xt7fbg2h7b46 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7fbg2h7b46/data/mets.xml Duncan, Fannie Casseday. 1922  books b92-54-27062157 English Printed for the author by Presbyterian Committee of Publication, : Richmond, Va. : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Casseday, Jennie, 1840-1893. Jennie Casseday of Louisville  : her intimate life as told by her sister, Mrs. Fannie Casseday Duncan. text Jennie Casseday of Louisville  : her intimate life as told by her sister, Mrs. Fannie Casseday Duncan. 1922 2002 true xt7fbg2h7b46 section xt7fbg2h7b46 


JENNIE CASSEDAY
       of
   LOUISVILLE


 



























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JENNIE CASSEDAY

                      of

           LOUISVILLE



         Her Intimate Lift Us TeId by Her SWier
      MRS. FANNIE CASSEDAY DUNCAN
                 Auther .f
The MJIssge ef the Lerd;s Prayer, The Sara .f the Making of L euisville
             The Ap.sts' Creed, c.










             Printed f.r the Auther by
    PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE of PUBLICATION
             RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
                  1922

 















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alto yelpeb to IOafa the lite of

  !3ennie eCaoebap
     jilett anb a lessing
     hi31 tebiatetW tis ook


















         COPYjRGHr 1 )21
     FANNIg CASS.DAY OUNCAN

 




Prefatory



W      HEN a life has been nobly lived, has
        made a strong impression upon its gen-
        eration and, passing away, has left to
other generations a trail that may serve to blaze
a way upward, it becomes a duty to make record
of at least its salient features, that it may remain
both as guide and inspiration. The world has
been greatly enriched by the biographies of its
leaders.
  More than twenty-five years have passed since
Jennie Casseday went from earth, and most of
those who knew her and loved her and were a
part of her goings and comings have followed
her to another sphere. But lives like hers never
die. Instead, they become a type or a torch.
  So it is not primarily to magnify Jennie Cas-
seday that this impressionist sketch of her is be-
ing made. She herself would be the first to
request that the least of herself be pictured. But
this touch-and-go portrait is being etched because
her beautiful life was fragrant of the indwell-
ing Christ, and we would that its sweet incense

 


might lead others to her conception of service
in the name of Him who said "I am among you
as one that serveth."
  In thinking of Jennie Casseday we are re-
minded of a passage in the Analects of Confu-
cius. One of his disciples asked him: "Master,
is there one single word which may serve as a
rule of practice for the whole of one's life "
Confucius replied, "Is not SHU (reciprocity, or
service) such a word "


 




    JENNIE CASSEDAY

         of LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY


                  ATMOSPHERE.
    "In the beauty of the lilies,
       Like her Lord's, her sweet life ran,
     The same light within her bosom
       That He wore as Son of Man:
     The same mission to the sinning
       On her tender heart was laid;
     She too had the love that answered
       When griefs cried and grew afraid.
    "In the beauty of the lilies,
       Walked her soul in spotless white,
     Brightening up the world of shadows
       With a clear, reflected light.
     Where the shadows fell to blackness,
       Where the ooze of sin and crime
     Was the deepest, there her courage
       Proved her stricken life sublime."

1 UNE 9, i840, was Jennie Casseday's birth-
J day, the day when this wee infant took on the
   outward form of the mystery which we call
life. My thought often travels back to that birth-
day and to the insignificant baby whose future no
one could divine. Next comes the memory of her
early years, as I afterward came to know them,-
happy years, so soon shadowed-and of her ever-
                       5

