[Illustration: I] STARTED from Walnut Hills. You may not find the name
in your geographies, so I will just hint to you that it is one of the
parlors of Cincinnati; _that_ you can find.
Down Gilbert Avenue in a car which made good progress, notwithstanding
its frequent stops to take on more people. "Who makes it go?" asked a
wee girlie who was evidently taking her first ride of the kind. Sure
enough! Who did? No horse or mule; no engine to be seen; no visible
means of making that car slip over the road as it did.
The child repeated her eager question: "Mamma, who makes it go? There
isn't any horsie."
"It is a cable car, my child," the mother answered, with a look of
profound wisdom in her eyes.
"What is a cable car, mamma?"
"It is a car that goes without horses."
"But what _makes_ it go?" was the third time repeated query. Then
the small questioner, and I, listened for words of wisdom from the
mother's lips. "I told you, Alice, it was a cable car; now be quiet;
you ask too many questions." I think Alice and I came to the same
conclusion; that the mother did not understand how to explain a cable
car, and did not want to own it.
Now you are asking _me_ what a cable car is. Oh, dear! I don't
understand how to tell you; and I will own it. I have questioned until
it is pretty clear to me, but as I said, I don't know how to tell it.
You see, the one who explained it to me, seated me in a chair at one
side, and said: "You are the engine." This astonishing statement held
me quiet, while he put into my hand a tiny cord which he said was a
very strong and heavy band. Being bound to believe him, I watched
the band placed around a great wheel, on the street in front of me.
Away down the street, about two miles, was another wheel, and a rope
which had neither beginning nor end was placed around both wheels; at
least that was what "he" said. To be sure, it looked to me like the
study table, and an inkstand, and a tin can with some twine around
them. But since _I_ was an engine, why could not they be two great
wheels connected by a rope? "Now," said the speaker, "you--being the
engine, you understand--are set in motion, and the band about you being
connected with this great wheel, when the band moves, the great wheels
do the same, and the iron rope responds, and moves round and round.
Now here comes along a car" (it wasn't, it was a spool of thread;
never mind!) "here comes along a car drawn by horses; but this a steep
ascent" (it was as level as the floor), "and they want to use engine
power, so they take off the horses, and a little contrivance underneath
grasps the chain, and away goes the car. Understand?"
Yes, I understand, after a fashion. The question is, Do you? Well, we
went down town on the cable car.
Arrived at the city, we went with speed to a music store, made our
way up stairs to the "parlors." We were late; every chair taken;
very little standing room left. We found some, however, to stand in,
and were glad even for this opportunity of hearing the sweet-voiced
speaker. Who who she? Her name is Layah Barrakat.
A strange-sounding name? Oh, yes, she is a foreigner. Her birthplace
is away among the mountains of Lebanon. Once she was a little heathen
girl; and the strange sad things she told would have made the tears
come to your eyes. If ever you hear or read that Layah Barrakat is to
speak on Foreign Missions in any building near where you live, I want
you to be sure to hear her.
Let me tell you the story of a pair of red shoes. Our missionaries had
a Sabbath-school near where Layah lived; but she had been taught that
it was a very wicked place, and she must have nothing to do with it.
One day a lady from the Mission met Layah and invited her to
Sabbath-school, telling her she would make her a present of a pair
of new shoes if she would come. Layah wanted the shoes; she told
her mother about it and begged to go, just once, to get the shoes,
promising she would not listen to, or remember a word that was said;
so the mother agreed, and she went. But there she heard such wonderful
things she could not help listening, and remembering; for the first
time she heard about Jesus; how he loved her very much, and had a
beautiful home waiting for her, and would show her the way to it if she
would follow him. In all her life Layah had never heard of anything
like this. She wanted to follow the kind friend who loved her. She
received her shoes, beautiful red ones, and she thought a good deal of
them, but when Sunday came again she wanted to go back to the school,
and hear more about Jesus. She did not dare tell her mother of her
wish, for she knew punishment would follow; but at last her desire to
go grew so strong that she ran away. Her brother found out where she
was, and came for her, scolding and whipping her all the way home.
But all the scolding could not take from her what she had learned. It
is a long story, the trials she went through, and the punishments she
received for wanting to be a Christian. She used to be cruelly whipped,
and shut up in a dark cellar without anything to eat. But it was all to
no purpose; she had heard enough of Jesus to make her hungry for _him_.
Nothing else would satisfy her; she was determined to follow him, cost
what it might.
By and by, good Doctor Nassau, a missionary, became interested in
her; he wrote to some friends in America, telling her story, and a
Sabbath-school in West Philadelphia determined to adopt and educate
her. So they gathered their pennies, and sent them out, and Layah went
to the mission school; but she had to run away from home in order to do
so.
The story of her life since then reads almost like a fairy tale; one
can hardly imagine it possible that all the strange experiences of
which she tells, could have come to her. How she grew up, and married,
and went to Egypt as a missionary; how her brother, the very one who
used to whip her through the streets, became a Christian, and a teacher
in the Mission; how her mother, soon after, learned to love Jesus;
how Layah saved many little girls in Egypt; how when the troubles
came there, she escaped with her husband and child, after suffering
dreadful things, and came to this country, and went wandering through
the streets of Philadelphia, in search of one man whom she had met in
Egypt--Dr. Dulles Chestnuts--this was his name, as she remembered it.
How the children of the streets chased them, calling them gypsies, how
the very dogs barked at them, how she sat down at last on a doorstep,
and cried to think that she had come to Christian America, and could
find no friend; all these things are deeply interesting. I wish you
could have heard her tell them.
Was it not wonderful that at last she should have found the very friend
whom she sought? a policeman spoke kindly to her, took her into a
store, looked in a directory for her, and found that her friend was
Doctor Dulles, on Chestnut street. After that, the way to rest and help
was smooth; she began to realize that she was indeed in a Christian
country.
For three years she has been living in Philadelphia. She goes over the
country to visit churches, and Mission Bands, wherever she is invited,
to tell her beautiful, and sorrowful, and joyful, and altogether
wonderful story.