead of going home as I had planned, in order to get strength for a wider range of work, I shall stay on and enjoy the privilege of going over ground impossible for my poor limbs." On one of the first drives she had, she went in search of a site for a new and larger church which she had determined to build., and was gathering material for, at Use, and then she planned to go to Ikpe via Ikot Ekpene by the new Government road, opening up out-stations wherever she could get a village to listen to the message. Her aim, indeed, was nothing less than to plant the whole Ibibio territory with a network of schools and churches. She seemed to grow more wonderful the older and frailer she became.

The spurt lasted for a time, but again the terrible weakness troubled her, and she had to conduct household affairs from a couch. School work was carried through on the verandah, and when she spoke in the church she was borne there and back. She came to see that only a real change would do her permanent good, and that it would be true economy to take a trip home, even for the sake of the voyage, which, much as she feared the sea, always invigorated her. What made her hesitate now was the depleted condition of the Mission. "We were never so short-handed before," she said, "and I can do what others cannot do, what, indeed, medical opinion would not allow them to try. No one meddles with me, and I can slip along and do my work with less expenditure of strength than any," Had there been some one to fill her place she would have gone, but she was very reluctant to shut the doors of the stations for so long a period. How she regarded the idea may be gathered from a letter to a friend who had given her some domestic news:--

These little glimpses, like pictures, of home and the old country, of family ties and love, make me long for just one long summer day in the midst, if only as an onlooker, and for the touch of loving hands and a bit of family worship in our own tongue, and maybe a Sabbath service thrown in with a psalm and an old-fashioned tune, and then I should feel ready for a long spell of work. But I should fret if it were to take me from this, my own real life and home and bairns. This life is full, the other lies at the back quiescent, and is a precious possession to muse on during the night or in the long evening hours when I'm too tired to sleep and the light is not good enough to read or sew, or mostly when I'm not well and the doldrums come very near. But I should choose this life if I had to begin again; only I should try to live it to better purpose.

Another respite or two carried her into the middle of the year, when her opportunity of a furlough was lost. She said she would have to hold on now for another winter--or go up higher. In September she completed thirty-six years as a missionary, and took humorous stock of herself: "I'm lame and feeble and foolish; the wrinkles are wonderful-no concertina is so wonderfully folded and convulated. I'm a wee, wee wifie, verra little buikit--but I grip on well, none the less." "Ay," said an old doctor friend to her, "you are a strong woman, 'Ma.' You ought to have been dead by ordinary rule long ago--any one else would."

VI. HER FIRST HOLIDAY

Anxiety as to her health deepened both in Calabar and Scotland, and pressure was brought upon her to take a rest. One of her lady friends on the Women's Foreign Mission Committee, Miss Cook, appreciated her fear of the home winter, and wrote asking her to take a holiday to the Canary Islands, and begged the kindness at her hands of being allowed to pay the expense. "I believe," she said, "in taking care of the Lord's servant. I am afraid you do not fully realise how valuable you are to us all, the Church at home, and the Church In Nigeria." The offer, so delicately put, brought tears to Mary's eyes, and it made her wonder whether after all she was safeguarding her health enough in the interests of the Church. As soon as the matter became a duty, she gave it careful consideration, resolving to abstain from going up to Ikpe, and to go down to Duke Town instead, where she would consult the Wilkies and the Macgregors. But she would not dream of the cost of any change being borne by Miss Cook, and she asked Miss Adam to find out if her funds would allow of her taking a trip. There was no difficulty regarding clothing. Among the Mission boxes she had received was one full of warm material, and she surmised that God was on the side of a holiday.

Her friends at Calabar did not hesitate a moment; they wanted her off at once. She went to consult her old friend, Dr. Adam, the senior medical officer, that "burning and shining light," as she called him, who first showed her through the Hospital, where she spoke with loving entreaty to every patient she passed, and left many in tears. After a thorough examination, he earnestly besought her to take the next boat to Grand Canary. Still she shrank from the prospect. It was a selfish thing to do; there were others more in need of a holiday than she, it was a piece of extravagance, it would involve closing up the stations. And yet might it not be meant? Might it not be of the nature of a good investment? Might she not be able for better work? Might it not do away with the necessity for a furlough in the following year? She decided to go.

