The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 362 pages of information about The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation.

The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 362 pages of information about The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation.

I will here relate a vision I had.  One cold night in March, 1889, I heard a groan across the hall.  It was about three o’clock in the morning.  I found the sufferer to be an old gentleman who was having very severe cramps, so I went down to the kitchen to make a mustard plaster.  The hotel was a number of frame buildings, one having twenty-one rooms, and about five or six cottages around the main building.  We carried no insurance, and so many would say we had a “firetrap” there.  We had a mortgage on the place, and I was kept in terror constantly for fear of fire, and would often spring out of bed at night in my sleep, expecting to see a fire.

I lit a candle, went down stairs through several dark halls.  Then I went upstairs again and gave the old man the plaster; afterwards returned to the kitchen, thinking probably I left the candle burning.  Things were all dark, but when I started up the stairs, there seemed to be a light shining behind me, which would come and go in flashes, as I ascended.  I looked everywhere to see where it came from, but discovered it to be an unnatural manifestation, for I could not see to step nor move by it.  It followed me until I got to my room door.  It did not alarm me.  I felt the sweet, peaceful presence of God, I prayed to him and I could think of no reason for having this blessing from God, except that I had gotten up in the cold to relieve this suffering man.  I stood by my bed for a short time praying to God, and thanking him for his goodness to me.  I thought Mr. Nation was asleep, but he afterwards told me that he heard me whispering.  I slept until late, and when I did go down to breakfast, Mr. Nation and Alex, my son-in-law, were at the table.  I told them I had a warning last night, and if I had a Daniel or Joseph they could interpret a vision I had.  The peculiar vision of the light was repeated to them, but they paid very little attention to it; being very busy I thought no more of it that day.

Just about three o’clock the next morning, I was awakened by the cry of fire.  Charlien screamed from the next room:  “Mamma, the town is on fire.”  I ran out and the whole heavens seemed to be on fire.  It had originated in a drugstore and was sweeping towards the hotel.  I immediately ran upstairs and began to pray.  I told God “There wasn’t a dishonest dollar so, far as I knew in the house, and that He told me “to call on Him in a day of trouble,” and said, “this is my day of trouble, and begged He would hear me.  Many of the guests passed by, some of them with baggage in their hands and some still dressing.  I prayed until I seemed to get an answer of security.  One lady, Mrs. Moore, the wife of a physician, who had boarded with me a long time, had a very elegant set of furniture, and she called to me several times to take my things out of the hotel.  She had two colored men moving her furniture I heard her say to several persons:  “That woman has lost her mind.”  All the boarders had their trunks out and everyone was saying to me:  “Why don’t you try to save your furniture?” I would take hold of some things to take out, but it seemed something would intimate, “Let it be.”  I walked down the street and Mr. Blakely, one of the men who was killed in the Jaybird and Peckerwood battle in Richmond said:  “Are you insured?”

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The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.