Chapter XXXII. How, Though
I was Ready for Service, I was
Forestalled by a New Trouble,
and the Very Interesting Plan
Which Came Out of it
THEN the reward of the years came to me: I had my whole time to give to my parish, I had my home in the parsonage and a wife—the “brown-haired young woman”—to preside over it. Though Evangelical University had nurtured narrow, dogmatic, and discontented versions of faith in me, and though the first months of instruction in the Seminary had witnessed the destruction of these versions of faith, finally had come the larger world of faith, without narrow bounds, with deeper reaches and a much brighter sky. Like Burner, I had been called upon to pass through skeptical valleys, and to climb over high walls which bruised the spirit, but it was only to climb to the top of a lofty faith, at last, in which I seemed to behold the world of men, spite of their common sins, tending towards the central place—God’s garden. I felt that I could go into the pulpit and preach on themes, which instead of arousing the hostility of men, as the doctrine of Evangelical University seemed destined to do, would by their breadth, optimism, and freedom from Phariseeism win the repentant consent of men. I had gone into the Seminary tutored by Evangelical University to be afraid to let the sun shine on religion’s chief doctrines, I had come from the Seminary believing that the flood of light intensified the beauty of religion. So, at last, I had the opportunity of testing on community life this doctrine which comforted me with an inexpressible comfort. I bent to my work, with my wife at my elbow, as proud of my chance as any king called suddenly from obscurity to a kingdom.
I occupied a study whose front window overlooked the trees and gave me an excellent view of the sailing ships and steamers which dotted the bay. I had my typewriter in one corner, my desk in the centre of the room, and an abundant supply of manuscript paper on which I intended writing years and years of sermons for that parish.
One day, in spring, my wife insisted that I consult a specialist about a throat affliction which had been interfering with my parish duties. I sought one out and had him make a thorough examination of me. Gravely he plied his tools and searched my throat, and gravely he announced,
“You will have to bring your pastoral work to an end, sir. Your throat will have to be cared for. You must go, immediately, to a dry climate, among the high hills, and use your throat for a year or two with great economy. That is all. There is no better remedy.”
I gazed on him with startled eyes.
“But I’ve just got settled down,” I insisted. “I have no money saved. I have just married. Is there no other remedy?”
“None,” he replied, “I am sorry to say. You will have to do as I prescribe or lose your voice altogether. It is very serious.”
Late that afternoon I appeared before my wife. She had been planting some old-fashioned flowers in the garden. She saw by my downcast countenance that I had bad news.
“What has he told you?” she enquired. “Don’t quibble with me, please!”
“We’ll have to say good-bye to this place,” I began, miserably. “It’s all at an end: this fine dream!”
“Have to leave?” she echoed, faintly. “Is that it?”
Then I reported to her what the specialist had told me.
“And we’ve planted the garden!” I concluded. “We shan’t be able to stay here long enough to reap it!”
There followed some moments of silence, during which the full shock of the news had time to hurt her, and then she proved herself to be one in that sisterhood of wives who in proposing a comfortable escape from a domestic difficulty bravely commit themselves to hardships: for she said, with a smile,
“There, now, this will give you a chance to get to college!”
I looked at her with great astonishment.
“But we cannot afford to go to college,” I protested.
“Oh, can’t we?” she smiled. “Well, I suppose it may be possible for you to get a little church to supply near a college, and I will stay at home through the week, keeping an eye on the parish work while you study for your degree.”
“I had never thought of that!”
“You will have to be idle if you go to a parish, you might as well use your time in getting a college degree,” she insisted.
In two weeks’ time I had written to the Dean of an old New England college, of great reputation, and, on the strength of my seminary study, was informed that I should be eligible to enter the junior class at the college the following fall. With that matter settled, I soon learned that I might supply a country church, some miles from the college, and let my wife occupy the parsonage. The financial end of college thus concluded, I resigned from the church: the church in which all the sentimental ties of student days, ordination, and marriage were merged.
An old seaman came and boxed my household goods, and as he worked, tried to blunt the sting of the task by reciting to me in great detail, how Moses, after becoming the wisest man among the Egyptians, likewise became the greatest war general of his time.
“How is that?” I asked.
“Well, you see,” said the seaman, “the ’Gyptians was allus goin’ over the sands of the desert to battle, and the sands of the desert was filled with biting snakes, and the men died by whole companies from the glare of the sun, so Moses, he invented some red umbrellas and give one to every soldier and took ’em onto the blazing, snake-ridden floor of the desert. Result was, when the snakes seen the glaring umbrellas they was scart off, and the men was covered from the hot blaze of the sun, and went into other lands and won big victories under that same Moses!”
“Where did you learn that?” I asked, in great curiosity.
He mumbled the name of some strange-sounding history, and then returned to his work, for which I was paying him twenty cents an hour. That legend had cost me fifteen cents; it had taken him a full three-quarters of an hour to recount it with its frills and the many interjections.
Then my wife and I, feeling like the first man and woman leaving Eden, bade a tearful good-bye to the house, to the parish, and went forth to a new educational adventure, one that would have its own peculiar hardships, pain, and pleasures.