The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
as another to me. I now see what the enlarging of my heart meant. Once
an old colored man brought in the kitchen some eggs to sell. I said:
"Uncle, do you love God?" He turned to my cook Fannie and said:
"Hear dat". Fannie said: "Oh! Mrs. Nation knows the Lord." Uncle
said: "Thank God one white woman got ligen," clapped his hands and
praised God. It used to be and is now the sweetest music to have anyone
praise God. I am at church often, when I long to hear a loud shout of
praise go up to the giver of every good and perfect gift. It is torture to
attend the cold, dead service of most of the churches.
I was a teacher in the Methodist Sunday school and had given perfect
satisfaction up to this time; but things changed. The minister said from
the pulpit that the teachers should be Methodists, and spoke so pointedly
that all knew he meant me. The superintendent at the Episcopal Sunday
school asked me to teach in their Sunday school. (This was Judge Williams,
the husband of Lola, Mr. Nation's daughter.) I did so, and things
went smoothly for a while.
Father Denroach was the minister, and one morning he asked the
school questions out of the catechism. My class could not answer. I
arose and said: "Father Denroach, I do not teach my class the catechism,
I use only God's word." "What objection do you find to the
catechism?" he asked. I replied: "I cannot teach the Bible and catechism,
for one contradicts the other. The gospel is to be believed and
obeyed and a Christian is a follower of Christ. The catechism in the
first lesson asks this question: What is your name? 'Bob, Tom or John.'
'When did you get that name?' 'In my baptism, when I was made a Christian.'
"Baptism never did make a Christian. Infants cannot be made Christians,
they cannot follow Christ, cannot believe or obey the Gospel. Jesus
said: 'Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven! Now if I teach my class that
the state of being a Christian is something they get without the exercise of
their will, I contradict what I have been teaching." The dear old man
walked up and down the aisle shaking his robes. I said: "A house
divided against itself cannot stand." You must have an Episcopalian
teacher to teach your doctrine." So I was shut out from teaching in the
only two churches in Richmond.
I could not be satisfied. I tried to get the Methodist church for a Mission
school in the afternoon, but failed. I got plank for seats and after
dinner on Lord's Day I had my hotel dining-room seated and gathered all
the little ones I could. These were largely children who went to no Sunday-
School. I got five Catholic children to attend. We had an attendance
of from thirty to forty. We bought an organ, had our charts and
maps. One poor saloon keeper named Frost came several times and always
gave a dollar. He was killed in the fight between the Jaybirds and
Peckerwoods in Richmond. This work was a blessing to my soul and I
have seen happy results from that little school. I kept this up until I
left there for Kansas. The last Sunday we all went to the graveyard to
study our lesson. I wished by this to impress the little ones with the
purpose of the Gospel.
I have had visions and dreams that I know were sent to me by my
Heavenly Father to warn or comfort or instruct me. I notice my dreams,
not all, but I can tell the significant ones, usually by the impression they
make on me. The dream that comes to me just before waking up generally
means something to me. To dream of snakes has always been a
bad omen to me. When I first started out smashing, while in Wichita
jail, I dreamed of two enormous snakes, one on one side of a road, the
other on the other; one raised to strike me, the other made no move. I
was impressed that the one that was the most venomous and in the attitude
of striking me with its fangs was the Republican party, and this
has been my deadly foe.
I will here relate a vision I had. One cold night in March, 1889, I
heard a groan across the hall. It was about three o'clock in the morning.
I found the sufferer to be an old gentleman who was having very severe
cramps, so I went down to the kitchen to make a mustard plaster. The
hotel was a number of frame buildings, one having twenty-one rooms, and
about five or six cottages around the main building. We carried no insurance,
and so many would say we had a "firetrap" there. We had a mortgage
on the place, and I was kept in terror constantly for fear of fire, and
would often spring out of bed at night in my sleep, expecting to see a fire.
I lit a candle, went down stairs through several dark halls. Then
I went upstairs again and gave the old man the plaster; afterwards returned
to the kitchen, thinking probably I left the candle burning. Things
were all dark, but when I started up the stairs, there seemed to be
a light shining behind me, which would come and go in flashes, as I
ascended. I looked everywhere to see where it came from, but discovered
it to be an unnatural manifestation, for I could not see to step nor
move by it. It followed me until I got to my room door. It did not alarm
me. I felt the sweet, peaceful presence of God, I prayed to him and I
could think of no reason for having this blessing from God, except that
I had gotten up in the cold to relieve this suffering man. I stood by my
bed for a short time praying to God, and thanking him for his goodness to
me. I thought Mr. Nation was asleep, but he afterwards told me that he
heard me whispering. I slept until late, and when I did go down to breakfast,
Mr. Nation and Alex, my son-in-law, were at the table. I told them
I had a warning last night, and if I had a Daniel or Joseph they could
interpret a vision I had. The peculiar vision of the light was repeated to
them, but they paid very little attention to it; being very busy I thought
no more of it that day.