It was arranged that Jean should accompany her, and that she should put up at the Hotel Santa Catalina, Las Palmas. Letters from Government officials were sent to smooth the way there for her. Miss Young and others prepared her outfit, and made her, as she said, "wise-like and decent,"--she, the while, holding daily receptions, for she was now regarded as one of the West African sights, and every one came to call upon her. Mr. Wilkie managed the financial side, and gave the cash-box to the Captain. When she transhipped at Forcados. it was handed to the other Captain, and he on arrival at the Islands passed it on to the manager of the hotel. On board she was carried up and down to meals, and received the utmost kindness from officers and passengers alike. The Captain said he was prouder to have shaken hands with her than if she had been King George. The season at Grand Canary had not begun, and there were very few visitors at the hotel. Those who were there saw a frail nervous old lady, followed by a black girl who was too shy to raise her eyes. "We were certainly a frightened pair," Mary afterwards confessed. But the management attended to her as if she were a princess. "What love is wrapped round me!" she wrote. "All are kind,-- the manager's family, the doctor's family, and the visitors. It is simply wonderful. I can't say anything else."

The first days were spent in the grounds, drinking in the pure air, watching the changing sea and sky, and admiring the brilliant vegetation. The English flowers, roses and geraniums and Michaelmas daisies and mignonette, were a continual joy, whilst the crimson clouds piled above the sapphire sea often made her think of the "city of pure gold." Later, she was able to ascend the hill at the back, and "there" she says, "I sat and knitted and crocheted and sewed and worked through the Bible all the day long, fanned by the sea-breeze and warmed by the sun, and the good housekeeper sent up lunch and tea to save my walking, and in the silence and beauty and peace I communed with God. He is so near and so dear. Oh, if I only get another day in which to work! I hope it will be more full of earnestness and blessing than the past."

It was her first real holiday, but she felt it had been worth waiting a lifetime for. There was something infinitely pathetic in her ecstasy of enjoyment and the gratitude for the simple pleasures that came to her. Only one thread of anxiety ran through her days, the thought of the appalling expense she was incurring, for she had made up her mind that the cost was to be paid out of her own slender funds.

A lady in the hotel, with whom she formed an intimate and lasting friendship, and who saw much of her, gives this impression of her character:

She made many friends, her loving sympathy, her simplicity, her keen interest in all around her, her sense of humour and love of fun endearing her to all. The entire negation of self which she evinced was remarkable, as well as her childlike faith and devotion to her Master and to His service. A lady was heard to say, "Well, after talking to Miss Slessor I am converted to foreign missions," Her mind was ever upon her work and her children, and she used often to say she was idling, there was so much to be done, and so little time in which to do it. Of all the people I have met she impressed me the most as the perfect embodiment of the Christian life,

Jean waited upon her mother-mistress with a patient and thoughtful devotion which was a wonder to those who saw it. She wore her Calabar frock and bandana, and had she not been a very sane person, her head would have been turned, for she was a favourite with every one, and was given as many ribbons as would serve her all her life. But she was as shy the day she left as when she arrived.

The departure came in the middle of the night. A general and his aide- de-camp and a merchant each offered to convoy her to the ship, and pleaded that they had conveyances, but the manager of the hotel would not hear of it, saw her himself safely into her cabin, and placed the cash-box once more into the Captain's hands. It was the same steamer by which she had travelled to the Islands, so that she felt at home. On board also was Dr. Hitchcock, on his way out again to take up work at Uburu, a large market town in the far north amongst a strangely interesting tribe. How she envied him, young and strong and enthusiastic, entering on such glorious pioneer work! At Accra the Governor of the Gold Coast, a stranger to her, sent off to the steamer a bouquet of flowers, with an expression of his homage and best wishes for a renewal of her health.

When she arrived at Duke Town Dr. Adam again examined her, assisted by Professor Leiper of the London School of Tropical Medicine, and the verdict was: "Good for many years-if you only take care."

She was given written directions as to the care of her health, and these she regarded with a rueful face. "Life will hardly be worth living now," she said. "But for the work's sake I must obey. God wants us to be efficient, and we cannot be so except by living decently and taking care of the wonderful body He has given us."

