Sight to the Blind by Lucy Furman
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Lucy Furman >> Sight to the Blind
SIGHT TO THE BLIND
A STORY
BY
LUCY FURMAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
IDA TARBELL
1914
TO HARRIET BUTLER
Contents
INTRODUCTION BY IDA M. TARBELL SIGHT TO THE BLIND AFTERWORD
The illustrations reproduced in the Introduction to this volume
have been selected from those in Miss Furman's "Mothering on
Perilous."
Introduction Ida M. Tarbell
Introduction
A more illuminating interpretation of the settlement idea than Miss
Furman's stories "Sight to the Blind" and "Mothering on Perilous"
does not exist. Spreading what one has learned of cheerful,
courageous, lawful living among those that need it has always been
recognized as part of a man's work in the world. It is an
obligation which has generally been discharged with more zeal than
humanity. To convert at the point of a sword is hateful business.
To convert by promises of rewards, present or future, is hardly
less hateful. And yet much of the altruistic work of the world has
been done by one or a union of these methods.
That to which we have converted men has not always been more
satisfactory than our way of going at it. It has often failed to
make radical changes in thought or conduct. Our reliance has been
on doctrines, conventions, the three R's. They are easily
sterile--almost sure to be if the teacher's spirit is one of
cock-sure pride in the superiority of his religion and his
cultivation.
The settlement in part at least is the outgrowth of a desire to
find a place in which certain new notions of enlightening men and
women could be freely tested and applied. The heart of the idea
lies in its name. The modern bearers of good tidings instead of
handing down principles and instructions at intervals from pulpit
or desk _settle_ among those who need them. They keep open house
the year around for all, and to all who will, give whatever they
have learned of the art of life. They are neighbors and comrades,
learners as well as teachers.
It would be hard to find on the globe a group of people who need
more this sort of democratic hand-to-hand contact than those Miss
Furman describes, or a group with whom it is a greater satisfaction
to establish it. Tucked away on the tops and slopes of the
mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee are thousands of
families, many of them descendants of the best of English stock.
Centuries of direful poverty combined with almost complete
isolation from the life of the world has not been able to take from
them their look of race, or corrupt their brave, loyal, proud
hearts. Encircled as they are by the richest and most highly
cultivated parts of this country, near as they are to us in blood,
we have done less for their enlightenment than for that of the
Orient, vastly less than we do for every new-come immigrant. On
the religious side all that they have had is the occasional
itinerant preacher, thundering at them of the wrath of God; and on
the cultural what Aunt Dalmanutha calls the "pindling" district
school. In the teachings of both is an over-weight of sternness
and superstition, little "plain human kindness," almost nothing
that points the way to decent, happy, healthy living.
The results are both grotesque and pitiful. Is it strange that the
feud should flourish in a land ruled by a "God of wrath?" Is
anything but sickness and death to be expected where both are
looked on as visitations of an angry God?
Among these victims of our neglect and our blundering methods of
teaching the settlement school has gone. It goes to stay. Not
three months, but twelve months its teaching goes on; not one
Sabbath in the month, but three hundred and sixty-five days in the
year it preaches. Literally it is a new world which the settlement
opens to the mountaineers, one ruled by cleanliness, thrift,
knowledge and good-will. The beauty of it is that living day after
day under this order they come to know that its principles are
practical truths; that they work out. To be told that the baby is
dying not because the Lord is angry with the family but because the
milk is impure may seem little better than impiety at first, but
save the baby by proper care and you have gone a long way to
proving that pure milk is God's law and that all the prayers in the
world will not change His ruling.
For distorted imaginings of the way the world is run the settlement
is giving to the mountaineers something of the harmony and beauty
of science.
New notions of heroism and honor are filtering into the country
along with the notions of sanitation and health. That injuries
can be honorably forgiven and forgotten is a hard doctrine to
swallow in Eastern Kentucky, but when you see it practiced by those
from the great world of which you have only dreamed it comes easier.
The contrast between the two ways of living--that in the settlement
and that in their mountain homes--is not long in doing its work.
Decent living even in great poverty is possible if you know how,
and the settlement shows what can be done with what you have. The
relation of their poverty and ill-health to their lack of knowledge
and their perpetual lawless warfare is quickly enough grasped by
the young, and means a new generation with vastly improved morals,
health, self-control.
What more fruitful and appealing world for work, particularly for
women, do these United States offer? If there is an idle or lonely
woman anywhere revolting against the dullness of life, wanting work
with the flavor and virility of pioneering in it, let her look to
these mountains. She 'll find it. And what material to work with
will come under her hands! "I often ask myself," says the heroine
of "Mothering on Perilous," one of Miss Furman stories of the
settlement school, "What other boys have such gifts to bring to
their nation? Proud, self-reliant, the sons of heroes, bred in
brave traditions, knowing nothing of the debasing greed for money,
strengthened by a hand-to-hand struggle with nature from their very
infancy (I have not known of one who did not begin at five or six
to shoulder family responsibilities such as hoeing corn, tending
stock, clearing new ground, grubbing, hunting, gathering the crops)
they should bring to their country primal energy of body and
spirit, unquenchable valor, and minds untainted by the lust of
wealth."
