They would say, 'You are sent by our holy mother,
Mary, to help us;' and do not think me hard-hearted when I tell you
that I often said to them, 'Loose your hold of my feet; I did not
come to deliver you from your husbands, but to show you how to be so
good that you can be happy with them.' Weeping, they would say,
'Have mercy on us; if not, we must kill ourselves.' I had no fear of
their doing that, so I would seat them at my side, and tell them of
my own dear father,--how good he was; but he was always _obeyed_.
They would say, 'We could obey a good man.' 'But I am very sure you
would not have been willing to obey my father.'
"It is one thing to pray for our degraded sisters while in America,
but quite another to raise them from their low estate. When I saw
their true character, I found that I needed a purer, holier love for
them than I had ever possessed. It was good for me to see that
_I_ could do nothing, and it was comforting to think that Jesus
had talked with just such females as composed the mass around me,
and that afterwards many believed because of one such woman."
Sometimes the revilings of the women were almost equalled by similar
talk among the men, as in a village of Gawar, where they said, "We
would not receive a priest or deacon here who could not swear well,
and lie too.
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