Just about three o'clock the next morning, I was awakened by the cry
of fire. Charlien screamed from the next room: "Mamma, the town is on
fire." I ran out and the whole heavens seemed to be on fire. It had originated
in a drugstore and was sweeping towards the hotel. I immediately
ran upstairs and began to pray. I told God "There wasn't a dishonest dollar
so, far as I knew in the house, and that He told me "to call on Him in
a day of trouble," and said, "this is my day of trouble, and begged He
would hear me. Many of the guests passed by, some of them with baggage
in their hands and some still dressing. I prayed until I seemed to get
an answer of security. One lady, Mrs. Moore, the wife of a physician,
who had boarded with me a long time, had a very elegant set of furniture,
and she called to me several times to take my things out of the hotel. She
had two colored men moving her furniture I heard her say to several persons:
"That woman has lost her mind." All the boarders had their trunks
out and everyone was saying to me: "Why don't you try to save your
furniture?" I would take hold of some things to take out, but it seemed
something would intimate, "Let it be." I walked down the street and Mr.
Blakely, one of the men who was killed in the Jaybird and Peckerwood battle
in Richmond said: "Are you insured?"
I said: "Yes, up there," pointing to Heaven.
All fear was gone, and now in the time of almost certain danger I
was confident of deliverance, when before I had been nervous, in time when
all was secure. At last the cry came in: "You are saved." I went in the
hotel office, sat down by the stove and Alex, my son-in-law, was by me. I
said to him: "Oh, Alex, my vision!" He looked almost paralyzed, for
I had told him it was a warning and all the circumstances. From that
day to this I have never had any fear of fire.
ENTERTAINING ANGELS UNAWARES.
One noon I was busy with the guests and waiting on the tables, and
going to the kitchen I saw sitting on the wood-box a poor dejected looking
creature, a man about twenty-four years of age. He asked me if I had any
tinware to mend. I told him, "No, but you can have your dinner."
He said. "I don't want any." He looked the picture of dispair.
I said: "Don't go until I can speak to you."
When I had time I told him I wanted some one to wash dishes. He
consented to stay, and I felt at that time I must care for that poor creature
or he would die. He stayed with us three years and proved to be a
jewel. All the rest of my help was colored, and generally speaking, white
and colored help do not assimilate, but they all had profound respect for
Smith. He soon owned his horse and did the draying for the hotel. Then
he got to be a clerk, and bought pecans for the northern market. All his
family had died from consumption, and he was traveling for his health.
He left us for Pierce's Sanitarium, Buffalo, N. Y., and stayed there some
time for treatment. He ran a little booth by the Niagara Bridge, and soon
accumulated quite a little sum. He became a Christian and married. I
often got letters from him expressing so much gratitude. He was an
infidel when he first came, and he said it was my influence that made him
a Christian.
I often had the Orthodox Jews to stop with me. They ate nothing
that contained lard; their food was mackerel, eggs, bread and coffee. The
rates were two dollars a day, but I charged them only one dollar, and
allowed them to pay their bills with something that was in their "pack."
My other guests would often regard them with almost scorn, but when
they were at their meals I would wait on them myself, showing them this
preference, for I could not but respect their sacrifice for the sake of
their religion. I have always treated the Jews with great respect. Our
Savior was a Jew and said: "Salvation is of the Jews." They are a monument
to the truth of the Scriptures, a people without a country; and
though they are wanderers upon the face of the earth, they retain their
characteristics more than any other people have ever done. If an Italian,
German or Frenchman comes to America, in a hundred years he becomes
thoroughly an American, losing the peculiarities of his descent. But
wherever a Jew goes no matter how long he stays he remains a Jew.
This can be said of no other people on earth.
I know by experience that the Jews are tricksters, but they have
almost been forced into their cupidity in getting money, yet the greatest
promise of deliverance in the Bible is for that nation. The foundation
stones of heaven and the pearly gates are named for the twelve tribes. No
Christian should scorn a Jew.
One day I was driving down the street of Richmond in a buggy, and
Mr. Blakely the merchant I dealt so much with, and also a member of
the Methodist church, stopped me, saying that he had something to say
to me:
"Your friends are becoming very uneasy about the state of your mind.
You are thinking too much on religious subjects, and they asked me to
warn you." This gave me a blessed assurance, and I laughed very heartily,
saying:
"Your words are indeed a blessing to me, for if I have a religion
that the world understands, it is not a religion of the Bible."
I was naturally ambitious and was very fond of nice furniture, china
and dainty things, but I have lost all taste for these, and stopped making
fashionable calls, for I have seen the vanity and wickedness in fashionable
society and costly dressing. I educated myself to look at things as I
thought God would, and this change came about after that transaction
between my soul and God, at the Methodist church, which I know was the
"Baptism of the Holy Ghost;" but did not know then what it was. I had
been born in the Christian church, and was taught that only the Apostles
had received that gift. I never knew what to call this experience until
three years after when I went to Kansas, and had it explained to me by
the Free Methodists, and where God gave me a witness that it was true.