IDA M. TARBELL
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."
Here Marthy again covered her face with her hands, and Mrs. Chilton
took up the tale:
"I can see her now, up thar on the hill-shoulder, betwixt you and
John on the front log, by Evy's grave-house, and Uncle Joshuay
a-hollering and weeping and denouncing like he does, and her setting
through it like a rock. Then finally Uncle Joshuay he thundered at
her the third time, 'Hain't it the truth, Sister Dalmanuthy, that
the judgment and the curse of God has fell on you for your
rebelliousness, like I prophesied, and that you hain't able to see
John thar or Marthy thar or the hand thar before your face thar?'
when Aunt Dalmanuthy riz up sudden, and clinched her hands, and says
slow and fierce: 'Man, it _is_ the truth you speak. The curse _has_
fell; and I hain't able to see John here or Marthy here or the hand
here before my face here. But listen what I got to say about it.
I'm able to hate and to curse as good as God. And I do! I hate and
curse the Hand that, after taking all else I loved, snatched from my
bosom the one little yoe lamb I treasured thar; I hate and curse Him
that expected me to set down tame and quiet under such cruelty and
onjestice; I hate and curse and defy the Power that hated and spited
me enough, atter darkening the light of my life, to put out the
sight of my eyes! Now,' she says, 'you lay claim to being mighty
familiar with the Lord; take that message to Him!' she says.
"Women, that whole funeral meeting kotch its breath at them awful
words, and sot there rooted and grounded; and she turnt and looked
around defiant-like with them sightless eyes, and strode off down
the hill, John and Marthy follering."
[Illustration: "Aunt Dalmanuthy riz up sudden, and clinched her
hands"]
After a somewhat protracted silence, Marthy's gentle voice resumed:
"And from that day to this John and me hain't left her sence. We
shet up our house and moved down to hern; and she tuck to setting by
the fire or out on the porch, allus a-knitting, and seldom speaking
a word in all them years about Evy or her sorrow or her curse. When
my first little gal come along, I named it Evy, thinking to give her
some easement or pleasure; but small notice has she ever showed.
'Pears like my young uns don't do much but bother her, her hearing
and scent being so powerful' keen. I have allus allowed if she
could git her feelings turnt loose one time, and bile over good and
strong, it might benefit her; but thar she sets, day in, day out,
proud and restless, a-bottling it all up inside."
"She biles over a right smart on you, Marthy, I should say,"
remarked the hostess.
"No, now, Susan, she don't, neither, considering her provocations.
She were the smartest, most managing woman in these parts, and I
never did have no faculty, and don't run her house like I ought; and
John is a puny man and not able to do all her bidding; and the young
uns they gits terrible noisy and feisty at times, all but Evy."
"The women" rode with Marthy a mile farther, stopping before a
lonely log-house, with corn-fields climbing to meet the timber
half-way up the mountain in the rear. Marthy ushered her guests
into the porch with the words, "Here 's the fotch-on women, Maw."
The tall, gaunt, forbidding-looking old woman sitting there turned
sightless eyes toward them, putting forth a strong hand.
"Howdy, women," she said grimly. "Git cheers for 'em, Evy."
They seated themselves, and Aunt Dalmanutha resumed her knitting,
swiftly and fiercely, all the pent-up force of a strong nature
thrown into the simple act. Instead of the repose that
characterizes the faces of the blind, her eaglelike countenance bore
the marks of fretful, sullen, caged, almost savage energy.
"Go quick and take a look that 'ere pot of beans, Marthy," she
ordered. "Evy declar's they hain't scorching, but my nose informs
me different'. Take the women's bonnets, Evy, and lay 'em on my
'stead; and round up all the young uns back in the corn-crib, so 's
I can git the benefit of the talk. Now, women," she continued
peremptorily, "I been hearing a whole passel about your doings and
goings and comings these four or five year' gone, and I 'm right
smart curious to know what it 's all about. What air you in these
parts for, anyhow, and how come you to come?"
"We are here," began Miss Shippen, quietly, "first and foremost
because we want to educate the children who have never had the
chance they deserve--"
"That 's so; they hain't, more shame to the State," interrupted Aunt
Dalmanutha. "Take me, now; I were raised forty-five mile' from a
school-house or church-house, and never had no chance to l'arn 'a'
from 'izard.' And these few pindling present-day district-schools
scattered here and yan they only spiles the young uns for work, and
hain't no improvement on nothing."