 



after shut-in life, with only pain as a constant
companion. In lighter mood I recall her as the
normal little girl, born of rich, cultured parents
who loved to give their children every equipment
for happiness. She was so round and ruddy and
sturdy that her big brothers called her "Dutch".
That was her family nickname until she was
nearly grown, until in fact it seemed pitiless to
call her by it-until we came to speak of her,
gently, as "Our Little White Shadow". When
she was well in her 'teens her Aunt-Mother
called her "Miss Gadabout" because she so loved
to make one in all the good times going.
Strangely enough, in thinking of her I often re-
call her beautiful feet. They were exceptionally
shapely, plump and white. As a young woman
she was proud of her feet and loved to dress
them richly. Whatever was novel in silk and
leather she bought; and she was as light on her
feet as a bird.
  Ah, those feet! Those snowy, blue-veined feet
that trod the earth so airily. Those patient,
twisted feet that lay quite quiet on the bed for
more than thirty years, aching with pain! Those
thin, pale feet, dumbly crossed in rest! Aye,
those transfigured feet, floating upward to the
golden gates of the Beautiful City of God!
                                      
  Her mother died when Jennie was only nine
years old; but a maiden aunt took the place of
mother and filled it so beautifully that we
younger children scarcely knew we were mother-
                       6


 









   VENOM





4 IM

 This page in the original text is blank.

 

less. Our father was both mother and father
to us all-yes, and teacher and preacher and
chum and model. He lived to be eighty-two
years young and often we thought of Browning's
lines:
   "Grow old along with me!
   The best of life is yet to be,
   The last of life, for which the first was made.
   Our times are in his hand
   Who saith 'a whole I planned,
   Youth shows but half; trust God, see all,
   Nor be afraid."'
   The Casseday home was notable in its day. In
i844 father bought an elevated plateau right in
the heart of Louisville, Kentucky. There were
eight children of us and he built a 'big sunny
house, providing winter romp-rooms for his four
little girls and a completely furnished carpenter-
shop for his four growing boys. This wise pro-
vision kept his girls and boys at home and also
supplied companionship with the boys and girls
of his friends.
  Jennie Casseday's intense love for flowers, and
for all nature, was an inheritance from her
mother. Our spacious grounds were 'laid off in
figures and wide serpentine walks, with rare
trees and flowers. There was a high stone re-
taining wall with a plantation border which was
filled with dear old-fashioned things, such as
lilacs, peonies, altheas, weigelias, golden elder,
barberry bushes and calacanthuses and moss
roses. There were broad stretches of bluegrass,
                       7

 

ending in circles and squares and half moons of
exquisite roses. It was a place to dream of and
to dream in. It was father's love gift to his
idolized wife. But she lived less than five years
to enjoy it.
  Jennie's father, Samuel Casseday, was a Vir-
ginian, a Presbyterian, and a slave owner. Her
mother, Eliza McFarland, was born in Philadel-
phia of Ulster parents and held the British view
of slavery. Her slaves almost worshipped mother
and delighted to render her obedience. In this
home one saw only the happiest side of slavery-
provision and prevision, motherings for the sick,
religious schooling, and respect from mistress to
slave and slave to mistress. I wish this were the
place to tell the charming story of how our
slaves were freed and sent to Liberia at my
father's cost almost before the world knew there
was an Abraham Lincoln. I hope to incorporate
it in a book I am preparing-"The Old Slave On
Old Kentucky Plantations"'.
  Perhaps this is all that Jennie Casseday's bi-
ographer needs to tell, in this short sketch, of
her home life. We were a big, happy, cultured
family, bookish and artistic. I think we were
modest withal, for our very fortunate circum-
stances did not strike us as exceptional at all or
a matter to be vain of, but only as a happy mat-
ter of course. Father and mother, both, early
taught us the Golden Rule as a rule of life.



8

 



Fetters



           "Behind the dim Unknown,
         Standeth God within the shadow
           Keeping watch above His own."

