J. Breckenridge Ellis

“ Your capabilities fit you for one field of labor, mine fit me for another. We have all to build an altar. I have built mine, and laid thereon my tenderest feelings, the yearning desire of the woman-nature to be loved. I know that this mysterious yearning which God has planted with his own hand in woman's heart will, if left unsatisfied, cast a shadow over her life; that however strong, however self-reliant a woman may be, her heart reaches out for something to complete her happiness. But the giant will can strengthen the trembling, faltering heart. ”

“ But then, I thought, man's life does not consist in the things he possesses; so I am resolved to be content in my Old Kentucky Home! I feel inexpressible satisfaction in the thought that while teaching boys, I am exerting a purifying and elevating influence,—an influence that will mould society, and tinge its religious, literary and charitable institutions, long after this heart has ceased to beat. O, what a privilege is ours, Mattie, of setting in motion waves of eternal blessing! How strange that the great mass of mankind neglect such opportunities! ”

“ If love in its fulness cannot be spoken, much less can it be read. There is a simplicity and an inner earnestness, that is altogether baffling to the snare of leaded type. Whatever the subject of that sermon, Christ was in it, and we care nothing for its divisions and its order. We are thrilled with joy by that sermon—we who never heard it,—because we see the preacher's mother step forth—at last!—and stand before them all like a beautiful dream come true—or rather, like a spirit of love, whose enkindled face flashes into the son's eyes the answer to his prayers. ”

“ The girl understood this; that is why her determination to be a teacher grew and ripened; not to impart facts but, by means of facts, to inculcate the love of learning and of truth. She wanted to come into touch with the world, and to send the ripple of her personal influence far out into those magic circles of infinite distance, which the casting of an idea forms on the sea of thought. She wanted girls, many girls, countless girls,—to receive a higher view of life by having known her ”

“ Mattie Myers is not as strong as she might be, but she has had a long rest, and can rest no longer; for that active spirit calls her to her chosen work. She has already done some teaching, but in the autumn of 1867, she purchases Franklin College at Lancaster, and starts definitely upon her career. She is the president, of course; and she feels as she walks the familiar streets,—no longer a little girl under her brother Joe's tutelage, but a grave young teacher—a girl of twenty now, surrounded by other girls—that her life-work has, indeed, begun. ”

“ Let poor Joe play his flute-airs, and look mournfully into space; let Williams say what he will, or Pinkerton, or anybody else. Mattie has spoken. That means a wedding-day on March the twenty-sixth.
Not that Joe understands how unalterable is her mind. Indeed, he is in no condition to bear the truth. That voyage seems to him a death, the going out from his life of the dearest object of his affections. He grows wild when she tries to make him understand her mind. When Oliver reasons with him, he no longer answers with arguments, but with mere incoherent passion, partly anger, partly despair. ”

“ And somewhat further down we find in another handwriting—"All sitting together tonight, and Johnnie proposes that each of us write something in his diary and sign his name.
O. A. Carr."
So the day, bright and beautiful, is at a close; the waves of the Ohio no longer sparkle with diamonds as the steamboat plows its way southward; and the jolts of the journey—let us hope—are eased; and the sermon has been preached; and if we smile at the thought of the sand-scouring of the boots, is it not with the smile of sympathy? For we, too, find beautiful the feet of those who bring tidings of great joy! ”

“ One might crowd a large book with the people who come and go, never to return, people important in their own orbits, no doubt, but quite futile to ours. Happy would it be for us and ours, if all the time we scatter among the moving multitudes of life, we might concentrate upon the few who are to abide in our hearts and memory. But that is not to be while life is life; however, it may be reasonably accomplished in book-land. ”

“ However mournfully my heart may cry, however beseechingly, I cannot go with you. Conscience, my guide, beckons me, and fervently I follow, though my heart is torn asunder. Ah, the bloodless battles that are fought in our world! You have said, 'Although I love you as I love no one else on earth, still, if you deny me, I must go alone.' I say in reply, that though I love you with that love of which only a Christian woman is susceptible, I cannot go with you. ”

“ This country about Adelaide is a level plain for 200 miles around the seashore, girt by hills like those at Maysville on the Kentucky side. In the early morning, as I look at those hills and the lovely plains silvered with light, all is so much like home that my heart rises in my mouth, and I could almost say poetry! Adelaide seems to have been laid out for about 200,000 people, but only about 30,000 have come; so the spaces between the houses have been made into lawns and fragrant gardens. It is truly a rural place. ”

