Chapter XXIII. A Plot Which
had for its End the Raising up of
a Discouraged Young Preacher
ONE day I was sitting in the apparently deserted library, looking over the new books which were always kept on a side shelf, at the entrance to one of the alcoves, when I heard a heavy, most disconsolate sigh, coming from a hidden corner in the rear of the room. The sigh was followed by the rustling of book leaves. I continued my investigation of the new books, but was once more interrupted by that same, prolonged sighing. It was just such a sigh as Dante must have heard proceeding from the lips of those unfortunate creatures who stood in neither hope nor despair. I decided to investigate, and, for that purpose, went down the alcove from which the sighing seemed to have come, and there, with his back turned to me, seated at one of the reference tables, with his head resting woefully on his spread out arms, sat Amos Tucker, an upper-classman.
I hesitated to approach him, at first, and pretended that I had come into the alcove for a book. Then again the sigh proceeded from the limp heap at the table, and, throwing all restraint to the winds, I went to the table, touched Amos on the shoulder, and said,
“Are you in trouble, Tucker?”
He raised his tearful, grey eyes to me, and said,
“They say I’m not fit to be a preacher!”
I sat down beside him, for from his manner I knew that he welcomed me to be his confidant.
“Who says so? Any of the students?” I asked.
“No, it wouldn’t matter if it came from them: the church says so!”
“What church is that, Tucker?”
He sat up in his chair and replied,
“I have just started to preach, this year. I have been out for two Sundays in a little place where they give me seven dollars, out of which I have to pay a dollar and a half for expenses. It’s not that I care a snap about the money, though, but I want a place to call my parish. I feel that I ought to preach. Well, I’ve got a letter from the committee this morning, telling me that they will have to get along without me; that they cannot have me any longer for their minister.”
“What reasons do they offer?”
“That’s it!” he responded, with a catch in his voice, “they have had the bravery to tell me the exact reason. It is this: they tell me—oh, hadn’t you better read for yourself,” and he handed me the last page of a letter, explaining,
“It’s all on that one page: all that you want to know.”
I read:
“You can never make a preacher, we feel—excuse us for telling you so frankly—you have no voice, you do not read well, your grammar is poor, your themes are not interesting. Your last Sunday morning’s talk on ‘Conscience’ was beyond our understanding. Several good supporters have threatened to forego their subscriptions if we have you another Sunday. Will you kindly suggest some one to come to us next Sunday and oblige, yours in Christian sincerity, etc.”
“Blunt, isn’t it?” he half smiled.
“The idea of asking you to send them somebody, after that!” I gasped.
“Oh,” he sniffed, “it’s all in Christian sincerity, you know!”
“Well,” I added, “there are other places, Tucker. Cheer up!”
Then a most discouraging change came into his eyes, he nodded his head, and replied, with vigor,
“The trouble of it is, Priddy, what they say is all true, every word of it! I have a terrible voice and can’t seem to get my words out. I don’t know much about grammar; never had much of a chance on the farm. I’m not quick to learn like so many here. I have to plod and plod and plod. As for interesting sermons, why, if they aren’t interesting I do the best I can!”
I wanted to ask him, then, why he persisted in entering the ministry, but I couldn’t find courage to do so, but he had read my thoughts, for he said, immediately,
“You wonder why, if I know all this, I enter the ministry, and fight against hope? Well, I’ll tell you. I have felt, right along, that I might break down my handicaps. At least I thought I would give myself a thorough trial, no matter how bitter the disappointment of failure might be. I didn’t mind losing two or three places at first, if I could finally master myself. It was a sort of inherent vanity of mine that I could succeed. But this—this seems to be a judgment on me, I guess. I think I’ll pack up and go out and become—oh, anything that pays day wages. At least, I can try to be a good layman!”
“Why don’t you try it another year?” I suggested. “Things might turn.”
“How can I stay here if I can’t earn some money by preaching?” he asked. “If no church will take me, why, I shall have to leave the Seminary.”
“I wouldn’t leave before having a good talk with some of the professors,” I suggested. “I think you have the sort of a spirit which will finally prevail, Tucker.”
“Oh,” he replied, “I haven’t got much spirit—now—after that letter. They might have borne with me a month or two longer—perhaps I should have surprised them.” Then he laughed, bitterly. “You can’t guess why I came into the library with my troubles, Priddy, can you?”
“No.”
“You see this!” and he indicated a large, open book, on which his tears had been falling. It was a huge, ancient tome, with metal bands and chipped leather binding. The leaves were yellowed, and from them came a dampish odor of musty age. It was a Latin edition of “The Book of Martyrs” opened at the page where the fanciful wood-cut showed heaps of flaming fagots, blazing in Smithfield market, directly under the bare feet of a woman, tied to a stake and holding to her breast a crying infant.
“There is a story about here,” went on Tucker, with a smile, “to the effect that a former student in the Seminary, when discouraged, would come into the library and pore over these dismal, grewsome pictures, and persuade himself that his own sufferings were trivial when compared with the sufferings of these martyrs! I thought I’d come and try it, too, but it only intensified my own misery!” He shut the great book with such an explosion that the dust issued from it and gleamed in the rays of the sun which streamed in through the window.
“But I’d stay on till the end, Tucker,” I persisted. “It’s worth trying—if you feel that you have a call to preach!”
“I have the call clearly enough,” he insisted, evidently cheered by my confidence in him. “If I could only persuade others of it, though, I should feel happier.”
“Probably you’ll have another chance to preach before you expect it,” I said, in conclusion, and left him with the intention of speaking in his behalf to some of the students, who might be able to encourage him in a substantial manner.
