A COURAGEOUS WOMAN

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 18, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 12

A COURAGEOUS WOMAN.

Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher, in an article on “True Courage,” in the Christian Union, relates the following incident:—

We have been led into this train of thought by an account of the courage and self-possession of a lady in New Orleans under circumstances of the most startling character, when a moment’s wavering or weakness manifested would have cost her her life. She was a woman of wealth, with rich surroundings and costly adornments. She was that evening alone, with only one servant in the house; and laying aside some articles of jewelry and replacing them in their appropriate cases in her bureau, she chanced to raise her eyes to a mirror opposite. From a night-lamp standing on a table in the opposite corner she caught in the mirror a reflection of the figure of a man curled up under a center-table, but hidden from all sight save what was gained by the reflection cast in the mirror from the lamp, on the floor. In this way she saw one of the hands resting on the floor. This hand lacked two fingers, and she at once suspected that close by her was a most notorious character, whose crimes and depredations had been the terror of the neighborhood. Suppose she had screamed or made a hurried effort to reach the door! That would have sealed her fate. But forcing herself to be calm, she finished what she was doing at her bureau, and then quietly stepping to the bell, rang for the one servant then in the house.

When the girl appeared she said, “Jane, I wish you would step to Mr. —— (naming a jeweler in the neighborhood), and tell him I wish he would send me back immediately the diamonds he has been resetting. They are the most valuable of all I have, and I feel uneasy to have them out of the house and not under my own care another night. Tell him to send them to-night, even if not done. Wait, I’ll write him a note.”

So this brave lady seated herself with apparently the greatest composure by the very table where the ruffian was concealed, and wrote. We can readily imagine that she wrote not for her diamonds, but for help. The girl took the note, and alone, absolutely alone in the house, save with the fearful object concealed under the table, this lady waited. To avoid awakening the least suspicion she busied herself in putting various articles away in different parts of the room, even humming a tune or little snatches from some opera. We can well imagine that she dared not sing lest her voice should betray her. How fearful must have been that waiting! How full of joy and safety the sound of the bell when the girl returned! But she came not alone. Her friend promptly answered her appeal for help, and bringing with him the police, the man was captured before he had a moment’s time to defend himself.

This story speaks for itself, and more forcibly than anything we could say, teaches the importance of cultivating courage, governed and held firmly by self-control, or presence of mind.