"Rainy Day Inkdrops," The Christian Recorder, Sept. 30, 1865, p. 2 · Freedmen's Bureau Project

Title

"Rainy Day Inkdrops," The Christian Recorder, Sept. 30, 1865, p. 2

Date

09-30-1865

Creator

Edmonia Highgate

Description

In this article in The Christian Recorder (the newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church), teacher Edmonia Highgate reflects on the gains made as a result of the war, and how they may be for naught if education is not pursued. She encourages the wives of black soldiers to dress well and keep a neat home, so that when their husbands return home they will not feel compelled to roam.

Source

Center for Research Libraries

Transcript

RAINY -DAY INK DROPS.

BY E. GOODELLE HIGHGATE.

A debit and credit side you will find all through nature and life. They do pay, - perhaps not the price we put upon them, but undoubtedly all they are worth. If man can't wring compensation out of snarled matters, God can.

Didn't it pay England, even though Charles the First was so bad, that she had to behead him, to have him for her king, when, if she had had a better man, the English people never would have got the degree of liberty which they now enjoy. Didn't it pay England, in 1216, to have the imbecile John for her monarch, for if a better man had ruled the British Isles, would they have obtained the Habeas Corpus Act, which was to the Magna Charta, as the marriage certificate is to the betrothal ring?
Didn't it pay to have McClellan, Scott, and Halleck make the war drag its slow length along when it gave us the assurance that four millions of our race are forever free, even though they have not yet the right of suffrage - the safeguard of liberty? Don't it pay to humble the South and secure something like a balance of power in this country, even at the cost of millions of dollars and streams of blood? Don't it pay to make soldiers of slaves - to teach chattels the sublime act of taking life scientifically, and the sublimer one of reading and writing. I tell you, it does.
But I am afraid it will appear not to pay, if the wives and daughters of our colored soldiers, who can't read, do not know as much as these blue-coated ones, when they come marching home. This inequality, which too often exists in the domestic circle, will be the ten percentage some families must pay, if our sisters, - fond women though they have been, - don't embrace every opportunity to be equal, in that respect, to their returned or returning soldiers husbands. It don't pay to get some one to write your letters in the long run. Our nice, trim, blue coat, who learned so much from some camp teacher or chaplain, won't be content to remain at home at nights, after the first flush of joy is over, unless his home is neat and attractive. Don't it pay to dress to please a pair of brown or black masculine eyes? Maybe a clean collar and a nicely combed head don't inspire the right sort of pride, but you will find they pay. Don't it pay to love prayerfully and steadily one who is almost entirely lost to you? I tell you a woman who grasps tight hold of the Saviour, and goes nobly, blamelessly, on her quiet way, can save a man, if he be a man. If not, she can inspire to noble deeds, mere masculine clay. It pays to love a bad, faithless husband, with a reforming love. It pays to bear and forbear with a good husband. Mothers, it pays to work your fingers off to educate that bright-eyed, high-browed boy or that sweet, thoughtful girl. It will pay when you are in the grave. It will pay you, teacher, to study the nature of that wayward pupil. It will always pay to be true to yourself and every body else.
There is no humbug about that "casting your bread upon the waters." You will gather it up some day , ten loaves for one. Bright smiles pay - they may be benedictions. Kind words pay, - "they never die." It pays to get a good article, if you have to pay more for it than a cheap one. It pays to trust God in the human or in the abstract. "Trust is truer than our fears," sings Whittier, and he has got the right tune. It pays to work off, mentally or physically, the blues. The rain has ceased to fall.
Louisville, Sept. 1st, 1865.