TWO GIRLS' PLEDGES

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 10, 1881

TWO GIRLS' PLEDGES.

"SEE here, Ruthie Ringgold, I've signed the pledge!"

The girl of twelve years who answered to that name in the village of Ottercreek halted and looked back at her playmate's call, and said, as the other overtook her, panting:—

"Pshaw, Lilla Brown, you don't say so! I hope you'll be strictly temperate now."

"I hope to be strictly total abstinent."

"Were you ever anything less, I'd like to know? What does it amount to for one to sign the pledge who never drinks anything stronger than water, or a swallow of tea, or coffee sometimes?" The girls were walking on in the old byway together.

There was a peculiar light in Lilla's eyes as she said, "The lecturer told the audience last evening, you recollect, that all temperance people ought to put down their names by way of example."

"But my father says that is all nonsense," Ruth interrupted. "Because, you see, it's no self-denial to pledge themselves not to drink, when they haven't any love of drinking. My father says he would make no such sacrifice as Mr. Wright, for instance, makes in signing; so there's no comparison and no example in it."

"Then the lecturer was correct in saying it is often more difficult to obtain the names of temperate men to the pledge than the names of drunkards. But now, Ruthie," Lilla continued, "the pledge I meant isn't that kind at all. Let us sit down on this bank in the shade, and I will show you my secret pledge that I wrote for myself, and that nobody is to sign with me. Maybe you will see what need there was. Maybe you'll admit it costs self-denial. Maybe a good many people wouldn't do a bad thing to get up for themselves such a sort of a pledge."

"Oh, dear, how serious you grow! I am afraid you're pledged to become a nun, and want me to be another."

"No nun, Ruthie; here, read; you see it is very short."

"Rose Cottage, June 1, 1880.

"I, Lilla Brown, do herewith make my pledge not to have any discontents for one month from date—asking our Father to help me keep this resolution."

"There is only one s in resolution," returned the reader, in gentle criticism.

"That's true; I saw my mistake before you mentioned it. The wording gave me so much trouble that I forgot to attend to the spelling."

"Discontents," repeated Ruth, and raised her eyes from the slip of paper inquiringly.

"That was where I was puzzled," Lilla replied. "First I wrote it fidgets, for that's what grandma says ails me; but mamma calls me nervous. I don't like that word any better. I put it discontents, and I know 'most too well what I mean by it. Drinking men are apt to get worse and worse, and it's the same with all bad habits, isn't it?"

"I s'pect so," said Ruth in a low tone, while twisting her sash end. "But what was it made you do this?"

"Well, the temperance folks last night, you know, got some of the worst drinking men of the village to attend the meeting, and finally to sign the pledge. Brother Ed did not go with the rest of us, because he had his Latin lesson to study; but at the close of the lecture, just when two or three that most needed to went up to the desk, one after another, and put their names to the pledge, and each time there was great cheering all over the hall, he came in and took a seat with me, and began to clap with all his might, seeing Jimmy Wright with his bloated red face stooping over the book with the pen in his hand, trying to steady his nerves enough so he could write his name. It was real exciting, and I whispered, 'Ed, why does anybody wait to be persuaded? why don't they rush and sign, when it will make men of them? If I was a drunkard, I'd rush!' Ed looked down on me and answered, 'Humph!' He sat back then, put his thumb in the armhole of his vest and added, 'Better try it on with something you're ad-dict-ed to.' Ed always uses his biggest words on me.

"He meant only just what he said—no more—but I felt my face grow hot, for I knew of a fault I was addicted to that made us all uncomfortable pretty often. It was in my mind as we went home, and after I was in bed, and as soon as I waked this morning. And this is what has come of it. But I'm not going to tell any one else at present."

"Your pledge is to last only a month," criticised Ruthie again. "Anybody could keep any kind of a pledge one month."

"That's what I hope," Lilla replied. "Why I put it so, was because I have meant, over and over, to quit acting out my discontents—to quit it for ever and always, and I didn't do it. I had got almost discouraged. This time it came to my mind to try it as a man might make a journey on foot, a step at a time, or as a pendulum marks off the seconds one by one, through the whole twenty-four hours. We have heard of things being done in that way that were too discouraging if undertaken in a lump. When the month is out I will pledge myself for another, and so on."

"Have you a pencil and some more paper with you?" Ruth asked, looking away thoughtfully while smoothing out her sash. "I might take a pledge. What fault of mine do you think I shall put down?"

"You are not fussy and fidgety, like me," was the negative guess, as the other fished from her pocket and passed over to her friend a scrap of paper and a bit of pencil.

Using a flat stone by her side for writing table, Ruth traced the following, and handed it to Lilla, who read aloud:—

"If God will help me, Ruthie Ringgold, I will not ridicule any person's peculiarities for one month."

Lilla glanced around quickly and saw, to her surprise, two great tears fall from Ruthie's blue eyes.

"But you're such a born mimic," said her friend, excusingly, "and so full of fun. Really, I don't believe ever any one thought hard of you."

"I have hurt people's feelings more than once," Ruth confessed, "so it cannot be innocent fun. We know in the fable the frogs said to the boys who threw stones at them, 'It may be sport for you, but it is death for us.' Now, if any boys I know practiced such cruel sport, they could not have me for a friend. But I am afraid I've often been crueler than that, because it was done to people, you know, and not frogs. Last winter when I was visiting at Aunt Fanny's, a neighbor called one day whose face was almost covered with reddish-purple spots—it was a mark, they said. He was hardly out of the house when I had my face painted with huckleberry juice to imitate his, and ran round from the kitchen to the front door, and rang, and when Aunt Fanny opened it I imitated the young man's speech, too—he stammered very much—and bade her good-morning. Instead of being amused she was sadly grieved. She quoted, 'Who makes thee to differ?' It's in the Bible, or words like these. I felt inclined to be vexed that I could not be allowed my fun, till she told me the young man's mother, now dead, had been her best friend, and that there was a sad story connected with his misfortunes which she would tell me when I got older.

"And last evening, Lilla, though you may not have noticed it, I left the hall making fun of Mrs. Tilson—saying she was as crooked as a rainbow, and, at least, a hundred and fifty years old, I did believe. I didn't remember at the moment the terribly hard lot she has had with her husband and two sons—all now in drunkards' graves. She came out just before us, and I supposed she had gone on; instead of that she had stepped aside in the entrance-way to wait for some one, as I saw too late. The poor woman must have heard me, and what will she think? I was ever so 'shamed, and yet I should be sure to do the same thing again, if I hadn't taken the pledge."

There was a pause. Then Ruth resumed:—

"You said maybe such a pledge might not be a bad thing for a good many people to take. I have taken mine. There is Dora Jones told a lie to the teacher, and when the teacher went to her mother about it Mrs. Jones said Dora told lies constantly, and she did not know what to do with the child. Do you think Dora is too young to take a pledge like ours?"

"And there is Miss Blossom," said Lilla, "who has been making a lot of mischief by telling all around that somebody said something about wanting to get rid of the minister—she better get rid of tale-bearing; and only a short time ago it was the same thing about another story she had told. She's what brother Ed would call addicted to that. Do you think Miss Blossom is too old to sign a pledge like ours?"

"Perhaps we had best practice ours before we think about a pledge for others."

"I think we had."