Chapter 2
The Hope of Holiness
When Amy was twelve she was sent away to Marlborough House, a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Naturally she was homesick. Is there, for anyone who has grown up in a secure and loving home, anything to compare with the first experience of complete separation from that home? It is pure misery from which there seems to be no possibility of escape, for it is the parents themselves who have decided that this is “best.” The child feels that nothing could be worse; yet he trusts his parents. It seems that the “earth is removed and the mountains are carried into the midst of the sea.” Amy’s upbringing forbade her to make much of anything appointed, nevertheless she needed solace of some sort. She found it—in a white lily that stood in a pot in the bow window, in a box of chrysanthemums sent by her mother from the little greenhouse at home, and in a saucer of moss on the dinner table which reminded her of one of her father’s stories: Mungo Park, an explorer, was comforted by seeing moss and feeling that the One who made it would care for him.
The taboos and restrictions of Methodism would seem intolerable in the twentieth century, even to the dedicated. To Amy they were perhaps not more stringent than the Presbyterianism she was used to. She did not find schoolwork nearly so pleasant as it had been at home, and only one teacher, the botany master, knew how to make lessons “shine.” Certainly there were no complaint boxes at Marlborough House, nor were students in those days required to evaluate the performance of each of their teachers. Looking back years later, Amy judged that the faults lay mostly with herself—“many things happened which should not have happened, because I had not learned to set to, and work at things which seemed to me dull and not useful. This was a great pity. I have often been very sorry about it.” Unfortunately for us she saw to it that no record of the story was left which she did not believe would edify the children in India, except for a single incident. The wild Irish girl was “quite naughty” that time, but felt that the end surely would justify the means. It was the year of the comet, 1882. Amy went, on behalf of the girls in her dormitory, to request permission of the principal to stay up to see the comet. “Certainly not,” was the verdict.
Missing the celestial show was simply not to be borne, so Amy tied threads to the toes of each of the girls, promising to keep awake and give them a yank as soon as the rest of the house was asleep. At the signal, they all crept to the attic, holding their breath when a step creaked, and found themselves face-to-face with the principal and teachers. “We had time to see it beautifully before anyone had recovered sufficiently from the shock of our arrival to order us back to bed. That was a woeful night for me, I was sure I would be expelled and that would break my parents’ hearts. Happily that did not come to pass. There was a rather solemn hour next morning, for the matter of threads tied round toes showed such purposeful audacity that it could not be passed over. It was taken for granted that I was the ringleader, but in the end I was forgiven.”
It was near the end of her three years at Marlborough House that Amy experienced “the one watered moment in an arid three years.” The Children’s Special Service Mission held meetings in Harrogate at which one Edwin Arrowsmith spoke. She had no recollection of his talk, but remembered singing the lovely children’s hymn by Anna B. Warner, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” In those quiet minutes she understood what she had not understood before—there was something else to be done. All her life she had known of Jesus’ love. Her mother had often told her of it, sung to her about it, and Amy had, as it were, nestled in Jesus’ arms as she had nestled in her mother’s. She realized now, at the age of fifteen or so, that she had not “opened the door” to Him. “In His great mercy the Good Shepherd answered the prayers of my mother and father and many other loving ones, and drew me, even me, into His fold.”
It seems that competition with American flour necessitated a move to Belfast where the Carmichael brothers built a new mill. Amy’s family found a house in College Gardens, and soon afterwards because of financial difficulties she and her brothers were withdrawn from the boarding schools. Amy’s lessons were in subjects deemed suitable for young ladies—music, singing, and painting. She was thoroughly discouraged with the last, in which she had especially wanted to do well. She held up alongside a real sunset an oil sketch of a sunset. “The contrast was so tremendous I resolved to spend no more time on that.” Her father took her to London, where she was filled with wonder at the great sights of the Tower, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, St. Paul’s,
