When Margaret Andrews was twenty-five, she received what she
thought was a call to the foreign mission field. Her parents,
altho they at first tried to dissuade her, put no obstacle in
the way of her hopes, and, full of eagerness, she began training
at a school in another city. One day, says the _California
Advocate_, she received a telegram. Her mother had met with
an accident, just how serious could not at once be known.
Margaret packed her books and took the first train home,
expecting to return in a few weeks. Long before the weeks had
passed she knew that her dream must be given up. Her mother
would never be able to do anything again, and Margaret, instead
of making her journey to strange lands, saw herself shut in to
the duties of housekeeper and nurse.
For a year or two she bore her disappointment in silence; then
she went to her pastor with it. The pastor was an old man, who
had known Margaret all her life. He looked at her steadily for
a moment. Then he said slowly, “You are living in a city of two
hundred thousand people. Isn’t there need enough about you to
fill your life?”
“Oh, yes,” the girl answered, “and I could give up the foreign
field. It isn’t that. But I haven’t time to do anything, not
even to take a mission-class, and to see so much work waiting,
and be able to do nothing--”
“Margaret,” the old minister said, “come here.”
The girl followed him to the next room, where a mirror hung
between the windows. Her reflection, pale and unhappy, faced her
wearily.
“All up and down the streets,” the old minister said, “in the
cars, the markets, the stores, there are people starving for
the bread of life. The church can not reach them--they will not
enter a church. Books can not help them--many of them never open
a book. There is but one way that they can ever read the gospel
of hope, of joy, of courage, and that is in the faces of men and
women.
“Two years ago a woman who has known deep trouble came to me one
day, and asked your name. ‘I wanted to tell her,’ she said, ‘how
much good her happy face did me, but I was afraid that she would
think it was presuming on the part of an utter stranger. Some
day, perhaps, you will tell her for me.’ Margaret, my child,
look in the glass and tell me if the face you see there has
anything to give to the souls that are hungry for joy--and they
are more than any of us realize--who, unknown to themselves, are
hungering for righteousness. Do you think that woman, if she
were to meet you now, would say what she said two years ago?”
The girl gave one glance and then turned away, her cheeks
crimson with shame. It was hard to answer, but she was no
coward. She looked up into her old friend’s grave eyes.
“Thank you,” she said; “I will try to learn my lesson and accept
my mission--to the streets.” (Text.)
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