Mark 6:30-31 And the apostles gathered themselves together to Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught.… A well-known visitor among the poor found living in a notorious court a woman who was known as "the Buttonhole Queen," who often gave work away, poor though she was, to those poorer than herself. Reserved as she appeared to be, she was at last induced to tell her story, which accounted for the interest she took in the poor girls around her; and poor they were, for fancy the misery of making 2,880 buttonholes in order to earn 10s., and having "no time even to cry!" Her story was this: Her daughter had been apprenticed to a milliner at the West End. She was just over sixteen, and a bright young Christian. She got through her first season without breaking down; but the second was too much for her. She did not complain, but one day she was brought home in a cab, having broken a blood vessel, and there she lay, propped up by pillows, her face white as death, except for two spots where it had been flecked by her own blood. To use the mother's own words: "She smiled as she saw me, and then we carried her in, and when the ethers were gone she clung round my neck, and laying her pretty head on my shoulder, she whispered, 'Mother, my own mother, I've come home to die!'" Killed by late hours! She lingered for three months, and then she passed away, but not before she had left a message which became the life inspiration of her mother: "For my sake be kind to the girls like me;" and that message, with God's blessing, may make some of you think and resolve, as it did the poor "Buttonhole Queen." (A. Rowland, LL. B.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught. |
    |