"Next," proceeded the trained nurse, "we want to be friendly and
helpful to the grown-up people who need it, especially to the sick
and suffering."
"I heared of the nursing you done in these parts in the typhoid last
summer," said Aunt Dalmanutha, "and certainly it sounded good. But,
women, one more question I crave to put to you. Do you mix in
religion and preachifying as you go along?"
"We do not preach at all," replied Miss Shippen; "we let our deeds
speak for us."
Aunt Dalmanutha extended a swift hand. "I am proud to make your
acquaintance then," she said. "I have had my 'nough of religion and
preachifying, but of plain human friendliness not, because there is
little of it on the ramble."
"My special work," continued the trained nurse, "is of course with
the sick, nursing and teaching how to nurse, and how to prevent as
well as to cure illness, and sending cases I cannot help down to the
level country for proper treatment. I see, Aunt Dalmanutha, that
you are blind. Have you any objection to letting me take a close
look at your eyes?"
"Look all you want," was the grim reply; "I am used to being a'
object and a spectacle."
The nurse took from her satchel a glass with which she carefully
examined the dulled and lifeless eyes, sitting down afterward
without a word.
"And not only a' object and a spectacle," continued Aunt Dalmanutha,
bitterly, "but a laughing-stock and a byword for the preachers in
especial to mock and flout at. Yes, I that were once the workingest
and most capablest woman up and down Clinch; I that not only could
weave my fourteen yard', or hoe my acre of corn, or clear my man's
stint of new ground, a day, but likewise had such faculty in my
head-piece that I were able to manage and contrive and bring to
pass; I that rejoiced in the work of my hands and the pyeertness of
my mind and the fruits of my industry, and when my man died were
able to run the farm and take keer of the children as good as
before--I am sot down here in the midst of rack and ruin, with the
roof a-leaking over me, the chimbly sagging out, the fence rotten
and the hogs in the corn, the property eatin' their heads off, and
the young uns lacking warm coats and kivers, John and Marthy being
so mortal doless; I am sot here bound hand and foot, my strength
brought to naught, my ambition squenched, my faculty onusable, a
living monument to the hate and revenge and onjestice of God!" She
spoke with growing passion, but checked herself, and began more
calmly.
"And if it were just, Dalmanuthy Holt would be the last to speak
ag'in' it. I allus prided myself on being a reasoning woman. But
just it is not, and never were, and never will be. I have seed a
sight of trouble in my day, women, and bore up under it patient and
courageous. Besides the man of my love, and the payrents that begot
me, seven sons of my body have I laid in the grave, three in infancy
of summer-complaint, two with the choking-disease, two with typhoid;
and in all this I never once lifted up my voice ag'in' God, but bore
it still and patient, even when I were reduced down to just John, my
sorriest son, and little Evy, my onliest daughter and the child of
my prayer. But, women,"--and again strong passion thrilled in her
voice,--"when I seed that one little tender yoe lamb that I
cherished with deathless love begin for to pale and cough and pine,
then and thar the sword entered my soul, my heart turnt over in my
breast, and I cried out wild and desperate: 'Not this! not this!
Take all else I got, but not her! It is cruel, it is onjust. I
rebel ag'in' it, I will never endure it.' And I kep' a-crying it as
I seed her fade and thin; I cried it when the last breath flickered
from her pore little body; I cried it when I laid her in the cold
ground; I cried it when the preachers come to see me atterward,
threatening judgment; I cried it when I felt the curse a-falling and
the sight of my-eyes a-going; I cried it loud and fierce at her
funeral occasion; and cry it I will to the end of my darkened days!
It were cruel, it were onjust, it were horrible, it were wicked, of
God to treat me that way, and never will I say it wa' n't!"
Miss Shippen waited a full minute before answering quietly and
slowly: "It was cruel, it was unjust, it was horrible, it was
wicked, that you should have been made to suffer so; above all, Aunt
Dalmanutha, it was unnecessary. With a little knowledge, and proper
food and fresh air, your daughter's life could have been saved; with
knowledge and proper treatment your sons need not have died of
dysentery or typhoid or even diphtheria; with knowledge your
blindness itself, which is no curse, but would as surely have come
upon you had you never lost Evy and never rebelled in your heart,
need have lasted only a few months. For these are cataracts that
you have on your eyes, and nothing would have been simpler and
easier than their removal."
Amazement, incredulity, almost horror were written upon Aunt
Dalmanutha's countenance as she heard these quiet words.
