ONE Monday morning, just before the school bell rang, a tidy woman, leading a very neatly-dressed little girl, walked up to the school door at which I was standing.
“This is Lily,” she said. “She be always a-talkin’ about comin’ to school, and, as she was three last June, I’ve a-brought her.”
“Well,” I said, “since she is old enough to wish to come, you have done quite right in bringing her. I only hope she will like to stay.”
“Oh! there ain’t no fear o’ that,” the mother said, and, putting Lily’s hand into mine, and bidding her be a good maid, she wished me “Good morning”
There was little that was lily-like in Lily, and I thought, as I looked at her plump, rosy cheeks, that she ought rather to have been called Rosa, little thinking that those roses were soon to go, and that, the blooming little creature before me would ere long seem more like a faded lily than any other flower, for she was to die very soon.
We said—the children and I—when the Lord took her that He had sent her to school just to learn about His love, for He did not let her stay long enough to learn even he A B C perfectly. One of our favorite hymns is—
“I am so glad that our Father in heaven
Tells of His love in the book He has given.”
And even now, when I give it out to be sung, one or other of the children is almost sure to say, “That were Lily’s hymn.”
Though so shy a child, that she seemed never to speak, nor even to smile, in school, Lily’s voice was to be heard above all the others whenever this hymn was sung, and often, when the rest of us had quite finished the verse, little Lily would be singing over again, “even me.” She had little idea of the music, but we could not help thinking, From the grave, pretty earnestness of her face, that she had some idea of the words—
“Jesus loves me—even me.”
They were seldom away from her lips. Again and again I was told that she was singing it “a’ the time at home” —about the house, and on her father’s knee when he came home from work, and was resting after supper, and on the doorstep, whenever she could get two or three other infants to play at “school” with her.
They told me that she always began her school-keeping with prayer, first running up to her mother for her gloves, “to pray wi’—to be like gov’ness,” she pleaded, when her mother, not understanding, was for putting her off without them till next Sunday. As far as I can find out, they never could tell what she said when she prayed at these times, but there was no mistaking the words of the hymn which these “young, young children” were sure to strike up directly the prayer was over—
“I am so glad that Jesus loves me—even me.”
How interested He must have been, whose love constrained Him to come to save such, to hear His love so sung. We may think a child’s singing of Jesus a pretty thing enough, but of little matter; but out of the mouth of such He ordains strength. If these should hold their peace the very stones would cry out.
Lily’s love for school was almost as remarkable as her love for this sweet hymn. After the first few days she always came by herself, and was always first. How often have I watched her from my window, toiling up the steps—the left foot first on each step! And when the snow or rain made it impossible for her to walk to school her mother used to carry her.
“It ain’t no good thinkin’ to keep Lily at home,” the mother said the first time she brought her, “she do only cry to come to school.”
It was a sad day when her place was vacant for the first time. “Lily’s ill,” the children said; and the next news was, “It’s the fever she’s got.” Then one afternoon, as one and another of them dropped in rather late, the first words they uttered were, “Lily’s dead! She died at two o’clock.”
“Ah!” we said to one another, “many a time Lily has sung—
“‘Oh! if there’s only one song I can sing,
When, in His beauty, I see the great King,
This shall my song in eternity be
Oh! what a wonder that Jesus loves me!’”
And now she is seeing Jesus. It was in February that Lily died, when the flowers were scarce. We felt that—
“We should bring pansies quick with spring,
Rose, violet, daffodilly,
And also, above everything,
White lilies for our Lily.”
“But winter kills the tender buds;
The gardens in the frost were,”
and there were none of these flowers to be had; but the children gathered all the snowdrops and crocuses they could find to lay around her now sadly lily-like form, and before they screwed down the lid of her little coffin the weeping mother laid beside her feet the little gloves she used to pray in, and the little scarlet hood she used to wear to the Sunday school—she felt, I suppose, that she would never again be able to bear the sight of them—and then they carried her past her beloved school, where she had been taught about Jesus, to the village churchyard, where she lies sleeping till Jesus comes.
“Babes! Love could always hear and see
Behind the cloud that hid them,
‘Let little children come to Me,
And do not thou forbid them.’”
E. B.