The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
to teach, and I attended the Normal Institute of Warrensburg. I was
not able to pay my board and Mr. Archie Gilkerson and wife charged me
nothing and were as kind to me as parents. God bless them! I got
a certificate and was given the primary room in the Public School at Holden.
Mother Gloyd kept house and took care of Charlien, my little girl,
and I made the living. This continued for four years. I lost my position
as teacher in that school this way: A Dr. Moore was a member of the
board, he criticised me for the way I had the little ones read; for instance,
in the sentence, "I saw a man," I had them use the short a instead of
the long a, and so with the article a; having them read it as we would
speak it naturally. He made this serious objection, and I lost my place
and Dr. Moore's niece got my room as teacher. This was a severe blow
to me, for I could not leave mother Gloyd and Charlien to teach in another
place, and I knew of no other way of making a living except by teaching.
I resolved then to get married. I made it a subject of prayer and went
to the Lord explaining things about this way. I said: "My Lord, you
see the situation I cannot take care of mother and Charlien. I want you to
help me. If it be best for me to marry, I will do so. I have no one picked
out, but I want you to select the one that you think best. I want to give
you my life, and I want by marrying to glorify and serve you, as well as
to take care of mother and Charlien and be a good wife." I have always
been a literalist. I find out that it is the only way to interpret the Bible.
When God says: "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him he
shall bring it to pass," I believe that to be the way to act. My faith does
not at all times grasp this or other promises, but there are times when
I can appropriate them and make them mine; there are times when I can
pray with faith, believing that I have the things I pray for, other times it
is not so.
In about ten days from that time I made this a subject of prayer, I
was walking down the street in Holden and passed a place where Mr.
Nation was standing, who had come up from Warrensburg, where he was
then editing the "Warrensburg Journal". He was standing in the door with
his back to me, but turned and spoke. There was a peculiar thrill which
passed through my heart which made me start. The next day I got
a letter from him, asking me to correspond with him. I was not surprised;
had been expecting something like it. I knew that this was in
answer to my prayer, and David Nation was to be the husband God
selected for me. He was nineteen years older than I, was very good looking,
and was a well-informed, successful lawyer, also a Christian
minister. My friends in Holden opposed this because of the difference
in our ages and of his large family. I gave him the loving confidence
of a true wife and he was often very kind to me. We were married
within six weeks from the time I got the letter from him. Mother
Gloyd went to live with us and continued to do so for fifteen years, until
she died. My married life with Mr. Nation was not a happy one. I
found out that he deceived me in so many things. I can remember the
first time I found this out. I felt like something was broken that could
never be mended. What a shattered thing is betrayed confidence!
Oh, husband, and wives, do not lie to each other, even though you should
do a vile act; confess to the truth of the matter! There will be some
trouble over it, but you can never lose your love for a truthful person. I
hated lying because I loved the truth. I hated dishonesty because I loved
honesty. I loved, therefore I hated. I love mankind therefore I hated
the enemies of mankind. I loved God and therefore hated the devil.
Truth is the pearl of great price. Whoso getteth it has all earth and
heaven.
I shall not in this book give to the public the details of my life as a
wife of David Nation any more than possible. He and I agreed in but
few things, and still we did not have the outbreaks many husbands and
wives have. The most serious trouble that ever rose between us was in
regard to Christianity. My whole Christian life was an offense unto him,
and I found out if I yielded to his ideas and views that I would be false
to every true motive. He saw that I resented this influence and it caused
him to be suspicious and jealous. I think my combative nature was largely
developed by living with him, for I had to fight for everything that I kept.
About two years after we were married, we exchanged our mutual properties
for seventeen hundred acres of land on the San Bernard River in
Texas, part of which was a cotton plantation. We knew nothing of the
cultivation of cotton or of plantation life. We took a car load of good
furniture with us and some fine stock, hogs and cattle. In packing up to
go to Texas there was a widow who assisted me. In paying her for her
services, I gave her some worthless things, because I was so avaricious.
I would not pay her money, but gave her the things I did not want to
carry with me. I remember I left about eight bushels of potatoes in the
cellar for her and the night we left they froze. I felt very much condemned
the way I treated this poor woman.
We were as helpless on the plantation as little children. The cultivation
of cotton was very different from anything we had been used to. A
bad neighbor threw all of our plows in the Bernard River and everything
seemed to go wrong. We had eight horses die in the pasture the spring
after we moved there. Soon the money we took with us was gone and
Mr. Nation got discouraged. He went to Brazoria, the county seat, and
stayed six weeks during court, for the purpose of entering the practice
of law again.
