Chapter XXV. At the Heart
of Human Nature. A Confidential
Walk with a Dollar Bill at
the End of it. A Philosophical Observation
from the Stage-Driver
A FOUR hours’ journey by train, each minute going farther and farther away from thickly settled country, and then I found myself waiting on a depot platform for the stage-driver who was to conduct me to Upper and Lower Village, twelve miles from the railroad.
I looked around and when my eyes lighted on a wooden-legged man, seated on the front seat of a democrat wagon, I knew that I had found the conveyance. I went over to him and said,
“Are you going to Upper and Lower Village?”
He aimed some colored expectoration over his horse’s ear, watched it alight upon a fluttering piece of paper, and then, satisfied with his marksmanship, he said, gruffly,
“Ef you’re th’ Elder, why, I got a seat. Jump in!”
The day was excessively hot, and we sat under the full glare of the sun. We left the little railroad village and plunged on through the churned-up swirls of choking dust straight into the isolation of this world, into a part of New England where whole townships have not even yet attained unto the dignity of names, but like prisoners with their suffrage taken from them, must be known by mere numbers.
The forests had been leveled, and there were innumerable acres of deforested land covered with rusty branches which had been left after the choppers had trimmed the logs. After several miles, we came to wide stretches of plain, covered with blueberry bushes.
A dip in the road, and we had plowed through the last inch of dust: the wheels of the democrat rattled merrily over the stone road of Lower Village. Word had been telephoned from the first farm we had passed that “the new Elder was on the stage with Bill.” The women boldly stood at their doors watching; from behind many windows I saw intent faces engaged in taking a comprehensive glance at me. I maintained a stolid attitude, and pretended not to be aware of the intense and continuous surveillance to which I was subjected. We thundered over a wooden bridge, went up a steep hill, and drew rein at a long veranda, which “Bill” informed me was the “Office, whar you git down.”
A tall, timid octogenarian, in shirtsleeves, whose thick trousers were drawn up tightly above soil-daubed shoes, introduced himself as “the deacon” and conducted me to a little house down a lane which ended in a pasture. The hot air of the day was fragrant with the odor of sweet-smelling foliage. Crows were screaming in the distance over the tops of some burnt pines. A woman, tall and thin and pale, welcomed me with all the hospitality with which a mother would welcome a son. I knew from that moment that I had a pleasant summer before me.
The two villages were nothing more than single rows of houses on either side of a main road. That road went inland for miles and miles through immeasurable solitudes, where no man dwelt. We were at the end of the world, apparently.
Then began my missionary experience. I was passed from home to home, sometimes staying but three days in one place: the object being both economical and social. The cost of my board, under this arrangement, was very light on each household, and as each hostess was not satisfied unless she gave the “Elder” the very best cooking she could produce, my short stay did not permit any embarrassment to the menu. But more especially this arrangement made it possible for me to know nearly every family in my parishes intimately, as the association with the families at the table was the means of establishing more than a perfunctory friendship. They learned some of my shortcomings, and I was made aware of their needs. When, in the latter part of the summer, I was boarding in Upper Village, in the shadow of the mountain, and went down to Lower Village for a Wednesday evening meeting, one of the households expected me to creep into the house with the eldest son, go into the pantry and “steal” huge slices of blueberry cake. This done, the husband and wife would come into the kitchen, have a hearty laugh, and before I started back for my boarding-place, we would have our serious talk over matters of faith and life.
There were few well-to-do farmers in the community. The distance was too great from the railroads for the injection of much social life. The winters were filled with days when life was grim. Had it not been for the telephone and the mail, the life of that back-road would have been without any great attractions. But the very isolation of the villages, and the absence of many social opportunities through the winter, like a church and preaching, made these farmers the prey of traveling fanatics, who imported here and there the most fanciful conceptions of religion and sought, by all manner of persuasion, to turn people into Mormons and “New Lights,” “Holy Ghosters” and “Disciples.” It did not take long to see that some of these perversions had taken root in some homes, and I found myself having to attempt the feat of constructing a positive and less fanatical doctrine: a feat which at the time I did poorly enough, but which I took pleasure in attempting. But it was not formal doctrine or intellectual discriminations which those parishes needed as much as it was a social man, to impart into their midst, after the austere winter, a joke, a song, a story, and a friendly hand-clasp. If I had preached no sermon, but merely gone from home to home, from field to field, telling men and women and children that I was their friend, I believe that I should have accomplished the major part of the needed ministry.