I N moments of contemplation, did you ever
    think how long Nature takes to round her
    creations to perfection, or through what
painful stages her fruits must pass before they
reach maturity-storms, wind, rain, frost, the
pruning shears If such are the methods of
Nature, is it any wonder that highest spiritual
completions must often come through great
travail of soul
  Just before Jennie graduated, her years of too-
intensive study told upon her brain, and fever
carried her out on its drifting tides, bewildering
her for months; but after that came a period of
happy young womanhood, of beaux and travel
and dress and the usual whirl of social life. They
seemed good to her.
  But better things were in store for Jennie.
They did not appear better at the time, but worse,
-oh much worse. They assumed, in i86i, the dis-
guise of a terrible accident-runaway horses, an
overturned carriage, a broken body dragged
along under the wheels, and hopelessly maimed
forever. Then the awful shadow of a life bereft
                      9

 
of all the things that make womanhood dear to
women-wifehood, motherhood, and
"The red, sweet wine of youth. She gave up the years
    to be
  Of work and joy; and those who would have been
    her sons."

  Next appeared a sculptor, with mallet and
chisel, sent to hew out of this fine marble all that
it possessed of the image of God, things so heroic
and noble, so clear-cut and ideally beautiful that
the work should stand for a model to all gen-
erations.
  This sculptor's name was PAIN. Jennie told
me years after that he really was an angel,
though she did not then recognize him as such.
Into a corner of her pretty bedroom he thrust
her, darkened the windows, and the work of slow
transformation began.
  Now came another period in this girl's life-a
period of adjusting. Such are critical periods.
One never comes out of them exactly the same
being. When they have passed, something has
gone out of us, or something has come into us
which has made us over again, has made a new
US. After a time even our faces have changed:
a new light has come into them, or an old light
has gone out of them. Bitterness and cynicism
have settled over them, or age and care have
withered them; or sweetness and light have trans-
figured them so that they are like the faces of
angels.
                      IO

 
  "The test of greatness," says one, "lies not so
much after all with those who, being highly en-
dowed, accomplish great things, as with those
who retain their greatness under narrowing con-
ditions and influences." I think Jennie Casse-
day, "honored, wept, sung of" on all the conti-
nents, was not greater, not so great, perhaps, as
was Jennie Casseday under the anvil, shut out,
shut in, in those years of pauseless torture and
slow transformation.
  I was with her through that long dark night
of adjustment, during which no one of us could
understand; and I was witness to the heroism
with which she fought, for us as well as for
herself, the battle with doubt and despair and
black unbelief.
  Many and many a time arguments failed her
own soul, as well as mine, and then she would
lie back exhausted with the double battle, the
spiritual and physical, and say only these words:
"What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt
know hereafter." Sometimes she would fortify
us both thus: "If I knew, Fan, as well as God
does, and as far, either I would be God, or he
would not be God. Take my hand in yours and
let us trust him wholly."
  Thus the little grain of faith rooted itself firmly
in the soil and prepared us both to withstand
many a shock of tempests. A favorite hymn of
hers in those dark days was this, written by Cow-
per in the twilight of his departing reason.
                      HI

 
      "God moves in a mysterious way
         His wonders to perform;
       He plants his footsteps in the sea
         And rides upon the storm.

      "Deep in unfathomable mines
         Of never failing skill
       He treasures up his b:right designs
         And works his woncrous will.

      "Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
         But trust him for his grace
       Behind a frowning providence
         He hides a smiling lace"

  Yet Jennie Casseday wELs very human. She
was full of humour: she loved poetry and music
and pretty gowns, and a good novel now and
then, when she could spare the time to read it.
  I do not believe that at any time of her life
she thought of herself as "entering a career".
She had no desire or intention "to arrive." She
just lay quiet on her little bed, awaiting God's
leadings day by day, doing what came to her to
do, and suffering what she must suffer, often
repeating to both herself and me these lines:

        "Just as God leads nie
           I would go.
         I do not ask to choose my way,
           Content with what He doth bestow,
         Assured He will not let me stray."
                        12

 And these:
          "Yes, leave it to Him,
          The lilies all do
             And they grow-
           They grow in the rain,
           And they grow in the dew-
             Yes, they grow;
 They grow in the darkness, all hid in the night
 They grow in the sunshine, revealed by the light,
             Still they grow.

          "The grasses are clothed
          And the ravens are fed
             From His store;
           But you, who are loved,
           And guarded, and led,
             How much more
  Whatever you need, if you ask it in prayer,
  You can leave it with Him, for you are His care,
             YOU, you know."



