his way through the College of Puget Sound doing janitor work. He met Martha one night at a student gathering. They spoke together of weighty subjects: life and love and God and death. “ Howard told me long afterwards,” wrote Martha in her book, “ that he made up his mind that day to try to make me his wife. I do not know what he could have seen in that foolish, immature child. He was enough older than I that he was already adult. I glimpsed by God’s grace the sterling qualities, the in tegrity and strength, the idealism, the virility com bined with delicacy which made up the rare person who was to become my husband.” Perhaps too optimistically Martha got a job at the Tacoma Public Library after college. For two blissful years she enjoyed people, books, children and the company of Howard. In her diary she wrote of their first kiss: SLe was given charge of a branch library in a very poor district. She put her heart into the work and it nearly wore her out. Finally Martha fell sick with tuberculosis and was sent to a Denver T.B. sanitarium to recuperate. Howard wrote her love letters nearly every day for three years. Then a heart specialist discovered that the high altitude of Denver was de teriorating her heart and she was returned to Tacoma. With hopes of quick recovery, she and Howard be came engaged. But Denver had not driven away the malady. Her temperature rose each day and a new doctor was called. Then the old familiar routine: “ Say one-two-three cough, one-two-three cough,” and a blue pencil outlining spots on her back and chest. Down, down went her resistance until Howard was so alarmed he bunked on a cot in the hospital corridor near her door. She survived. A year in the country with friends did wonders for the girl and one year later, on Jan uary 31, 1919, Martha and Howard were married. Later she wrote a poem about her trousseau: Once he said that this blue flowered gown Made my eyes look as blue as the sea, And his words wove a shining crown I shall wear through eternity, His words, and the look in his eyes! And I know that in Paradise 1 shall walk through the wide Golden Town In the ghost of that blue flowered gown! There followed the loveliest intimacies ever bio graphed. After less than a year in their little honey moon house in Tacoma, the Nicholsons moved to a farm near Olympia. But milk and cream failed to add weight to Martha’s wasted body. Foreign ailments plagued her on the farm. Doctors decided she had better try California. Prov W e kissed in the April rain. I shall never be free again; Though l lock the window and door I am never alone any more. For l dwell with rapture — and pain, Since we kissed in the April rain.
identially they learned of a farm couple that needed help and had room to house them. And so they went to Southern California. “ There were oranges falling off the trees and grow ing warm in the sunshine,” wrote Martha. “ There was a great tree of tangerines. Never would I have believed we could eat so many. There was milk, and a garden of fresh vegetables. And best of all, the sun.” Still disappointments and trials besought them. The Nicholsons received them all as God’s training. They listened and felt and prayed and learned. One day there came to the door a complete cata logue of the Western Book & Tract Company in Oakland. “ I fell onto it as a thirsty traveler falls on a pool in the desert,” said Martha. “ From this I learned the depths of my ignorance of the Word. I discovered what it was I had been longing to know.” She ordered dozens of books, all in paper covers. While Howard worked, she studied. In the evening they shared what she had learned. As she studied one afternoon the blessed truth of the eternal security of the believer was revealed to her. She dropped her books and ran out to find her husband. He was across the field, plowing. She started toward him on a run; panting, stumbling and trip ping over the rough ground. When he saw her How ard dropped the reins of his team and ran towards her exclaiming, “What is the matter, darling?” She gasped, “ 0 Howard, we can never be lost!” There in the middle of the brown field they clasped each other close “ while God’s verities were all about us and His grace was revealed fresh to us.” A year later they purchased an equity in a little house in Long Beach and Howard worked for the Shell Oil Company where he remained for 24 years. While there the Nicholsons attended the First Brethren Church and listened and learned from Dr. Louis S. Bauman. It was this pastor who eagerly read Martha’s poems and published them in his calendar. The response was immediate and other publications across the nation began printing Martha’s verse. This was the start of her great ministry. Then in 1947 Howard, always as strong as a tree, was suddenly stricken with a series of heart attacks. He died the next year. From then on Martha and her companion, Miss Lois Early, went on alone. Martha continued to wrjte and finished Heart Held High, The G lory For- evelr, Family Of God and her autobiography. At the close of it she wrote, “ Oh, what does it matter if I suffer a little more here? Of what importance the manner of my going to Him?” O the keen rapture! O dear delight, When to m y longing eyes faith becomes sight,
And m y heart whispers, “ M y Lord, it is Thee!”
O the sweet safety! O the bright glory, Every word true of that wonderful story;
O the fair morning Dawning for me!
The King's Business/September 1957
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