The meetings were held in the upper rooms of two very solidly constructed schoolhouses four miles apart. Our meetings had to be announced in two kinds of time, for some set their clocks by the sun, while others set them by the Standard, sent over the telephone wires. The dim, chalky atmosphere of the rooms was always colored by rich green ferns and assortments of wild flowers. Even though the flowers were bunched in the necks of mustard bottles, tumblers, and cream jugs, and not always arranged according to Japanese art, yet the thought that the sense of beauty in religion found expression even in wild flowers apologized for all else. When the hob-nailed boot and the plow, year in and out, are uprooting and crushing field flowers, it marks the high tide of esthetic appreciation when the wearers of the hob-nailed boot and guiders of the plow take pains to pick those flowers and add them to their hymns, their prayers, and sermons in praise to God.
No small, narrow opportunity was mine, such as in my gloomier moments I had ascribed to a country pastor. Preaching a sermon formed but a fraction of my duty. There were young men and women who sought advice about the outside world, and their business chances in it. There were business colleges, academies, hospitals, and mills to propose to the restless ones, who, like young birds, were to try life on their own wings.
Entwined in the pastoral work, were many social pleasures that made my body strong and rested my nerves: adventures over the high hills for soul-subduing vistas of mountains and lakes; trout fries by the side of meadow brooks; picnics by the river; visits to bark-peeling camps, over corduroy roads, and encampment on a lake shore where at night the wild birds gave voice and were interpreted to us by a guide.
The golden-rod lined the dusty road at last, and the purple flowers took the place of the lighter summer ones, and it was time for me to return to the Seminary. The services were crowded that last Sunday; mothers brought their babies and did not care if the little ones did compete with me, in voice. I knew what was in the faces, as they looked intently on me, as I preached. They were thinking that this would probably be the last preaching they would hear until the following summer, unless some stray, itinerant evangelist strolled that way and opened up the schoolhouse for an evening. There were many tearful farewells, and then the people went out into the night. It was a clear night of stars and chill. As I left the schoolhouse, having bade good-bye to the janitor, for I was due to leave on the next morning’s stage, a young farmer stepped out from the deep shadow of an oak near the flag-staff and accosted me with,
“Say, Elder, do you care to go up the road a piece?”
I responded that I should enjoy a walk and a chat with him.
While we walked between two walls of trees, our way dimly outlined by the faint flicker of the stars, my friend said,
“I’m one of the bashful sort, Elder. You know that; but I didn’t want you to leave without having me tell you how much you have helped my folks this summer. The time you come in our house and played and sang at the organ for us, and cheered us up with a laugh, why it made things different in our house. Since mother died, we’ve been having a hard row to hoe, and you don’t know how much we’ve appreciated the cheering up you give us. It gets terrible lonesome out here through the winter, and I want to thank you for all that you’ve done!”
We took a long walk through the night, paying no attention to distance; but sharing confidences in true brotherly fashion. Then we turned about and when we came to the crossroad, in front of the schoolhouse, we clasped hands, and as he hurried, without another word, into the darkness towards his motherless home, I felt something crisp in the palm of my hand. When I returned to my room and had a light I found that he had given me a dollar bill for a thank offering.
The next morning I had my baggage on the stage, this time for a return. Bill, with his wooden leg, greeted me, for by this time we were old friends. The word of parting was given at the post-office, and the democrat rattled down the grade and over the bridge. This time a continuous flutter of handkerchiefs and aprons, and a continuous hearty shout from the men and boys, followed our passage through the two villages and then we drove into the dusk of the road through the blueberry barrens, Bill aiming expectoration at every soap sign within reach, and confiding in me, on the way, the fact that he had loved once and “lost,” which he seemed to take in a very philosophical mood, for he concluded with this phrase, “You can’t get the hang of wimmen, anyhow!”