'3

 


                 Daybreak

    0, trusting Jesus with all her might Jennie
Casseday held on with a determination that
    knew no faltering, praying constantly and
with every fibre of her soul for hourly guidance,
until, out of her travail, came a new born being.
She had been anointed through suffering and she
was henceforth ready to minister.
  But how could she minister A frail little
figure, pitiable in its helplessness and tied to a
bed-what could she do to help in this great,
busy, bustling world, that roll; like a modern
Juggernaut, crushing out human lives in utter
remorselessness, or in conscious lust for prey
What could she do
  I will tell you what she did do. In the first
place she forgot self. She put pain and worry
out of sight so that her room was a centre of
brightness where one and another grew to love
to come. She became an inspiration to her
household. She gave to each and every one who
entered her presence a ray of brightness, suiting,
with fine instinct, the gift to the need-to one a
smile, because smiles were fitting; to one a tear,
because tears were uppermost; for one an uplift,
because burdens are weighty and there are few
who understand. And so, little by little, people
grew to love to come to her, and to go and tell
others: Andrew told Simon, and Simon, Philip;
                      14

 

and Philip, Nathaniel, so to speak, until the mul-
titude thronged.
  We will touch lightly upon Jennie's days of
torture and nights of pauseless pain, though they
continued for more than thirty years.. She her-
self spoke of them only to her physician, to God,
and to her own heart. I, living with her, knew
them, of course; but she had a strong tempera-
mental reserve which one, knowing her gener-
ous sympathies and simple manners, hardly sus-
pected. "How did you get hurt" "Where do
you suffer" "Have you constant pain" were
questions left deftly unanswered. Replies could
help no one, she said, tended to morbid selfness.
and would only waste precious time for both her-
self and her visitors. This psychologic reserve
soon became known and thereafter her room was
as free from all sorrowful things as is the nave of
a cathedral. Her bedside was a shrine, not a
mausoleum.
  Where lay her strange power I cannot ex-
plain it. Probably the ways of God's spirit act-
ing on human affairs are never explicable. The
more one tries to explore them the more mar-
velous do they appear. We come upon strange
modes in the makeup of the individual who
is Spirit-filled, and surprising moods in those
who come under his or her influence. It does not
seem to be a human problem at all, but one to
be solved along mystic lines. Among the letters
concerning Jennie after her death is one in the
handwriting of Lady Henry Somerset, a great
                      I5

 
friend of Miss Willard's. It is only a fragment
of a letter and does not include the name of the
writer in its present charred and imperfect state,
but I suppose from the manner of its coming to
me that Lady Henry is speaking of Jennie Casse-
day, so fitting is it. The letter says:
  "What was it that made it possible for every-
one who came into her presence to feel that they
had found a friend That their interests, their
lives, their work, their advancement, their devel-
opment, was the thing that was always near to
her heart  I think first of all it was a profound
belief in humanity. She saw the divine in hu-
manity as I have never known it realized by any
one else; and in the very darkest, dingiest human
life she recognized the aureole that no one else
saw. It was not that she made herself believe in
people, but it was that she did believe in them.
She had an intuition of their best, and although
at times that intuition possibly made her exag-
gerate the good and minimize the ill, it never
failed to call out for the time in that human
soul a real desire to live up to what she believed
it to be."
  Jennie kept a Day-book in which she wrote
each night the blessings of the day as they had
been experienced by her. Its first page was
headed with this quotation: "Count your bless-
ings, one by one." Under it she had written:
"I cannot. They rush upon me like waters from
a gargoyle." On one page I find this poem. Some