“ It was natural enough that the very sight of this man should suggest to the studious youth, thoughts of greatness and of travel. His kinship to Sir Walter Scott and his familiarity with the lands beyond the seas, no doubt lent him a sort of halo, to the imagination of boyhood. But it must have done more than this; it must have suggested that one need not remain poor and unknown; and that, as Walter Scott, when a poor young man had lifted himself above his condition by means of his education, so might Oliver Carr. ”

“ There is no punishment for a malicious nature so terrible as the vengeance of its own malice which reacts upon itself, dwarfing, embittering, deadening the higher capabilities of the soul that harbors it. He who took the snake to his warm hearth to nourish it to life, is not he who suffers from the ingratitude of a friend, but rather he who admits hate to warm it in his own bosom; for it wounds him, first of all.
Fourteen years of labor in the work Mrs. Carr loved best, amid surroundings best adapted to call forth one's greatest capabilities, [431] and then—the last journey. ”

“ Yet in each affliction there is a blessing. There is a holy, purifying influence that the children of God must feel in order to be made fit for His inheritance,—an influence that even mighty truth, alone, cannot bring; an influence that only trial can exert upon the proud heart. This will make the weakest strong; God accepts no sacrifice without salt or without fire. Trial gives us our Christian character, brings us into closer communion [95] with our God. With it our hearts may be made fair and pure as the snow that encircles the mountain-crest. ”

“ So they have met at last, the preacher and the singer. They might have finished their education there at Harrodsburg, Oliver Carr at the University and Mattie Myers at Daughters' College—if the meeting had not brought them together—who knows! But, being brought together in that way, and being the grave and purposeful characters we have found them to be, it is easy enough to comprehend the friendship that came into being; a friendship sanctified, as it were, by the sound of hymn and the fervor of prayer. ”

“ Then Oliver rose. At last, at last! the privilege was his to speak to these dear people, words of eternal life. As he looked into their kindly faces, he too, was overcome by emotion. Minute after minute passed by, and he could but weep, while the faces of his audience, bathed in tears, told him that the yearning of his heart was understood. It seems wonderful when a celebrated man rises to address an audience, and, for ten minutes, stands dumb before tireless applause. ”

“ One feels his heart leap with a sympathetic throb when men who had dreamed of such a return to the old paths, but who had dreamed of it in solitude, not knowing it had found a voice in the earth—suddenly heard it pronounced from the pulpit. Men who had brooded in seclusion over their Bibles, finding there, as it appeared to them, sublime statements antagonistic to sectarianism, were suddenly transfixed by hearing the words of old, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!" ”

“ But the word Mattie has spoken before the blazing hearth she speaks on the open pike: "I will go."
Why argue further? Clearly conscience nerves her to her purpose! Conscience—or love. Only one term of her first school so proudly begun—and she has put it in charge of another, and is starting forth to merge her life-work into that of another—and he, a stranger not long ago,—a mere lad gathering the shavings in the wagon-shop to start the tavern fires. ”

“ He was, indeed, a remarkable man, one who magnified the dignity of his calling, always conscious that the better he succeeded as a teacher, the greater would prove his blessing to the lives of others.
On Sunday we may follow the college girls to church. There goes Mattie Myers, in her solid-green woolen dress, her wonderful suit of hair arranged as plainly as such a wealth of heavy brown will permit. We see the neat and unpretentious hat from under which appear the serious brow, and the eyes always bright and intelligent. ”

“ After this pleasant companionship, Oliver and Mattie were never again to be strangers. Now he knows one girl at Daughters' College who leads singing in the church—and she knows one young man at the University whose very soul is wrapped up in the things nearest her own heart. He comes to the college to see her; and John Augustus Williams sits with them in the parlor to complete the triangle,—very properly; are not triangles the least-sided figures known in the halls of learning? And when President Milligan gives a levee, who comes for Mattie to escort her thither? ”

“ And as Elizabeth Barrett found in later years a great love upon which she could always rest her weary heart, even so was Mattie Myers to find a love resourceful and deathless? We shall see, by-and-by.
The first writing in the book—written somewhere in her thirteenth year, is this: "A forehead royal with the truth"—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Then we find, "As stars differ from one another in glory, so shall it be in the resurrection morn." Later comes, "Heaven is fair, earth pitiless; why is life so dear?" And, "He who has most of heart has most of sword." ”

“ For nigh six years of student life we were boon companions. We shared our mutual joys, our mutual burdens bore, in a most intimate friendship. We planned our future so that our paths might often cross each other, but duty called us to labor in fields as far apart as Colorado, California, Australia. When James C. Keith, President of Pierce Christian College, California, and I were corresponding, concerning this meeting of today, our hearts cried out for the absent one—the noble, generous, gifted, brilliant valedictorian of our class. ”