Sight to the Blind

One morning in early September, Miss Shippen, the trained nurse at the Settlement School on Perilous, set off for a day of district-visiting over on Clinch, accompanied by Miss Loring, another of the workers.  After riding up Perilous Creek a short distance, they crossed Tudor Mountain, and then followed the headwaters of Clinch down to Skain’s Fork, where in a forlorn little district-school-house the trained nurse gave a talk on the causes and prevention of tuberculosis, the spitting of tobacco-juice over the floor by teacher and pupils abating somewhat as she proceeded.  Two miles farther on she stopped at the Chilton home for a talk to half a dozen assembled mothers on the nursing and prevention of typhoid, of which there had been a severe epidemic along Clinch during the summer.

Afterward the school-women were invited to dinner by one of the visiting mothers.  Mrs. Chilton at first objected to their going, but finally said: 

“That ’s right; take ’em along with you, Marthy.  I allow it ’ll pyeerten Aunt Dalmanuthy up to hear some new thing.  She were powerful’ low in her sperrits the last I seed.”

“Pore maw!” sighed Marthy, her soft voice vibrant with sympathy.  “It looks like things is harder for her all the time.  Something new to ruminate on seems to lift her up a spell and make her forgit her blindness.  She has heared tell of you school-women and your quare doings, and is sort of curious.”

“She is blind?” inquired the nurse.

“Blind as a bat these twelve year’,” replied Mrs. Chilton; “it fell on her as a judgment for rebelling when Evy, her onliest little gal, was took.  She died of the breast-complaint; some calls it the galloping consumpt’.”

“I allus allowed if Uncle Joshuay and them other preachers had a-helt off and let maw alone a while in her grief,” broke in Marthy’s gentle voice, “she never would have gone so far.  But Uncle Joshuay in especial were possessed to pester her, and inquire were she yet riconciled to the will of God, and warn her of judgment if she refused.”

“Doubtless Uncle Joshuay’s high talk did agg her on,” said Mrs. Chilton, impartially, “but she need n’t to have blasphemed like she done at Evy’s funeral occasion.”

Marthy covered her face with her hands.

“Oh, that day!” she exclaimed, shuddering.  “Will I ever forgit it?  John and me had got married just a month before Evy died in October, and gone to live up the hollow a small piece from maw, and even then she were complaining of a leetle scum over her eyes.  Losing Evy, and rebelling like she done atterward, and Uncle Joshuay’s talk, holp it along fast, and it were plain to all before winter were over that he had prophesied right, and her sight were a-going.  I would come down the branch of a morning and beg her to let me milk the cow and feed the property and red up the house and the like, but she would refuse in anger, and stumble round over chairs and table and bean-pot and wash-kittle, and maintain all spring and summer her sight were as good as ever.  Never till that day of the funeral occasion, one year atter Evy died, did she ever give in.”