The cotton had been planted before he left. A neighbor named Martin
Hanks came over and told me not to allow the cotton to go to waste, said
he would lend me his plows, and advised me to get a colored man named
Edmond, who was his master's overseer in slave time, to manage this
crop for me. I hired five other negroes, paying them with things I had
in the house, for I had not a cent of money. The result was a fine crop of
cotton. Mr. Nation's daughter Lola, was then eleven years old, and
Charlien was three years younger. We lived six miles from a school, and
just at a time when the girls needed school most. I began to see what a
disastrous move we had made. I became very dispondant and sick at
heart. I was young and did not know then how to contend with
disappointments on every hand. At one time I was quite sick with chills
and fever. I had nothing in the house but meal, some fat bacon and sweet
potatoes. There was a poor old man that we took in for charity who
was with us, named Mr. Holt. I called him to my bedside and asked
him to go to the patch and dig a bushel of sweet potatoes and take them
to town and exchange them for a little tea, sugar, lemons and bread.
He failed in this and was returning when, he met a dear, sweet woman,
Mrs. Underwood, that I called my "Texas Mother." She called to Mr.
Holt, and asked him how I was. He told her I was sick and out of
anything to eat. She took the potatoes and sent the articles I wanted.
I believe I should have died had he returned without them, for I was
almost famished for food and sick besides.
I was in Columbia one day and stopped at the Old Columbia Hotel,
owned by the Messrs. Park, two bachelors. Mrs. Ballenger a widow was
renting it from Messrs. Park. I said to them: "If you ever need a tenant,
send for me." In a few months Mrs. Ballenger's daughter died and she
left. Mr. Park sent for me to come. We had a car load of good plain
furniture and bedding, some handsome tableware, but no money to buy
provisions.
Dear old mother Gloyd was a great help to me. She had once
kept hotel herself. I did not ask credit, and this is how I got the money
to begin keeping hotel: There was an Irish ditcher named Dunn whose
wife did my work. She was a good cook. I borrowed of Mr. Dunn three
dollars and fifty cents, and with this money began the hotel business. The
house was a rattle trap, plastering off, and a regular bed-bug nest.
I fumigated, pasted the walls over with cloth and newspapers, where the
plastering was off, and made curtains out of old sheets. My purchases
were about like this for the first day: Fifty cents worth of meat, coffee
ten cents, rice ten cents and sugar twenty-five cents, potatoes five, etc.
The transients at one meal would give me something to spend for the next.
I assisted about the cooking and helped in the dining-room. Mother Gloyd
and Lola attended to the chamber work, and little Charlien was the one
who did the buying for the house. I would often wash out my tablecloths
at night myself and iron them in the morning before breakfast. I would
take boarders' washing, hire a woman to wash, then do the ironing myself.
Columbia was a small village of not more than five hundred people. It was
the terminal of a railroad called the Columbia Tap. Mr. Painter, the
conductor, began boarding with us right off and in three or four days he
brought a family there to board by the name of Oastram, father, mother
and two boys, having come south to buy a plantation. Mrs. Oastrom handed
me a ten dollar bill. I called Lola and Charlien upstairs and showed
them the ten dollar bill. We were overjoyed; we danced, laughed, and
cried. Charlien said: "Now we can buy a whole ham." For several
months my little children and I ate nothing but broken food. I can never
put on paper the struggles of this life. I would not know one day how we
would get along the next.
The bitterest sorrows of my life have come from not having the
love of a husband. I must here say that I have had, at times, in the
society of those I love, a foretaste of what this could be. For years
I never saw a loving husband that I did not envy the wife; it was a
cry of my heart for love. I used to ask God why He denied me this.
I can see now why it was. I know it was God's will for me to marry
Mr. Nation. Had I married a man I could have loved, God could never
have used me. Phrenologists who have examined my head have said:
"How can you, who are such a lover of home be without one?" The very
thing that I was denied caused me to have a desire to secure it to others.
Payne who wrote "Home Sweet Home" never had one. There is in my
life a cause of sadness and bitter sorrow that God only knows. I shall not
write it here. Oh! how the heart will break almost for a loving word!
I believe the great want of the world is love. Jesus came to bring love to
earth.
During these severe afflictions I began to see how little there was in
life. I wondered at the gaiety of people. Seemed like a pall hung over the
earth. I would wonder that the birds sung, or the sun would shine. I
might say that for years this was my experience. I would go to God but
got very little relief; yet I never gave up. It was all the hope I could see
for me. About this time my little Charlien, who had been such a help to me,
began to go into a decline, until she was taken down with typhoid fever.
Her case was violent and she was delirious from the first. This my only
child was peculiar. She was the result of a drunken father and a distracted
mother. The curse of heredity is one of the most heart-breaking
results of the saloon. Poor little children are brought into the world,
cursed by disposition and disease, entailed on them. How can mothers be
true to their offspring with a constant dread of the nameless horrors wives
are exposed to by being drunkards' wives. Men will not raise domestic
animals under conditions where the mothers may bring forth weak or
deformed offspring. My precious child seemed to have taken a perfect
dislike to Christianity. This was a great grief to me, and I used to pray