She turned up her Bible and found the verse she had marked as a "promise" before leaving: "_But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by the spirit that dwelleth in you_." She saw now that this meant something besides the Resurrection, for the voyage, the climate, the food, and the rest had worked in her a miracle, and she realised more than ever what prayer and faith could do for the body as well as for the spirit. There was a lesson in it, too, she thought, for the Church. She had had a month at sea, and a month in the Islands, with the best of care and food, and no furlough had ever done her more good. She felt that a visit to Scotland would not have rested her so much. There was the bustle and excitement and movement and speaking-of all the bugbears of a furlough, she said, speaking at meetings was the chief. If only the hard deputy work at home could be eliminated from the missionaries' programme, they would have a happier and a better time. But here the personal equation obscured her judgment. For to abandon the system would be to do away with the intimate touch and association by which interest in the Mission Field is so largely maintained. To many missionaries, also, the duty of telling to the congregations up and down the country the story of their work is one of the chief pleasures of their furlough.

Laden with chemical foods, medicines, and advice, she returned to Use to find that the entire cost of the trip had been defrayed by Miss Cook, who wrote: "I am only sorry that I did not beg you to stay longer in order to reap more benefit. Come home next year; we all want to see you."

VII. INJURED

But a furlough home was far from her thoughts. She rejoiced in her new strength, and set herself with grim determination to redeem the time. She was now doing double work, carrying on all the activities of the settled station at Use, and establishing her pioneer centre at Ikpe. During the next two years she travelled between the two points, sometimes using the canoe, but more often now the Government motor car, which ran round by Ikot Ekpene and dropped her at the terminus, five miles from Ikpe. David was the driver, and she had thus always the opportunity of seeing Mary, his wife, who lived at Ikot Ekpene.

At Use the work had gone on as usual; there had been no backsliding, and the services and classes had been kept up by the people themselves; and she proceeded with the building of the new church, which was erected under her superintendence and without any outside help. When she was at Ikpe she placed Annie's husband--they were both now members of the Church--in charge, and he conducted the services, but Miss Peacock, whom Mary styled her "Bishop," gave general supervision.

On one of her early journeys up to Ikpe she met with a slight accident, a pellet of mud striking one of her eyes. The people were alarmed at the result, and would have gone off at once to the District Commissioner had she not restrained them. Some native workmen passing his station later mentioned the incident, and within a few minutes the officer had a mounted messenger speeding along the tract to Ikpe, with an urgent order to the people to get her conveyed in the Cape cart to the nearest point on the road, where he would have a motor car waiting. Next morning, although it was market day, the members of the church left everything and took her to the spot indicated. Here were the District Commissioner and a doctor, with eye-shade and medicine and every comfort, and with the utmost despatch she was taken round the Government road to Use. The hurt was followed by erysipelas, and she was blind for a fortnight and suffered acute pain and heavy fever; but very shame at being ill after so fine a holiday made her get up although the eye was swollen and "sulky," and she was soon in the midst of her work at Ikpe as if nothing had happened.

Building, cementing, painting, varnishing, teaching, healing, and preaching filled in the days. A visitor found her once at 10 A.M. finishing school in a shed. She continued it in the afternoon. Then she visited the yards of the people, and they crowded round her and brought her gifts of food. Later she leant against a fallen tree trunk and talked to one and another. In the gathering dusk she sat on a small stool and attended to the sick and dressed their sores. After dinner some men and lads arrived carrying lamps, and she held her catechumens' class--a very earnest and prayerful gathering.

