Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary | Page 7

these was Mr. J. H. Smith, who became her warm friend and
counsellor.
As the mission developed, a shop under the church at the side of
Wishart Pend was taken and the meetings transferred to it, she having
charge of classes for boys and girls both on Sundays and week-nights.
Open-air work was at that time dangerous, but she and a few others
attempted it: they were opposed by roughs and pelted with mud. There
was one gang that was resolved to break up the mission with which she
had come to be identified. One night they closed in about her on the
street. The leader carried a leaden weight at the end of a piece of cord,
and swung it threateningly round her head. She stood her ground.
Nearer and nearer the missile came. It shaved her brow. She never
winced. The weight crashed to the ground. "She's game, boys," he
exclaimed. To show their appreciation of her spirit they went in a body
to the meeting. There her bright eyes, her sympathy, and her firmness
shaped them into order and attention....
On the wall of one of her bush houses in West Africa there used to
hang a photograph of a man and his wife and family. The man was the
lad who had swung the lead. On attaining a good position he had sent
her the photograph in grateful remembrance of what had been the
turning-point in his life....
Another lad, a bully, used to stand outside the hall with a whip in hand
driving the young fellows into "Mary Slessor's meeting," but refusing
to go in himself. One day the girl weaver faced him. "If we changed
places what would happen?" she asked, and he replied, "I would get
this whip across my back." She turned her back. "I'll bear it for you if
you'll go in," she said. "Would you really bear that for me?" "Yes, and
far more--go on, I mean it." He threw down the whip and followed her
in, and gave himself the same day to Christ. Even then she was

unconventional in her methods and was criticised for it. She had a
passion for the countryside, and often on Saturday afternoons she
would take her class of lads away out to the green fields, regardless of
social canons.
By and by a new field of work was opened up when a number of
progressive minds in the city formed Victoria Street United
Presbyterian congregation, not far from her familiar haunts. In
connection with the movement a mission service for the young was
started on Sunday mornings under the presidency of Mr. James Logic,
of Tay Square Church, and to him Mary offered her services as a
monitor. Mr. Logie soon noticed the capacity of the young assistant and
won her confidence and regard. Like most people she was unconscious
at the moment of the unseen forces moulding her life, but she came in
after days to realise the wise ordering of this friendship. Mr. Logie
became interested in her work and ideals, and sought to promote her
interests in every way. She came to trust Mm implicitly--"He is the best
earthly friend I have," she wrote-and he guided her thenceforward in all
her money affairs.
She was as successful with the lads at this service as she had been
elsewhere. Before the meeting she would flit through the dark passages
in the tenements and knock, and rouse them up from sleep, and plead
with them to turn out to it. Her influence over them was extraordinary,
They adored her and gave her shy allegiance, and the result was seen in
changed habits and transformed lives. It was the same in the houses she
visited. She went there not as one who was superior to the inmates, but
as one of themselves. In the most natural way she would sit down by
the fire and nurse a child, or take a cup of tea at the table. Her
sympathy, her delicate tact, her cheery counsel won many a woman's
heart and braced her for higher endeavour. It was the same in the
factory; her influence told on the workers about her; some she
strengthened, others she won over to Christ, and these created an
atmosphere which was felt throughout the building.
And yet what was she? Only a working girl, plain in appearance and in
dress, diffident and self-effacing. "But," says one whom she used to
take down as a boy to the mission and place beside her as she taught,
"she possessed something we could not grasp, something indefinable."
It was the glow of the spirit of Christ which lit up her inner life and

shone in her face, and which, unknown even to herself, was then and
afterwards the source of her