A Saint Given by a Quaker Girl

Rita Snowden writes in one of her charming books: “I cling with real affection to the idea of a saint given me by a little Quaker girl. She sat in a beautiful church. She had never been inside a beautiful church before, and when she sat as quiet as a mouse in her tall pew and asked what the lovely stainedglass window was, she was told it was a saint.

She thought she had never seen anything so beautiful. She was silent. Now she knew what a saint was. A few days after, she was crossing the park with a friend when they saw an aged woman with flowers and a full basket going her way towards the poorer part of the village.

“There was a saint if ever there was one,” said the friend. And the little girl was puzzled. On Sunday a saint was a beautiful stained-glass window, and now it was an old woman. How could that be?

She puckered up her brow in doubt. Then it came to her; in the next moment she added, ‘kOh, I know, a saint is some one who lets the light shine through.”