The burden of the untouched region around her vexed her mind. Sometimes she was depressed about it all, and said she would need to fill her letters with nonsense, for "it would not bear writing." Time and again she sought to impress her friends with the needs of the situation: "The last time I was at school I counted eight hundred women and girls running past in eager competition to secure the best places at the fishing-grounds where the men had been working all the morning, and these are but a fraction of our womankind. But what can I do with supervision of the school and church and dispensary and household?" She did not pretend that she worked her station properly, and she pointed out how necessary settled, steady, persevering teaching was. "These infant churches," she said, "need so much to be instructed. The adults are illiterate, and the young need systematic teaching of the Bible. They are an emotional people, and are fain to keep to speaking and singing and long prayers, and the sterner practical side of Christianity is set aside. They are children in everything that matters, and when we have led them to Christ we are apt to forget how much more they need in order to make a strong, upright, ethical character on which to build a nation. Then we need a literature, and this, too, is the work of the Church. What ails it? _Is it not forgetting that God can't give His best till we have given ours?"_

With all its bustle it was a very lonely and isolated life she led. There was no mail delivery, and she had to depend mainly on the kindness of Government officials to forward her correspondence. "I have been here seven weeks," she wrote on one occasion, "without one scrap from the outside--letter or paper--nothing to read but the old advertisement sheets of papers lining the press and the boxes. If you wish for the names of hotels or boarding-houses In any part of Europe-- send to me. I have them all on my tongue's end." It was a red-letter day when a stray white visitor entered the district, for there would be tea and a talk, and a bundle of newspapers would be left--one never forgets another in this way in the bush. She was amused to receive a note from Scotland asking her to hand on a message to Dr. Hitchcock at Uburu. "Do you know?" she replied, "you are nearer him than I am--the quickest way for me to send it is via Britain!"

Life was not without its menace from wild beasts, the forest being full of them, and the doors had always to be closed and fastened at night to keep them out. Snakes were prevalent, and prowled about the building, and many a fight Jean and the others had with the intruders.

VIII. FRIENDSHIPS WITH OFFICIALS

Throughout these years, as always, "Ma" Slessor's relations with the Government officials were of the most friendly nature, It was remarkable that although she was essentially feminine and religious, and although she was engaged in Mission work, she attracted men of all types of character. Much of this power was due to her intense sympathy, which enabled her to get close to minds that would otherwise have been shut to her. What she wrote of another applies to herself:

What a strange thing is sympathy! Undefinable, untranslatable, and yet the most real thing and the greatest power in human life! How strangely our souls leap out to some other soul without our choosing or knowing the why. The man or woman who has this subtle gift of sympathy and magnetism of soul possesses the most precious thing on earth. Hence it is rare. So few could be trusted with such a delicate, sensitive, Godlike power and hold it unsullied that God seems to be hampered for want of means for its expression. Is that the reason that He made His Son a "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief"?

Most of these men had no interest in missions, and some did not believe in them. "The more I see of mission work in West Africa the less I like it," said one frankly to her. "Give me the genuine bushman, who respects his ancestral deities and his chief and himself.... But if all missionaries were like you!" None of these men belonged to her own Church; three of her favourites were Roman Catholics. Her introductions to some were of the most informal character. One day a stranger appeared and found her busy on the roof of the house. "Well," she said, eyeing him critically, "what do you want?" He stood, hat in hand. "Please, Ma'am," he replied meekly, "I'm your new District Commissioner--but I can't help it!" She was delighted, and took him into the inner circle at once. As frequent changes took place in the staff, the number whose acquaintance she made gradually increased, until she became known and talked of in all the colonies on the West Coast and even in other parts of the world.

The official view of her work and character differed little from any other. Says one who knew her long and well:

I suppose that a pluckier woman has rarely existed. Her life-work she carried out with immeasurable courage and capacity. Her strength of character was extraordinary, and her life was one of absolute unselfishness. She commanded the respect and confidence of all parties, and for years I would have personally trusted to her judgment on native matters in preference to all others. Shrewd, quick-witted, sympathetic, yet down on any one who presumed, she would with wonderful patience hear all sides equally. Her judgment was prompt, sometimes severe, but always just. She would speak much of her work to those who, she knew, took an interest in it, but very rarely of herself.

Another writes:

My first impression of her was that she was a lady of great strength of mind and sound common sense. Also that for one who had lived so many years in the bush wilds she was very well read and up-to-date on all subjects.

Mr. T. D. Maxwell, who knew her in Okoyong days and to the end, says:

I am sure that her own Church never had a more loyal adherent, but her outlook on this life--and the next--was never narrow. Her religion was above religions--certainly above religious differences, I have often heard her speak of the faiths and rituals of others, but never without the deepest interest and sympathy. She was young to the end; young in her enthusiasm, her sympathy, her boundless energy, her never-failing sense of humour, her gift of repartee, her ability always to strike the apt--even the corrosive--epithet. A visit to her was, to use one of her own phrases, "like a breath o' caller air to a weary body"--and in West Africa that means incomparably more than it can at Home.

