At a time when I had a lovely Sunday school class, of which I was very fond, there was an aged and very eccentric old lady who was quite particular in selecting her acquaintances.
For some reason, she favored me with her friendship, and it became my custom to start early Sunday school so I could spend an hour with her.
Her room was odd; she fancied putting almost everything into a separate little bag.
The hairbrush, coarse and fine combs, were each suspended in a bag just exactly large enough.
Even the penholder stuck out of the top of a slender bag that just fitted it.
Would you imagine a thimble bag also?
It was a fact.
It took me several visits to become accustomed to her oddity.
” It was partly because of the dust and partly a habit of the order,” she said.
I found out through her kindness of heart that some of these calico bags held a bunch of grapes and an apple each.
“I’ve got grandchildren,” she explained.
She also had a Bible so ancient that the pages were yellow, and it was so large it was awkward to hold.
Many a pleasant talk we she’d explained end to me obscure passages.
How I loved to read the writings of Esdras in the Apocrypha, and how odd were some of the names in the old Bible!
Such old-fashioned earrings as she wore, too.
One day I asked her if she had not had them for a long time, for my mother had hidden safely away a pair of something like them that grandpa gave her for her fifth birthday when he came home with his ship.
Said she, “My husband put these in my ears forty years ago on our wedding day, and I want them buried with me.”
Her wish was fulfilled that summer, and it was my mournful pleasure to attend her last hours more.
It is a sacred pleasure to realize that you have lightened a few hours of the aged and lonely who have been withdrawn from the sunshine and cheerfulness of outdoor existence.
If it is your privilege to do so, let your ministrations help them to forget a portion of their sorrow and pain, and perhaps they may bear a kind word for you to the higher and better world.
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