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That evening Mrs. Votaw came over to her sister Daisy’s. I had not seen Carrie Votaw for several years, but I observed that she had lost none of her regal beauty, and she, too, had certain facial expressions which reminded me strongly of her brother. Early in our conversation, Mrs. Votaw found occasion to inquire about my Aunt Dell, who, you will remember, had been a missionary to Burma at the same time Mrs. Votaw and her husband, Heber Herbert Votaw, had been engaged in work of the same character, and it was plain to be seen that the old feeling toward my Aunt Dell was still smoldering in the heart of her whose religion, as a Seventh Day Adventist, was not generally concordant with that of my Aunt Dell, who was a Baptist.
Mrs. Votaw said to me that she had felt very bitter when my Aunt Dell had taken occasion to have published in a certain paper an article, written by my aunt, which voiced the hope of her church that Mr. Harding, now the most distinguished member of the Baptist Church, as President of the United States, might see fit to exert his influence in the direction of promoting the very worthy work which the Baptists were carrying on so admirably in Burma. I knew my Aunt Dell’s sense of humor, and it would have been too much for her to refrain from making capital of a situation such as this, and I could not help being secretly amused. But it saddened me to realize how this given instance of Mrs. Votaw’s resentment proved that the work which should be so universally missionary in spirit and never pettily denominational, was, after all, permeated with the spirit of sect jealousy.