It was a peculiarly affectionate relation that existed between her and many of those men whom she regarded as "the strength and the glory of Britain." A witty member of the Mission once said they were given over to "Mariolatry"--an allusion to her first name. They never were near without visiting her, and often made long journeys for the privilege of a talk. They were delighted with her sense of humour, and teased her as well as lionised her. Half the fun of a visit to her was taking her unawares, and they often threatened to bring their cameras and "snapshot" her on sight, "Ma," they would write before calling, "get your shoes on, we are coming to tea!"

They wrote her about their work and ambitions and worries as if she were a mother or sister, and discussed the political and racial problems of the country as if she were a colleague, always with a delicate deference to her experience and knowledge, sometimes veiled in light banter. "I am at your feet, Ma," said one, "and your wisdom is that of Solomon." They often twitted her about being able to twist them round her little finger: "You break our hearts, and get your own way shockingly." On one occasion she received a grave and formal Government typewritten communication about land, which ended in this way:

I have the honour to be,
Madam,

_and affectionate_
Your obedient servant.

When they left the Colony they kept up the friendship. Many were bad correspondents, yet from the remotest parts of the world they wrote letters, as long as her own, full of kind enquiries about her work and the bairns, and begging for a reply.

On her part she wrote them racy and informative letters; and she also got into touch with their mothers, sisters, and wives at home, who welcomed her news of the absent ones, and were good to her in turn. One lady she delighted by praising her husband. "Naturally," the lady replied, "I agree with you, and you are welcome to court and woo him as much as you like!" A high official brought out his wife, and she wrote Mary from a desire to make her husband's friends hers also. She ended in the usual way, but he added, "She sends her kindest regards--_I_ send my love!" The nature of some of the friendships formed at home through officials may be surmised from an order she gave for a silver gift, value £5, to be sent to the first-born child of one of her "chums." It went to the mother, and the inscription was "From one whom his father has helped."

Very notable was the kindness shown by the Government to her as woman and missionary. Instructions were issued that she was to be allowed to use any and every conveyance belonging to them in the Colony, on any road or river, and that every help was to be afforded to her. Workmen were lent to her to execute repairs on her houses. Individual members sought opportunities to be kind to her. She was taken her first motor- car drive by a Commissioner. The highest officials did not think it beneath them to buy feeding-bottles and forward them on by express messenger. They sent her gifts of books, magazines, and papers--one forwarded _The Times_ for years--and at Christmas there would come plum puddings, crackers, and sweets. One dark, showery night the Governor of Southern Nigeria, Sir W. Egerton, and several officials appeared at her house to greet her, and left a case of milk, two cakes, and boxes of chocolates and crystallised fruit. "The Governor is a Scotsman," she wrote, "and must be sympathetic to mission work, or else why did he come with his retinue and all to a mud house and see me at that cost to his comfort and time on a wet night?" Lord Egerton was charmed with her. Replying to some remark of his she said, "Hoots, my dear laddie--I mean Sir!"

It was the great anxiety of her official friends that she should not outlive her powers: her influence generally was so great that to them the thought of this was distressing. They were always very solicitous about her health, writing to her frequently to say that she should take life more easily, "Take care of yourself, Ma--as much as you can." "Don't be so ridiculously unselfish." "Learn a little selfishness--it will do you all the good in the world," was the advice showered upon her. When she had the Court work she was often urged to take a month's holiday. On hearing of her intention to go to Ikpe one wrote, "Dear Lady, I hate the idea of your going so far into the bush. Don't go. There are plenty of men willing and eager to be of service to you, but away up there you are far away from help or care." Another warned her against the people; "But," he added, "we know you will go in spite of it--and conquer!"