"Where do you get your authority over preachers, woman?" she
demanded, leaning fiercely forward,
"I get my authority," replied the trained nurse, firmly, "from my
knowledge of modern medicine and surgery; I get my authority from
things seen with my eyes and heard with my ears during days and
nights of duty on the battle-line between life and death; I get my
authority," she continued more solemnly, "from Him whose spirit of
freedom and tolerance has made possible the advances in modern
science; who is the source of the rising tide of helpfulness
manifest in human hearts everywhere; who, when he was on earth, went
about doing good, and proclaiming not the hate, the vengeance, the
cruelty of God, but His mercy, His kindness, His pity, His fatherly
love."
The blind woman sat as though turned to stone, except that the veins
in her neck and temples throbbed violently.
"Do you mean to tell me God never wanted to take my loved ones from
me?" she asked at length from a dry throat.
"I do. I mean that their deaths, so far from being the will of God,
were the fruit alone of ignorance and of evil conditions."
"You mean to say that the hand of vengeance wa' n't never lifted
ag'in' me, and I hain't never sot under no curse?"
"I do."
"And that the preachers has lied to me?" she said through clenched
jaws.
"They were simply mistaken; they knew no better."
Aunt Dalmanutha lifted a shaking arm. "Woe to them if ever they
cross my path ag'in!" she cried hoarsely.
"Don't think about them," said the nurse; "the thing for you to do
at once is to go down to Lexington, in the Blue Grass country, to a
doctor I know there who does great things for eyes, and who, if it
is not too late, will remove those cataracts and restore you to
sight and usefulness and strength, as God intends. I will write at
once to the hospital, and make the arrangements; you should start
within a week. The trip," she added, "need cost you nothing, if you
are unable to pay your way."
Aunt Dalmanutha drew herself up proudly.
"I hain't a' object of charity," she said. "If I go, I 'll pay my
way. I got something laid by still from my weaving days. But it
has come on me too sudden'; I feel all lost; I will have to study a
heap before, I can make up my mind." She moved her hands about
before her in a dazed, helpless way.
During the rest of the visit she was silent and distraught. Twice
at dinner her shaking hands knocked over her coffee-cup, and once
the sorghum-pitcher, little fair-haired Evy cleaning up quietly
after her granny, and placing things to her hand so deftly and
furtively that she did not know it was done at all, while on her
other side sat Marthy, ever kind, solicitous, and patient, and at
the far end of the table John vied with her in unobtrusive but
loving attentions to "maw." Never had "the women" seen an elderly
or afflicted person more tenderly and devotedly cared for. But the
object of it all sat rigid, self-absorbed, frowning, as oblivious to
the light and warmth of love as to the light of day, her sole
remarks being contemptuous apologies for Marthy's cooking, and
complaints of the hardship of having to "gum it," or eat without
teeth.
One week later there was a call from the road in front of the school
hospital, and Miss Shippen was pleased and relieved to see Aunt
Dalmanutha mounted on a nag behind John. In her black calico
sunbonnet and dress, and long, drab apron, with her hand tightly
clutched to John's arm, and dark apprehension written upon her blind
face, she was indeed a pitiable sight.
"I have pondered your words," she said to Miss Shippen, "and have
made up my mind to foller them. With naught but them to swing out
on, I am setting forth into the unknown. I that hain't never so
much as rid in a wagon, am about to dare the perils of the railroad;
that hain't been twenty mile' from home in all my days, am
journeying into a far and absent country, from which the liabilities
are I won't never return. Far'well, if far'well it be!"
On the last day of October, Miss Shippen had just dismissed her
seventh-grade class in home-nursing, and was standing in the
hospital porch drinking in the unspeakable autumnal glory of the
mountains, when a wagon, rumbling and groaning along the road and
filled with people, stopped with a lurch at the gate. Advancing,
the nurse was at first puzzled as to the identity of the people;
then she recognized the faces of John and Marthy Holt and of little
Evy. But for several seconds she gazed without recognition at the
striking figure on the front seat beside John. This figure wore a
remarkable hat, bristling with red, yellow, and green flowers, and a
plaid silk waist in which every color of the rainbow fought with
every other. Her bright and piercing dark eyes traveled hungrily
and searchingly over the countenance of the trained nurse; her lips
opened gradually over teeth of dazzling whiteness and newness.
Then, leaning swiftly from the wagon, she gathered the nurse into a
powerful, bear-like hug, exclaiming, with solemn joy:
"You air the woman! I know you by your favorance to your talk. I
allowed you would look that fair and tender. Here air the woman,
John and Marthy, that restored unto me my sight, and brung me up out
of the Valley of the Shadow. She tolt me what to do, and I follered
it, and, lo! the meracle was performed; wonderful things was done
unto me!" Here Aunt Dalmanutha--for it was she--supplemented the
embrace with kisses rained upon the head and brow of the trained
nurse.
Extricating herself at last from the strong arms in which she was
lifted from the ground and rocked powerfully back and forth, Miss
Shippen was able to look once more into the face she had failed to
recognize, and from which at least a score of years were now erased.