 

friend found and copied it as expressive of their
own attitude towards her. It bears no signature.
"I never crossed your threshold with a grief
   But that I went without it; never came
   Heart-hungry, but you fed me, eased the blame,
 And gave the sorrow solace and relief.
 "I never left you but I took away
   The love that drew me to your side again
   Through that wide door that never could remain
 Quite closed between us for a little day."
 "Man proposes: God disposes." If Jennie Cas-
 seday had no intention of creating a "career,"
 Heaven surely appointed to her a mission-the
 mission being to reach as many lives as possible
 and make them sweeter, gladder, and more worth
 while. Those who came first to her bedside came
 for the joy of her friendship, largely women of
 her own well-circumstanced class; but soon she
 found that anywhere one may have a mission,
 and that fashion or wealth do not guarantee
 hearts at peace with themselves. Let me give an
 illustration: One evening a. gentleman called.
 Something within Jennie-some magnetic, un-
 analysible power divinely bestowed now and then
 on a few elect ones-drew out confidences in the
 strangest way. In a short time this young man
 was weeping and telling her all his sorrows. He
 and his beautiful young wife were on the eve of
 a divorce. He loved her dearly but, like many
 another husband, he tried to form her anew,
after some old-time, straight-laced pattern, left by
his New England ancestors. The girl was South-
                      I7

 

ern, high strung, an only child and spoiled to the
limit, and she rebelled. The "little rift within the
lute" was slowly widening to "make the music
mute". As the handsome, masterful young man,
his heart crazed with bewilderment and grief,
sat beside Jennie's bed, she, with quick compre-
hension of the whole situation, told him plainly
where his trouble lay.
  By a strange (was it Providential) coinci-
dence the very next day the wife called. Her
young heart was simply breaking for her lover-
husband, who now, she said, only found fault
with her. Not letting the wife know of the hus-
band's visit, but holding the key to their mutual
misery, Jennie was in a position to offer expert
advice. Neither, so far as I know, ever knew
of the visit of the other; but a happy houseful of
boys and girls afterward gathered around their
fireside, wholly unconscious of the averted trag-
edy. This was not an unusual case. People came
to her as to a Father-confessor and went away
shriven and with new purpose.
  But there was another class over whom Jen-
nie's heart yearned-a class whose burdens were
more tangible, more oppressive, harder to deal
with. These were the over-worked, over-
tempted, under-fed, battle-scarred folk of her
own city. Night and morning she prayed for
them. At the time that was all she felt she could
do, for the Civil War had come, was over, and
our father was very nearly impoverished. His
                      i8

 
interests had been in the South and the South
was ruined. Merchants who owed him great
sums of money were either killed or their prop-
erty was eaten up, and all hope of collecting bad
debts was forever gone. Soon his home was
turned into apartments. Rentable houses were
built right over the rose beds, and were mort-
gaged to pay for the building. Within a decade
our father died, the big old mahoganies were,
most of them, sold and Jennie and I resorted to
boarding house life. Brothers and cousins lay
on the "Flanders Fields" of the Southland, and
we had to make ourselves content with life from
this new angle. Within three years I married;
we secured a lovely old English cottage; two
growing nephews, whose father also slept in
"Flanders Fields", came to us at the death of
their beloved mother, and we all went again to
the delights of housekeeping. How happy she
was with a home once more, with rose beds out-
side her window and a backyard full of Collie
pups. And soon came my fairy baby to live
beside her for six short months.



19

 


"I Was Sick and Ye Visited Me"



T    HROUGH      this straying pathway I now
     come to Jennie Casseday's first public-
     service work and its queer beginnings-
the Flower Mission.
  From its initial number, the New York Ob-
server, the most notable religious paper of its
day, had been taken in our home, my father's
home. In i869 it was full of the story of a young
Boston girl, teaching in Roxbury, -who, as she
passed from place to place, noticed the great
waste of flowers and fruits in the gardens of the
rich, most notable when the owners were absent,
or in summer, when the sight of any blossom or
the perfume of any flower that has survived the
scorching heat is so welcome to the inhabitants
of a crowded city. Sometimes the teacher was
given a bunch of roses and these she invariably
gave away to the children of the streets, children
of poverty, who ran after her, begging "One
flower, Lady, please!" Later she secured bas-
kets of flowers and small fruits and made little
detours on her way to school, so as to reach even
the more denied districts. It was a simple act,
simply done.
  This story fired the heart of Jennie Casseday,
as she lay there in her little bed, shut out from
the green earth and the glorious flowers, love for
which was her passion and her inheritance. Day
                      20

