Chapter XXXV. Hot-Popovers
and a Cold Watch in the Station.
The Sleigh-load of Talent
WHEN the winter storms piled the river highway with snowdrifts, I had to put aside my bicycle and use the railway trains. This made it necessary for me to leave my home on the Sunday midnight train that I might be ready for my classes at college, on Monday morning. In that northern part of New England what storms could grip the land and put a stop to train traffic and cartage! One of my parishioners showed me, for my comfort possibly, an actual photograph of a drift of snow so high that a liberal load of hay on a wagon stood on a level with it, when a gap was dug through. I had packed fir boughs around the parsonage cellar wall, and that was soon covered with the drifts; even the window sills were reached by the snow at last. As for the crumpled hills surrounding the village, their lonely, hurricane-swept crests,—with the stick-like birches bending away from the north like timid creatures afraid to stand up, day by day, against those icy assaults,—presented a wild, dismal picture of winter’s fury.
My custom was, during those months, to arrive home on the Saturday afternoon train and immediately set to work splitting the maple blocks of wood into convenient fire-wood and stacking a week’s supply in the kitchen wood-box, while my wife held a meeting with the children of the parish in the parlor. Then on Sunday, I would preach two sermons. I had to wear my overshoes in the evening on account of the chill in which the vestry was always wrapped. After this service, my wife would have the supper table spread with preserved pears, hot pop-overs and cocoa. We would linger over this meal, the last I should have at home for a week, and keeping a sharp eye on the clock. At the first announcement of ten o’clock, the lantern would be lighted and the words of farewell be given at the door. Then out into the dark misery of the night, with my lantern flickering my shadow over the houses, and my wife’s lonesome sigh echoing in my heart, I would creep through the storms of swirling snow, which wet my hot cheeks, pass over the quiet bridge to the opposite side of the river and climb up a steep road until the silent, isolated station was reached. Across the river I could see the dark outlines of the village, and in the midst of it, a golden point of light: the light of my home. The train was due at half-past ten, but it was never on time and so I had long waits. The station-master left the station dark on Sunday evenings. He gave me a key with which I unlocked the door and was able to keep warm while waiting. After having lighted the swinging lamp, I would produce a book and let the slow minutes pass until the late train screamed around the corner, as if angry with itself for its slow progress between stations. On the first sound of the whistle, it would be a wild scramble to quench the light, lock the door, and rush out to the train before it pulled out from the station.
An hour later the train would draw into the terminus and leave me stranded, four miles away from my dormitory. Then I had to cross over to the hotel, engage one of the rooms and try to sleep till half-past five the next morning; if sleep were possible with such a screaming of freight-train whistles, and such a bumping of shifting engines as prevailed through the small hours of the night.
At eight o’clock the following morning, eyelids leaden with loss of sleep and my body weakened through lack of rest, and an inadequate breakfast, I would commence the first of my three Monday morning classes, and not be free from the intellectual discipline again until nearly noon, after which I would spend the afternoon in sleep or recreation.
One day the director of social service, a department of the religious work done by students, came to me and said,
“Priddy, we’ve got all sorts of concert talent about here. Would your church care if we should give them an evening’s entertainment?”
“They can’t afford to do much in that line,” I replied.
“But all we shall expect will be our expenses and a good, hot supper. We can hire a big sleigh and make up quite a party to go over the hills.”
“What have you got—for talent?” I asked.
He thought a minute, and then said,
“Why, we’ve got banjo players to spare, club jugglers, a sleight-of-hand performer, four or five male quartettes, a stringed orchestra, two readers, and a ventriloquist. Of course, the night we could give to you would find some of these students unable to go, but tell me what sort of an entertainment you would like and I’ll see what we can do for you. We want to make the evenings brighter in some of these isolated, north country villages. It’s a little bit of social service that brings its own reward, for the boys like to get out and have a good country supper!”
He was able, finally, to make up a program which included a reader, a young professor who would swing flaming clubs, a sleight-of-hand performer and a male quartette.
On the afternoon appointed, these artists, wrapped up in thick clothes, appeared in front of a dormitory and were packed into a huge barge on runners until, including some invited professors and their wives, we numbered twenty or more.
The four horses, with streamers of brass bells hanging in front of them jingled over the packed snow roads of the village and finally brought us into the less used hill roads, which, in places rambled over the hills until the climb seemed interminable. The snow began to fall and we plunged down the steep declivities, half blinded by it, but opposing the storm with jokes, songs and banter.
On a shelf of road, which had been cut from a steep hillside, and which the winds, unhindered by protecting wall or trees, had stripped of snow and left glare ice for the sleigh to cross, our runners skidded to such an angle that we were threatened with an overturn that would have hurled us down the steep bank, had not some of the students leaped to the ground, and by sheer strength, aided by the careful control of the driver, kept the sleigh to the road until we were in safety.
Then as the twilight set in, and there were no sign-posts to guide us, we stopped at the first house and asked how far we were from the village. An old woman, dressed in a greasy print wrapper, and drawing gulps of smoke from a briar pipe, said she guessed we were “nigh four miles this side of it.” We drove through the storm for a quarter of an hour more, and then, thinking that we should be coming in sight of the village, we stopped a man who was going to his barn with milking cans and repeated our request as to how far we were from the village, and, as if he had been in league with the old woman with the pipe, a mile back he said,
“’Bout four mile, I’d say!”
Hopefully, then, we rumbled and scraped down a hill for another half hour, and then, meeting another sleigh, coming in our direction, our driver hailed the man at the reins, who was muffled to his ears in a swathing of crazy-quilt, and shouted,
“How far are we from the village?”
And much to our dismay, a rumbling answer came from the folds of the crazy-quilt, which we had to interpret as,
“Jes’ four mile!”
Ten minutes, later, however, we had the joy of arriving hungry, cold, but not without spirit, at the church door, where, under kerosene lamps, and on white paper table-cloths, was spread a meal of hot biscuits, hot yellow-eyed beans, hot pea beans, potato salad, hot kidney beans, dill pickles, pickled beets, four sorts of frosted cake, luscious lemon pies and coffee.
After the supper, the students went into my church and found a hundred of the villagers gathered, in spite of the storm. The quartette sang entrancingly their college jingles. The young professor swung his flaming clubs, until, when he was in the midst of some complicated spirals his alcohol-soaked rags burnt out, unexpectedly, and he had to apologize since he could not go on with his novel act because his “spirits had given out.” The reader gave, with great effect, a memorable quarrel between man and wife, and sparkling anecdotes which would have taken the dullness off a yokel’s heart. Then the star of the concert, the sleight-of-hand performer began his skilful mysteries. He made a pencil cling to the palm of his hand, brought flags and flowers from an empty hat, multiplied a billiard ball into six, wafted a half dollar into thin air, and, finally, produced a pack of cards, at the sight of which, I thought my deacons would institute proceedings of worldliness against me for allowing it, but which, when made to do the weirdest acts, finally reconciled even the most austere of them; so much so that one grim Puritan even came forward and held the pack—after much persuasion—while the man of mystery seemed to change them without the holder’s knowledge.
At the close of the entertainment, the college delegation, after going, every one, to the church women and declaring that they had never eaten a better supper than had been provided, got into the sleigh, the driver cracked his long whip with a deft explosion for the ears of the on-looking villagers, and with a hearty yell, they started on their way down the river road through the storm, and I stood with my wife at our door until their songs died away among the midnight shadows of the hills and storm.