“Sweet sings the great choir of sorrow,
The song of the gladness untold,
To Him on the throne of His glory,
Who wept in the days of old.”
YET another page of Lizzie's lesson-book was about to be turned for her, though I do not think it was in the way she or any of her friends expected. Often as she had gathered her little class round her, or gone in and out among the poor, who were beginning to love and trust her as a friend, she had wished she could give more than a few evening hours to visiting the sick and poor, and the desire had very often been formed into a prayer that, if according to the will of God, the way might be made plain.
There seemed so much to be done; many of the girls whom she was teaching to read, wore very ragged clothes, and this was not only the case among the very poor, but even with some whose fathers were, she knew, earning good wages. All this at first puzzled Lizzie greatly, but after a few visits to their homes she found out the secret that many of their mothers did not know how to make or mend their own or their children's clothes.
So another class was begun, open to any who wished to learn how to sew. Lizzie, who was really very clever at cutting out, became its teacher, and often while she was busy with the needlework a friend would look in for half an hour, read a chapter from the Bible, and say a few simple but earnest words about God's way of salvation.
And "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Before the end of the winter Lizzie was encouraged by hearing from more than one of the mothers that the blessing of the Lord had rested on the quiet little work, and they could now join truly in singing—
“Happy day, happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away.”
I am not quite sure, but think it was in the year 1859 that an outbreak of cholera swept over the east end of London. So many were taken ill that the hospitals were soon so crowded that it was impossible to make room for any more patients, and though doctors and nurses worked till almost worn out, a great number of sick people could not be removed from their own houses.
What is Maggie saying? That she can never quite understand how it is that people take cholera and smallpox, and wishes I would tell her. Well, I will try to help her out of the puzzle, even though I am afraid some of our readers will think I am going to put them off with a nursing lecture instead of a true story.
We all know that, while a few plants and flowers grow from slips or cuttings, by far the larger number are raised from seeds. Now fevers, smallpox, and all the diseases that are called infectious—a long word, I know, but it only means that others beside the person who takes them first get ill and have to be nursed—like the pretty flowers that have made our gardens so bright this summer, grow from seeds so very small that no human eye unaided by a microscope has ever seen one, and yet with the aid of a powerful glass they may be counted by hundreds. These seeds are called germs; they sail about in the air we breathe, are in the water we drink, the food we eat, and hide away in every place in which dust is allowed to gather and remain.
Nellie looks quite grave, and says if there are so many germs it is quite surprising we do not all take some kind of fever. We Christians know it is the mercy of God that we do not; but God, who is the God of order, works by known laws, and one of these laws is that a germ cannot grow unless it is planted. The kind of soil it likes best is the body of some one who is weak, or tired, or hungry. As soon as a germ gets planted it begins to swell, and then divides into two; these divide again into four, and this division goes on so quickly, the doctors tell us, that in twenty-four hours one germ can multiply into several millions.
Perhaps our little talk about germs may help some of us to remember when we have any sweeping or dusting to do that we are really doing very useful sanitary work, and helping the doctor, as by keeping our houses clean we are driving away the germs, and so helping to prevent illness.
But you would like to hear more of Lizzie and her cholera patients. Well, we must wait for the next chapter, I think.