 
and night she thought of the sweet young teacher
of Roxbury. Her vision grew deeper and wider,
and she came to realize the possibilities of such
a ministry.
  With Jennie Casseday to see a need was to
feel a call. She did not pause to bemoan her
helplessness or even to think of it. Instead she
covered her face with her handkerchief (which
was her way of kneeling in prayer; her only way.
Whenever we found her so screened we trod
lightly, for we knew the place on which we trod
was holy ground) and asked for guidance in
planning. Then she planned. She called to her
bedside the influential women of Louisville, the
specially consecrated women, and also that beau-
tiful body of women plodders who win success
through patience and service. She recognized
that what she hoped to create demanded team
work and delicate organization. Those whom
she called came and plans were perfected at her
bedside. A public meeting was arranged. Edi-
tors offered their columns gladly: reporters did
their best to float her project out on the tide of
popular favor, and the Courier-Journal presented
the use of a large room in its building with tables
ready for tying up flowers. By the time of the
first going forth this room was crowded with
flower missionaries and these tables burdened
with heaps of flowers of every class and hue.
  It did not take long for the story of the Louis-
ville Flower Mission and its invalid designer to
get abroad. Letters came to Miss Casseday from
                      21

 

north, south, east and west u ntil Flower Mis-
sions were inaugurated in forty different States
and countries. In the course of time there came
to Jennie's door a most elaborate music box, pre-
sented by the members of Flower Missions in
forty States west of the Mississippi. Our sister,
Mrs. Eliza Casseday McElroy, of Richmond, Vir-
ginia, fell heir to this box and holds it as a most
precious possession. This was long before the
days of the Victrola.
  Next came a letter from Harper Brothers, pub-
lishers, begging an article from Jennie's pen for
its "Harpers Young People". I will quote from
that article: She wrote:
  "Thank you for your request. The mission of
flowers has in it such possibilities, such deep
meanings, so much cheer and brightness for the
sick, the aged, the poor, the shut-ins, and for
the missionaries themselves, that I find my heart
bounding with gladness at the new avenue you
have opened for its enlargement:.
                                       
  "As you may well guess, flowers are used
merely as a wedge. Their beauty, purity, and
fragrance, teaching of the love of God, who made
them, and of the human sympathy which brings
them, opens the heart to gratitude, and prepares
the way for the little text card, which they must
always have attached to them. They can do no
real good without this card, which must contain
a message from God's own Word. Trust the
                      22

 

flowers to do the wedging; they have inherent
power for that. The very gift of them implies a
compliment which is quickly recognized, and
tends to create self-respect and that something
God-implanted in all of our hearts which responds
to their silent influence. Both giver and receiver
are the better for the gift. I have come to believe
that it is for this very use flowers were made, and
we have been all this time finding out God's
Thoughts:
    "God might have made the earth bring forth
       Enough for great and small,
     The oak-tree, and the cedar-tree,
       Without a flower at all.
    "Then wherefore, wherefore, were they made,
      All dyed with rainbow light,
      All fashioned with supremest grace,
      Upspringing day and night
    "To comfort man, to whisper hope
      Whene'er his hope is dim;
    For whoso careth for the flowers
      Will much more care for him."
  Think of one lying shut in with pain, sur-
rounded with the ill conditions of poverty, noth-
ing to brighten or alleviate lonely hours, and of
what it would be to have a tender-hearted woman
or a bright-faced young girl come with a little
knot of "something white, something bright, and
something sweet" (my rule for making bou-
quets), and lay it on the pillow or in the hand.
Imagine a hospital, with row after row of beds
filled with sufferers. Fancy the Flower Mission-
                       23

