expected to know? The population of school, in common with the parallel
world of Sunday school, has no background other than school itself, but
assembling out of the unknown and segregated into Primer Class, First
Reader, Second Reader, even as Sunday school is segregated into Infant
Class, Big Room, and Bible Class, performs its functions and disperses.
Where, then, does Hattie come from?
"She came out of the cloakroom, and she asked me to sit with her."
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise laughed. They have laughed at Emmy Lou before
in this sense and so have others. She has said "Madam and Eve" happily
and unsuspectingly all these years until Aunt Katie discovered it and
not only laughed but _told_, and Aunt Louise, in whose person and
carriage Emmy Lou takes pride, was a "blunette" until she found it out
and laughed and told.
A little boy at school as long ago as last year laughed and told a boy
named Billy who Emmy Lou had believed was her friend: "Ho, Teacher told
her to wait there for the present, and she thinks it's a present," And
at Sunday school a little girl laughed and told: "She thinks her nickel,
that nickel in her hand, is going up to God."
In consequence of these betrayals of a heart too faithfully shown and a
confidence too earnestly given, Emmy Lou is cautious now, laughter
having become a lion in the path and ridicule a bear in the bush.
A picture hangs above Aunt Cordelia's mantelpiece. It has been there
ever since Emmy Lou came to make her home with her aunties, but she was
seven years old when she asked about it.
"Where is the man going?" she said then to Aunt Cordelia. "What will the
lions do to him?"
"He is going _right onward_. The lions in his path will turn him aside
if they can."
"Correct," said Uncle Charlie overhearing. "But the lions can't turn
the trick. See the man's sword? And his buckler? The sword of his
courage, and the buckler of the truth."
"Who is the man?" Emmy Lou wanted to know.
"The anxious pilgrim of all time," said Uncle Charlie.
But Aunt Cordelia, taking Emmy Lou on her lap, explained. "The man is
any one of us--you, me, Uncle Charlie, your little friends Maud and
Albert Eddie down at the corner, everybody. If we meet our lions as we
should, with courage and the truth, they, nor anything, can prevent our
going right onward."
"Oh, let the pilgrims, let the pilgrims then,
Be vigilant and quit themselves like men!"
said Uncle Charlie.
And now laughter has become a lion in Emmy Lou's path. Will Hattie, her
new friend, laugh at her? One can refrain from showing one's heart to
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, but in the world of school Emmy Lou needs a
friend.
Omniscience at home is strangely wanting about this world of school,
perhaps because Emmy Lou's aunties in their days went to establishments
such as Mr. Parson's Select Academy, where the pupil is the thing, and
school and teachers even a bit unduly glad to have and hold her, whereas
Emmy Lou at her school has not found herself in the least the thing.
In saying she was to sit with Hattie she was implying that she was
grateful indeed for the overture, whereas Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise,
taking it the other way, ask who Hattie is and where she comes from.
Aunt Katie said more: "We must find out something about her. Suppose you
try?"
But Emmy Lou in one short day has divined all she needs to know, though
she does not know how to tell this to Aunt Katie. Hattie is Hattie,
life a foe to be overcome, this world the lists, and Hattie the
challenged, her colors lowered or surrendered never, though the lance of
her spirit be shivered seventy times seven and her helmet of conviction
splintered.
And Emmy Lou?--who, as complement to this divination, loves
Hattie?--Emmy Lou, what with over-anxious debate, what with caution,
what with weight of evidence and its considering, is the anxious pilgrim
of all time, lions in the path and bears in the bush.
Hurrying off to school the next morning to resume the grateful business
of sharing a desk with this new friend, Emmy Lou found Hattie waiting
for her at the gate even as she had said she would be, and life today,
even as life yesterday from the initial moment of acquaintance with
Hattie, became crowded at once, even jostled and elbowed with happening
and information.
As the two took their places in the line forming at the sound of the
school-bell, a little girl pushed in ahead of them where there was no
place until she by crowding made one. But she did not care for that and
showed it, her curls, which shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water
jug, tossing themselves, and her skirts flaunting.
Hattie explained this. "She asked me to sit with her, that's why she's
crowding us now. Her name is Sally Carter. But I choose, I don't take my
friends." Her voice lowered and one gathered that following was an
accusation, even an indictment. "She's the richest little girl in the
class and wants you to know it. And she is an Episcopalian, too."
