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Memories of a Long Life                                            11

Chapter Four

 

SOME RELIGIOUS RECOLLECTIONS

 

            When I felt that my sins had been all forgiven in my Saviour’s blood, I felt that I wanted to go to tell the poor heathen of God who so loved the world.  I soon found that I did not have the education, and it would cost more than my parents could afford.  Some of the wealthiest and best of the Pittsboro people talked together.  They felt like I would do good work if I could, and several of  the people purposed to pay my expenses.  My mother was in Pittsboro.  Mr. J. J. Jackson’s wife called her in and told her if she could dress me (they all wore uniform in those days) they would help me.  My mother was surprised, and came home and told me.  Well, I did not go about to tell it, nor did any of my people from home, but the news got out “Lucy Gean’s going to college.”  I had some kin that had been envious of me.  I was just in my teens but I had learned to work, and I was not afraid nor ashamed to be seen cooking, washing, milking, or chopping.  There was a young man who lived in the neighborhood going around talking about what the women had made in gardens, so he came to our house and asked my mother how much she made in her garden.  I remember she told him she had 18 bushels of Irish potatoes.  He said, with a kind of slur, “You don’t mean 18 bushels.”  She said, “If you don’t believe it you had better go measure them.”  After awhile he asked for a drink of water, and mother told me to go bring him a drink.  I went and brought it (we used gourds in those days).  He said, with a slur, “Well, Lucy, I hear you are going to college; do you think you could get a diploma there? Ha, ha!”  It stung me.  I said, “Yes, sir, I thank you.  I already have two.”  “Who gave them to you?”  “My mother gave me one in the cook pot and my daddy gave me one in the cornfield.”  Mother spoke to me about snapping him up so, but if I was no more than a child I had had some raising. My mother had always told me to speak polite to everybody, but my temper sometimes is like a match, just strike it, if you don’t hear the pop you can see a blaze.  I know I was trained, or was tried to be, to use politeness, but with my pride and temper it is not for me to take a slur, or was not in those days.  For the last few years I have been praying that I would not say anything in a short or crabbed voice, but to speak in a gentle and kind tone.  I have found it best, and am praying every day, not only every day but every hour, and yet sometimes I find it hard to be under a guard so true.

 

            The North Carolina Annual M. E. Conference was held in Pittsboro.  I was but a child. I know it was the last ever held there for it