 


aries entering the ward with baskets of heliotrope,
rose-buds, sweet violets, lilies, fresh with the dew
of the day. See how eagerly pale hands are out-
stretched to receive them, with what glad delight
they clutch the beautiful blossoms and press them
to their faces, as if to drink in the message they
carry.
  Can you not see where their ministry begins
  Now, follow the Flower Missionaries to a jail
or penitentiary. Within the iron walls are de-
graded men and women, prisoned in the cells,
forsaken, disgraced, disowned. What, think you,
must it be to these poor creatures, by the outer
world neglected, to have gentle Christlike women
come to them to tell them Jesus loves them and
longs to save them, how He sends the pure beauty
of the flowers into their darkened lives. The
subtle fragrance brings to them tender associa-
tions of the old home garden, of mother, and days
agone, when all the world was fair to their inno-
cence and youth. The heart, in this softened
mood, is ready to receive these words of God,
heard in better times, and they come with the
ring of truth from Heaven and speak to them
in tones of love. The Holy Spirit seals the im-
pression, and eternity alone can reveal the re-
sult."
  This beautiful organization was not left to the
emotions. While it was essentially a merciful
society, it was also a judicious one, with wise
committees sent to investigate families who ap-
plied for aid, or to search for those who needed
                      24

 

help but had not applied for it. In fact it was
the report brought in by its workers that formed
the embryo which, later, developed into Miss
Casseday's District Nurse Work.
  It was characteristic of Jennie that nothing
she touched remained long local. She entered
upon each of her many benefices only after much
prayer and much thinking. Also she had a strong
impression, each time, that she was specially
called to lead or organize the things in hand. Then
she went to it with the ease of one so equipped
and so supported. I think successes which seem
phenomenal may often be thus accounted for.



A5

 





"In Prison and Ye Came Unto Me"



IT was but a short step from the local Flower
    Mission to criminals confined in prisons.
    Jennie, herself confined to. narrow quarters,
soon began thinking of all sorts of prisoners and
began planning to send the message of the flowers
to States Prisons. Her board co-operated with
her loyally and gladly. Heil birthday, June 9th,
was set apart as Flower Mission Prison Day. By
this time Flower Missions had grown up in most
of the States of the Union and large plans were
made to visit all State and local prisons and
reformatories on June 9th. The co-operation
of officers of prisons was secured beforehand, the
number of prisoners learned, and it was asked
that prisoners be asked to assemble in their
chapels at a fixed hour. It was arranged to
present each prisoner with a bouquet made of
"something white, something bright, something
sweet." A requisite was that each bouquet must
have a text of scripture attached to it by a fine
wire. Jennie herself selected a large number of
texts and had them printed. But a missionary
was at liberty to choose her own texts and write
them with a pen. In fact fennie thought the
latter way might seem more personal and might
bring good to the selecter, as well as to the one
for whom it was intended.



26

 





Enter The Women's Christian
          Temperance Union

I N i889 the "Society of Christian Workers"
    held its annual meeting in New York and its
    secretary requested Miss Casseday to send to
it information regarding her Flower Mission
work. She responded by sending a letter, which
was read from the platform. There was at once
a large demand for copies of this and it was soon
put in booklet form for the convenience of all
who wanted to know about this public service. I
quote a bit from the booklet:
  "It was four years after the Louisville Flower
Mission was organized that Miss Frances E.
Willard was in Louisville, the guest of my sister,
Mrs. John Duncan. On the very last morning of
her stay she came to my room and asked me to
tell her all about my Mission work. I told it as
simply and fully as I could and she listened in-
tently. When I had finished, Miss Willard, with
that quick perception and ready insight for which
she is so remarkable, saw how Flower Missions
might be grafted on to temperance work and
bring forth rich harvests of good to both. She
rose to her feet exclaiming, 'I have an inspira-
tion; it is to establish a Flower Mission depart-
ment of the Women's Christian Temperance
                     27

 


Union, and put you at its head as National Su-
perintendent.'
  "The very idea appalled me, and I felt it was
impossible for me either to take on more work
or to think of undertaking, from my little corner,
a National