Latterly they became more importunate. "Do be careful," one wrote. "Do take quinine and sleep under a net and drink filtered water." Her custom of going hatless into the blazing sunshine was long a sore point, and when they failed to persuade her of the danger, they resorted to scheming. "We know why you do it," they said artfully. "You know you have pretty hair and like to display it uncovered, imagining that it gets its golden glint from the sun. Oh, vanity of vanities! Fancy a nice, quiet missionary being so vain!" Certainly no argument could have sent her more quickly to the milliner's.

IX. POWER THROUGH PRAYER

The power which enabled Mary Slessor to live so intensely, to triumph over physical weakness, and to face the dangers of the African bush, and gave her the magnetic personality that captivated the hearts of white and black alike, was derived from her intimate and constant contact with the Unseen, and the means of that contact were prayer and the Bible.

She had an implicit belief in the reality of prayer, simply because she had tested its efficacy every day of her life, and had never found it to fail. When her old friend, Mr. Smith of Dundee, asked for her testimony to include in his book, _Our Faithful God: Answers to Prayer_, she wrote:

My life is one long daily, hourly, record of answered prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvellously, for errors and dangers averted, for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life and my poor service, I can testify with a full and often wonder-stricken awe that I believe God answers prayer. I know God answers prayer. I have proved during long decades while alone, as far as man's help and presence are concerned, that God answers prayer. Cavilings, logical or physical, are of no avail to me. It is the very atmosphere in which I live and breathe and have my being, and it makes life glad and free and a million times worth living. I can give no other testimony. I am sitting alone here on a log among a company of natives. My children, whose very lives are a testimony that God answers prayer, are working round me. Natives are crowding past on the bush road to attend palavers, and I am at perfect peace, far from my own countrymen and conditions, because I know God answers prayer. Food is scarce just now. We live from hand to mouth. We have not more than will be our breakfast to-day, but I know we shall be fed, for God answers prayer.

She realised that prayer was hedged round by conditions, and that everything depended upon the nature of the correspondence between earth and heaven. She likened the process to a wireless message, saying, "We can only obtain God's best by fitness of receiving power. Without receivers fitted and kept in order the air may tingle and thrill with the message, but it will not reach my spirit and consciousness." And she knew equally well that all prayer was not worthy of being answered. Those who were disappointed she would ask to look intelligently at first causes as well as regretfully at second causes. To one who said he had prayed without avail, she wrote: "You thought God was to hear and answer you by making everything straight and pleasant--not so are nations or churches or men and women born; not so is character made. God is answering your prayer in His way." And to another who was in similar mood she wrote: "I know what it is to pray long years and never get the answer--I had to pray for my father. But I know my heavenly Father so well that I can leave it with Him for the lower fatherhood." In this as in other things she had to confess that she herself often failed. "I am a poor exponent of faith," she would say. "I ought to have full faith in our Father that He will do everything, but I am ashamed of myself, for I want to 'see,' and that sends faith out of court. I never felt more in sympathy with that old afflicted father before in his prayer, 'Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief'--every syllable suits me."

She had absolute faith in intercession, "Prayer," she said, "is the greatest power God has put into our hands for service--praying is harder work than doing, at least I find it so, but the dynamic lies that way to advance the Kingdom." She believed that some of her official friends, the Empire-builders, were kept straight in this way: "The bands that mothers and sisters weave by prayer and precept are the strongest in the world." There was nothing she asked her friends more often at home to do than to pray for the Mission and the workers. "Don't stop praying for us," she pleaded, and her injunctions were sometimes pathetic in their personal application: "Pray that the power of Christ may rest on me, that He may never be disappointed in me or find me disobedient to the heavenly vision when He shows the way, pray that I may make no false moves, but that the spirit will say, 'Go here and go there,'" She was always convinced that it was the prayers of the people in Scotland that carried her on and made the work possible. "It is so customary to put aside those who, like myself, are old-fashioned and unable for the burden and heat of the day; but in my case it is care and love and forbearance all the way through; and all this I trace back to the great amount of prayer which has ever followed me, to the quality more than the quantity of that intercession. Prayer-waves pulsate from Britain all through Calabar." To one who had always prayed for her she also wrote: "I have always said that I have no idea how and why God has carried me over so many funny and hard places, and made these hordes of people submit to me, or why the Government should have given me the privilege of a magistrate among them, except in answer to prayer made at home for me. It is all beyond my comprehension. The only way I can explain it is on the ground that I have been prayed for more than most. Pray on, dear one-the power lies that way." She also urged prayer for the Mission Committees, Home and Foreign--"We expect them to do so much and to do it so well, and yet we withhold the means by which alone they can do it."