I went, quite naturally, to Burner, the upper-classman who had manifested an interest in my arrival. The big student heard my version of Tucker’s experience without comment, and then, after a moment of thought, answered,
“Don’t you bother yourself any further about him. I’ll do all I can. This is an upper-classman’s work, and it needs, too, some fine work by the professors. It wouldn’t take much to drive Tucker off. By the way, don’t mention to him about your conversation with me. I’m sure he’s got the stuff in him for a preacher. He needs practical encouragement and he shall have it. You just watch!”
Two days later, while I was in the gymnasium, practising alone with the basket-ball, Tucker appeared on the floor in his gymnasium clothes, and, apparently, in a very happy frame of mind. As he stood opposite to me and caught the ball as I threw it to him, he said,
“Priddy, I’m going to preach on Sunday; another chance to botch it.”
“Good for you,” I declared. “Where are you to preach?”
“For Burner,” Tucker explained; “he wants a Sunday off. Do you know whether he preaches from manuscript or not, Priddy?”
“I think that he does read—I know he does. I recollect to have heard him declare that it was only by reading that one could get logical sequence: his pet hobby.”
Tucker held the ball in the air for a second and sighed, audibly. “That makes it somewhat easier for me, Priddy. You see, even if I ramble on with notes, so long as I don’t read my sermon word for word, the congregation will give me credit for it, and I may have a chance. Anyway, I mean to keep on, even if I am rebuffed again.”
The following Sunday morning, while Burner was shaving, he said to me,
“I hope that Tucker has a sermon with some logic in it. Anyway, he will get back encouraged. Deacon Herring will see to that!” He turned his face from the glass and smiled at me through the lather.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“I have written a letter to my deacon—about Tucker and the tight place he’s in,” explained Burner. “Told him all the facts and asked him to work with us to save a good man for the Lord’s cause. After his sermon, no matter how good or ill it is, Deacon Herring will go up to Tucker with a radiant face, tell him how glad they are to have him along, and invite him to preach the following Sunday. Meanwhile the deacon will forward to me a carefully written, frank criticism of Tucker, from which we can diagnose his troubles, fairly, and then get some of the professors to work on his case. Oh,” and Burner’s face was gleaming, “I guess if there’s any good points under Tucker’s skin, we’ll uncover them!”
It was an unusual edition of Tucker who returned the following day. I walked with him, arm in arm over to the Commons.
“There, Priddy,” he chattered, “at last I’ve found somebody who thinks I’m called to preach. They want me to supply Burner’s pulpit again next Sunday! He’s to have another day off. Tired, he told me. That’s the best sort of appreciation, isn’t it?” he added.
Burner said nothing to me or any one else about the personal sacrifice he made in giving up two Sundays to the discouraged Tucker, but I knew that the money he gave up was much needed. Burner, meanwhile, received the diagnosis from his deacon, and reported matters to one of the professors to whom Tucker looked with great reverence and respect. The result of this came out in a diplomatic invitation, sent by the professor, for Tucker to come and have a talk about his affairs—a perfectly natural request for the professor to make.
It did not take the professor long—armed as he was by Burner’s report-to get from Tucker a statement of his situation. Finally, the professor set himself to work, not only on the written sermons of Tucker, but also on his enunciation, his gestures, and his habits of thought.
“The professor’s helping me wonderfully,” exclaimed Tucker to me one day, as we took a walk into the outskirts of the city. “He’s landed ker-plunk on my worst faults, just as if he could read me like a book. You’d laugh at the sort of mournful stuff I’ve been giving from the pulpit! It’s quite plain to me now. I’ve been too depressing. That’s been one thing. No wonder the people didn’t want some of the stuff I’ve been guilty of giving. It’s optimism they want, Priddy, optimism! The professor’s proved that, all right! Just you wait till next Sunday, when I preach for Burner. I’m to have a sermon, entitled, ‘Rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice!’”
“What have you been preaching on, Tucker?” I asked.
He smiled, as one who could afford now to smile at past faults.
“Judgment, and Conscience, and the Inheritance of Penalty, and such-like,” he said. “Heavy, eh?”
“I’ve no doubt you had some good ideas on those subjects, Tucker, though, as you say, they are a trifle doleful, one after the other.”
“Got thinking in a groove, Priddy, that’s what the professor thought. But, of course, I’ve other faults. I don’t speak up—just whisper: no life or action. But,” he went on with a confidential smile, “I’m working hard on that, too. Mean to brighten up on those things next Sunday; though reformation can’t come in a day or a week.”
The next Monday a most encouraging report came to Burner from his deacon. Among other things, the old man said in his letter,
“There were not many out to hear him, for they had not cared for his preaching of the previous Sunday: but to those of us who had heard him the first time, his second appearance was startling. First of all, he seemed to have confidence. That was the striking thing. Then, in his effort to make himself heard he kept on a high-pitched note, which was somewhat monotonous, but more effective than his former timid whispering as if he were afraid of bursting the ear-drum of a gnat which sat on his desk. He fanned the air like a windmill in an effort to remedy lack of action: but that was a good sign. It argues well for the young man when he gets on the middle ground. But his sermon! He really gave us a cheering word; that made most of the others, who were there, like him. Personally, he would be glad to know in what a different way I have taken the application of his sermon, to ‘rejoice, and again—rejoice.’ I wish him the best of success. There is hope for him. I am getting one or two people, who told me they like what he had to say about rejoicing, to write notes of appreciation to him.”
“Twenty dollars well spent!” concluded Burner, with a smile. “At the rate, he is going Tucker will have a church of his own, over which he will cast his blessing. He has confidence—now!”
Late in the spring, Tucker found himself enjoying somewhat of a local reputation among us, for he was a decided success, by that time, on his preaching expeditions. He said to me,
“Priddy, the other people think I’ve got a call—now. I had a narrow escape, didn’t I?”