Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/430

Rh as I have done many a time, to the stranger, to the needy; to the messengers of all nations! I see around you blacks as servants and friends. They are free and you have made them so. They sing hymns which you have taught them, joyful songs which they themselves have made. And for them, and for you, sing the hundred-tongued birds in the cool live-oaks, which wave their long pendent mosses, whilst above them and you beams the mild, blue southern heaven, and the blessing of heaven! May it be so!

P.S. Yes, I must tell you about one of the mysteries of Charleston, because I have often seen it steal hastily by like a shadow in the streets and alleys there. It appears to be a woman, meanly clad, in the hues of twilight. She is called Mrs. Doctor Susan, for she is the physician and helper of the poor. She belongs to one of the higher families of the city, but having made a false step in her youth, became an outcast from society, which in North America endures much secret immorality, but none which becomes public. It might, perhaps, in the course of years have forgiven, and again admitted the young delinquent to its circles, but she no longer sought for pardon from man. She turned her heart and her eye to one much higher. She became the servant of his poor and afflicted people. And since then she may only be met with among them, or on the way to them. That which is given to her, either of money or of clothing, is applied by her to the use of the poor, and she herself lives in voluntary poverty.

The negroes in my friend's family were, at one time, so ill of an infectious fever that every one fled from them. But Doctor Susan came and tended them, and restored them to health, and when she was rewarded for it she considered her reward too great. Known throughout the whole city, she goes everywhere in her poor, dark attire, like a messenger of consolation, but