Almost invariably, when acknowledging money, she would beg the donors to follow up their gifts by prayer for workers. "Now," she would say, "let us ask God earnestly and constantly for the greater gift of men and women to fill all these vacant posts."

She used to pray much for her friends in all their circumstances, asking for many things for them that they desired, but eventually her petition came to be, "Lord give them Thy best and it shall suffice them and me."

Her religion was a religion of the heart, and her communion with her Father was of the most natural, most childlike character. No rule or habit guided her. She just spoke to Him as a child to her Father when she needed help and strength, or when her heart was filled with joy and gratitude, at any time, in any place. He was so real to her, so near, that her words were almost of the nature of conversation. There was no formality, no self-conscious or stereotyped diction, only the simplest language from a quiet and humble heart. It is told of her that when in Scotland, after a tiresome journey, she sat down at the tea-table alone, and, lifting her eyes, said, "Thank ye, Faither--ye ken I'm tired," in the most ordinary way, as if she had been addressing her friends. On another occasion, in the country, she lost her spectacles while coming from a meeting in the dark. Snow lay on the ground, and there seemed little hope of recovering them. She could not do without them, and she prayed simply and directly: "O Father, give me back my spectacles." Early next morning the milk-boy saw something glistening in the snow, and she had the spectacles in time to read her Bible. A lady asked her how she obtained such intimacy with God. "Ah, woman," she said, "when I am out there in the bush I have often no other one to speak to but my Father, and I just talk to Him." It was in that way she kept herself in tune with the highest. Sometimes, when there had been laughing and frivolous conversation before a meeting, she lost "grip," and was vexed and restless and dumb. But a little communion with her Father would put matters right. Once, oppressed by a similar mood, she foresaw complete failure, but the minister who presided, as if conscious of her attitude, prayed in such a way as to lift the burden from her heart, and she was given not only a calm spirit but also an eloquent tongue.

How natural it was for her to pray is evidenced by an incident at one of the ladies' committee meetings at Duke Town. Speaking of it she said, "All the ladies were laughing and daffin' over something of a picturesque sort, when it struck me we ought to be praying rather, and I just said so, and at once the whole lot jumped up, and we went into the nearest room and were closeted with our Master for a bit." Sometimes in the Mission House she would call the children to prayer at odd hours, and Jean would remonstrate and say, "Ma, the time is long past." "Jean," she would reply, "the gate of heaven is never shut." She said she wished to teach them that they could pray anywhere and at any time, and not only in the church.

"_We are not really apart," she once wrote to a friend in Scotland, "_for you can touch God direct by prayer, and so can I_."

X. BIBLE STUDENT

She had always been an earnest and intelligent student of the Bible, and to her it grew more wonderful every day. She believed that the spread of the Book was the simplest and most natural and direct way of preaching the Gospel and keeping it pure. Her own reading of it was mainly accomplished in the early morning. As soon as there was light enough--which was usually about 5.30--she took a fine pen and her Bible and turned to the book she was studying in the Old or New Testament. She underlined the governing words and sentences as she went along in her endeavour to grasp the meaning of the writer and the course of his argument; word by word, sentence by sentence, she patiently followed his thought. Sometimes it would be three days before she completed a chapter, but she would not leave it until she had some kind of idea as to its purpose. She was her own commentator, and on the margin she noted the truths she had learned, the lessons she had received, her opinions about the sentiment expressed, or the character described. If her expositions were not according to the ordinary canons of exegesis, they had the merit of being simple, fresh, and unconventional. Her language was as candid, often as pungent, as her remarks in conversation, its very frankness and force indicating how real to her were the life and conditions she was studying. When one Bible was finished she began another, and repeated the process, for she found that new thoughts came as the years went by. On one occasion we find her interested in a recent translation, reading it to discover whether it gave any clearer construction of the more difficult passages. Such sedulous study had its effect upon her character and life; she was interpenetrated with the spirit of the Book; it gave her direction in all her affairs--in her difficult palavers she would remark, "Let us see what the Bible says on this point "--it inspired her with hope, faith, and, and courage. Often after an hour or two of meditation over it she felt no desire for ordinary literature, all other books seeming tame and tasteless after its pages.