Emmy Lou felt anxious. Would Hattie laugh? "I don't know what an
Episcopalian is."
But she seemed to regard the admission as commendable. "Sally's church
gave an entertainment and called it for the orphans' fund, and she did
the Highland Fling on the stage."
Emmy Lou had no idea what the Highland Fling was, either, but the line
had reached the entrance doorway beyond which speech is forbidden.
Except for this, must she have said she did not know? Or might she
refrain from committing herself?
For there are different ways of meeting your lions. Emmy Lou knew two
ways. Last year at school a little girl stood up in the aisle for no
reason but a disposition to do so. Promptly and sharp came the rap of a
pencil on the teacher's desk.
Lion in the path of the little girl! Lion of reprimand! But the little
girl threw dust in the lion's eyes. "Oh, didn't the bell ring for
everyone to stand?" she inquired. And sat down.
There is another way. Emmy Lou walked in on her friends the Dawkins one
day, over the grocery at the corner, to find Albert Eddie in trouble.
Possibly more than any person of Emmy Lou's acquaintance, he seemed an
anxious pilgrim of all time too.
"Stand right where you are," Sarah his big sister was saying to him.
"You've had something in your mouth again that you shouldn't. Don't tell
me. Can't I smell it now I try?"
Albert Eddie was sniffling, which with a little boy is the first step on
the road to crying. But he met his lion.
"It's cigars off the catalpa tree," he wept, and went on into the next
room and to bed even as Sarah had forewarned him.
And so, as soon as Emmy Lou is free to speak, she must tell Hattie that
she does not know what the Highland Fling is? Alas, that in the
exigencies of sharing a desk with this person and incidentally
fulfilling the functions of the Second Reader she forgot to do so!
At the school gate at the close of the day Hattie said, "Come go to the
corner with me, and I'll show you where I live."
Go with Hattie? Her friend and more, her monitor and protector? Who the
day through had steered her by the Charybdis of otherwise certain
mistake, and past the Scylla of otherwise inevitable blunder? Go with
her at her asking? Did rescued squire follow his protecting knight in
fealty of gratitude? Did faithful _Sancho_ fall in at heel at his
_Quixote's_ bidding? Emmy Lou, who always went hurrying home because she
was bidden so to do, faced around today and went the other way.
Hattie lived in a brick house in a yard. Pausing at her gate she made a
proposition. "If you could go to my Sunday school I can come by and get
you."
"I go to Sunday school," said Emmy Lou.
Hattie was regretful but acquiescent. "Of course, if you go. I didn't
know. I'll walk back with you and see where you live. I'm Presbyterian.
What are you?"
Having no idea what Presbyterian was, how could Emmy Lou say in kind
what she was?
A little girl just arrived at a neighboring gate, an _habitue_ of the
Second Reader also, though Emmy Lou did not know her, joined Hattie and
Emmy Lou as they passed. Hattie knew her and, such is the open sesame of
one achieved friend, Emmy Lou found that she was to be considered as
knowing her also. Her name was Sadie.
"I've just told her I'm Presbyterian," Hattie explained.
"I'm Methodist," said Sadie. "That's my church across the street."
Methodist is Sadie's church, and Presbyterian then is Hattie's? The
names in both cases being abbreviated without doubt, and in seemlier
phrase, St. Methodist and St. Presbyterian? Emmy Lou is on ground
entirely familiar to her now, and she shifts her school-bag and her
lunch-basket relievedly, for while the pilgrim must not fail to say she
does not know when she does not, yet surely she may take advantage of a
knowledge gained through finding out?
"I go to St. Simeon's P. E. Church," she stated. "It's 'round on Plum
Street."
"What sort of church is that?" said Hattie.
"It's a stone church with a vine," said Emmy Lou, nor even under
questioning could she give further information.
Reversing the idea of Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise, Hattie would seem to
be gradually finding out who and what Emmy Lou is? Friendship evidently
must rest upon declared foundations. Emmy Lou goes to Sunday school and
her church is on Plum Street. So far so good. But one and yet another
lion faced, another and another spring up.
"Have you taken the pledge?" asks Hattie.
Emmy Lou in her time has taken the measles and also the chicken-pox, and
more latterly the whooping-cough. And also given it. But the pledge? Has
she taken it, and failed to recall it? And is it desirable or
undesirable that she should have taken it?
"I've taken it," says Sadie in a tone that leaves no doubt that one
should have taken it.
