THIS is my first day at school. Miss Maynard says we need not do any lessons today, as all the girls have not arrived, so I shall have plenty of time to write a few pages of my little journal.
Mother wants me to write an account of the way in which I spend my time here, so that when I meet her again, I may be able to read it to her, and to tell her about my school friends, and of what I did and thought about whilst I was so far away from her.
Dear mother! I can hardly write her name without crying; it seems so very dreadful to think that two whole years must pass away before I see her again. Two whole years! What shall I be, and how shall I feel then? I shall be seventeen, quite grown up, and I shall have left all my school days behind for ever.
Mother says the two years will pass away like a dream, and will seem as nothing when they are gone, and I look back upon them. But they are not gone now; they are stretching out before me, like a very dreary bit of road, which I must pass over, and at the very thought of which I feel lonely and desolate and disheartened. I know it is very wicked to feel so. I ought to be glad to be here, that I may learn to be of more use to mother when I go out to her in India, and I ought to feel that it is God’s will that I should be here, and that He knows what is best for me. Mother talked so beautifully to me about it the last night we were together.
Oh, that last night with mother! I shall never forget it; it was such a very sorrowful night!
We all had tea together; even little Hugh, the baby boy, came downstairs to tea. But instead of being merry and happy, and laughing and talking, as we had done on other nights, we were very quiet and sorrowful. Father and mother, and Melville and I, scarcely spoke a word. Only the children chattered away to each other, for they could not understand about father and mother leaving us, and as they talked, mother sat and watched them, with such a hungry, yearning look in her eyes, as if she could not bear them to be for a moment out of her sight.
They sat up later than usual that night, but at last they grew sleepy and tired, and one by one mother put them to bed. She would let no one help her to undress them; she wanted to do everything for them herself. And, as each child said his prayers at her knee, mother leant over him, and seemed to be sobbing, for she shook from head to foot. But I heard no sound, so I may have been wrong, but I know that when all the little ones were in bed, she went about from crib to crib, tucking them up, over and over again, and kissing them, and holding them to her heart, as if she could never leave them.
And then mother came downstairs to Melville and to me. Father had gone out, for he had much to arrange that last night, so mother and Melville and I sat together by the fire.
For some time no one spoke, only mother held our hands very tightly, and drew us both closer to her side.
‘Oh, mother, mother!’ I sobbed at last; ‘it is so dreadful to say goodbye!’
Mother could not answer me at first ; she tried to speak, but the words seemed to choke her.
At last she said, ‘You know what goodbye means, Olive, darling. It really is “God be with you.” We must think of its real meaning when we say it tomorrow. God be with you, my darlings. And I know He will,’ mother said, more brightly, ‘for you are both His children. You have both, I do believe, taken Jesus for your Saviour, and are trying to please Him, and I know He will be with you both.’
And then mother told us to go to Jesus in every trouble, just as we would have come to her, if she had been with us, and to feel quite sure that He loved us and felt for us, and would comfort and help us far better than she could have done.
‘And now, darling children,’ said mother, ‘I have a little present to give you ; my last little present. I kept it till the lest night, that you might remember that it was your mother’s last gift to you, before she went away.’
Mother left the room for a moment, and then returned with two beautiful cards in her hand. There was a wreath of forget-me-nots round each card, which mother said must often speak to us of her when she was away. But it was the words inside the card that she wanted us so much to remember. It was a question, printed in blue and gold letters. Mother read it aloud, as she gave us each one of the cards.
‘WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?’
‘Olive and Melville,’ said mother, ‘you are going out into the world now, and I want these words to be the rule of your life. Whenever you do not know what is right, or what you ought to do, in any difficult matter, look at your card. “WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?” let THAT settle it. Just try to fancy, if Jesus were in your place, how He would act, what He would say, how He would behave. He came to this world of ours chiefly to die for us, that we might be saved and go to heaven. But He also came to leave us an example, that we should follow His steps.’ And then mother told us a story.
‘There was an Indian chief,’ she said, ‘who lived in Northwest America, amongst the cold, and the ice, and the snow. This chief had a visitor, a white man, who came and spent a night with him. In the morning the chief took his visitor outside the wigwam or hut in which he lived, and asked him a question.
“How many people, do you think,” said the chief, “passed by this hut last night?”
The visitor looked at the snow very carefully, and saw the footmarks of one man distinctly imprinted upon it. There were no other footmarks to be seen, so he said to the chief, “Only one man has passed by.”
‘The chief, however, told him that several hundred Indians, in fact, a whole tribe, had passed his wigwam in the night.
‘And then he explained to him, that when the Indians do not want it to be known in which direction they have gone, the chief of the tribe walks first, and all the rest of the tribe follow in single file, each man placing his feet exactly in the footmarks of the chief, so that no new footmarks are made, and it looks as if only one man, instead of hundreds, had zone by. By this clever trick the enemies of the tribe are not able to find out in which way they have gone, nor to overtake them.
‘Now, dear children,’ said mother, ‘Jesus is our Chief. He has gone first over the path of life, and He has left us His footmarks, if. example. Did you ever, think why He came as an infant, and grew older and older by degrees? I think it was to set us an example in every age of life. He was a tiny child, to set an example to tiny children, that they might follow His steps; then He was a boy at school, to set you who are at school an example, that you may follow His steps. And then He grew older, He became a young man, and a full-grown man, to set young men and men an example, that they also might follow His steps. He went through it all before us, every step of the way; He trod it all, and He only asks us to follow where He leads.
‘Dear children, will you follow Him? Will you put your feet where He has gone before? Will you try to say nothing which Jesus would not have said ? to go to no place where Jesus would not have gone ? to do nothing Jesus would not have done? If you will, you will indeed be safe and happy.
‘But you cannot do it without Him,’ said mother ; ‘oh no! not without Him. But He will help you, I know He will—if you will ask Him. Will you ask Him, darling children ?’