Some of the later Bibles she used are in existence, and bear testimony to the thoroughness of her methods. Almost every page is a mass of interlineations and notes. As one turns them over, phrases here and there catch the eye, arresting in thought and epigrammatic in form; such for instance as these:

_God is never behind time.

If you play with temptation do not expect God will deliver you.

A gracious woman has gracious friendships.

No gift or genius or position can keep us safe or free from sin.

Nature is under fixed and fine laws, but it cannot meet the need of man.

We must see and know Christ before we can teach.

Good is good, but it is not enough; it must be God.

The secret of all failure is disobedience,

Unspiritual man cannot stand success.

There is no escape from the reflex action of sin; broken law will have its revenge,

Sin is loss for time and eternity,

The smallest things are as absolutely necessary as the great things.

An arm of flesh never brings power.

Half the world's sorrow comes from the unwisdom of parents.

Obedience brings health,

Blessed the man and woman who is able to serve cheerfully in the second rank--a big test,

What they were weary of was the punishment, not the sin that brought it.

Slavery never pays; the slave is spoiled as a man, and the master not less so.

It were worth while to die, if thereby a soul could be born again._

She was deeply interested in the earlier books, for the reason that the moral and social conditions depicted there were analogous to those she had to deal with in Calabar. Every now and then we come across such remarks as these: "a Calabar palaver," "a chapter of Calabar history," "a picture of Calabar outside the gospel area," "this happens in Okoyong every day." Her own experience helped her to understand the story of these primitive civilisations, and her annotations on this part of the Bible have always the sharpest point. To the sentence, "The Lord watch between me and thee," she appends, "Beautiful sentiment, but a _mbiam_ oath of fear." Jacob she terms in one place a "selfish beggar." Of Jael she says, "Not a womanly woman, a sorry story; would God not have showed her a better way if she had asked?" and of part of Deborah's song she remarks, "Fine poetry, poor morality." Her opinion of Jezebel is thus expressed: "A vain, heartless woman; one of the most revolting stories in history, and she might have been such a queen! A good woman is the most beautiful thing on earth, but a bad woman is a source of corruption.... Had only her soul been clean, dogs might have been welcome to her body."

The book of Job was always well studied. She had a great admiration for the "upright, wealthy, greatly-feared, and respected sheikh," and little or none for the "typical philosophers," who came, Calabar fashion, and sought to comfort him in his day of trial. Job was not, in her view, rebellious; "his plaint was a relief to his own spirit, and an appeal for sympathy." On chapter ix. she writes, "The atmosphere is clearing; the clouds are scattering, glimpses of sunshine, of starlight, and beauty; the spirit swings back on its pivot and begins to see God." Farther on, "Right, Job--turn to God I Leave it to Him-- the fit of depression will pass when you have sounded the depths, and profit will follow." On chapter xviii. her comment is, "Such is the friendship of the world"; on chapter xx., "How very sure the fool is in his explanations of God's ways"; on chapter xxvii., "The ultimate values of life shall be fixed not by wealth but by character"; on chapter xxviii., "A very mine of gems and precious things--exquisitely lovely thoughts and language. Poetry like this in the earliest ages of the world!" Of Elihu's contentions in chapter xxxiv., "A good many truths, but served up with bitter herbs, not with love": on chapter xxxvii., "Beautiful poetry, but a very bleak and barren picture of God; hard, arbitrary, selfish, self-centred, striking terror into His works, and compelling obedience and service. Nature cannot reveal Him, Elihu!" On the next chapter, "The God of nature turns the picture, and behold it is no more destruction and blind force, but beneficence and gracious design and beauty,"--and so on to the end, when we read, "The voice of humanity demands some such judgment and relief from the mysteries and trials and misrepresentations of this life. The poem rings true to the cry of the spirit of man. Is there a modern drama in any language to come near to this ancient production?"