While the pilgrim must scorn to throw dust in the eyes through evasion,
may she not hope for advantage through finding out again? Or must she
definitely draw her sword and face this lion by saying that she does not
know?
Bob, the house-boy, sent to hunt her, is the instrument of her respite.
He brought up before the advancing group. Time was when he would have
said, "Reckon you is done forgot whut happened to thet li'l girl whut
didn't come straight home like she was tol'." But Emmy Lou is a big girl
and Bob acknowledges it. "Reckon you is done forgot whut happens about
dessert for them that don't come on time to get it."
The implication dismaying even Hattie and Sadie, they took leave of Emmy
Lou hastily.
"You can tell us about your pledge another time," Hattie called. "Maybe
we will come around to see you this afternoon to get better acquainted."
Despite Bob's implication, Aunt Cordelia had saved some dessert for Emmy
Lou. By diligent application to her dinner she even caught up with the
others and thus achieved time for an inquiry. Was it on her mind that
Hattie and Sadie might come around this afternoon?
"What's the pledge?"
"Which variety?" from Uncle Charlie. "It might be a toast."
"Or a pawn," said Aunt Louise.
"Or a surety," said Aunt Katie.
"And also an earnest," from Uncle Charlie. "Take your choice."
"Now stop mystifying her," said Aunt Cordelia. "There is altogether too
much of it. I won't allow it. A pledge, Emmy Lou, such as you probably
are thinking about, is a promise. I daresay some of the little boys you
know have taken one. I hear it's quite the thing. Now, hurry. That's why
I sent Bob after you. Dancing school has been changed from Saturday to
Friday afternoon, and you have only half an hour to dress and get there.
Aunt Katie is going with you."
"But," dismayed, "two little girls said maybe they would come to see
me."
"Well, I'm sorry. I will see them for you if they come. Now, hurry."
And Emmy Lou accordingly hurried. For while the claims of school are all
very well in Aunt Cordelia's regard, the claims of church, as Emmy Lou
understands these claims, are imperative. And, moreover, while school
centers itself and its activities within five days and its own four
walls, St. Simeon's is the center of a clustering and revolving
seven-day system.
On Monday Aunt Cordelia herself takes Emmy Lou to old Mrs. Angell's
sewing class for the little girls of the Sunday school at the rectory
next door to the church. On Thursday Aunt Louise takes her to the
singing class for the children of the Sunday school at the organist's,
across the street from the church. And her aunties share among them the
duty of getting her twice a week to dancing school, taught by Miss
Eustasia, the niece of Dr. Angell, at her home next door on the other
side of St. Simeon's. The Church assembles its youthful populace here in
force as Emmy Lou grasps it, old Mr. Pelot, who taught Miss Eustasia
herself in her day and the mammas and papas of St. Simeon's in their day
too, wielding a bow and violin and being her assistant.
Dancing school! Emmy Lou, hurrying, is getting ready. School among
schools, secular, sewing, singing, or Sunday, of endeavor, effort, and
anxious perturbation! Aunt Cordelia does her best to help Emmy Lou
along. She takes her in the parlor from time to time, after dinner,
after supper, and, sitting down to the piano, strikes the chords. Aunt
Cordelia's playing has a tinkling, running touch, and her tunes have an
old-fashioned sound.
"_One_, two, three, start now--" Aunt Cordelia says. "Why didn't you
start when I said? Katie, go away from the door, you and Louise both.
You have laughed at her dancing, and she won't do a thing while you are
here."
Then again to the endeavor. _One_, two, three, _one_, two, three, alike
the chant and hope and stay of dancing. Emmy Lou starts right; she is
sure that her right foot leads out on time: but the difficulty is, the
while she pantingly counts, to bring up the left foot on the moment.
Uncle Charlie stops in the parlor doorway while he lights a cigar before
returning downtown. "We might think the left foot was faithful to the
Church and only the right given over to the World, but that Eustasia
plys her art in the shadow of St. Simeon's."
One foot to the Church and the other to the World? What does Uncle
Charlie mean? Are aspersions to be cast on dancing by other than its
victims? Or can it be that Uncle Charlie, too, like Aunt Katie and Aunt
Louise, is laughing at her?
But today Emmy Lou and Aunt Katie go hurrying off to dancing school,
Emmy Lou in her Sunday dress devoted to St. Simeon's functions, carrying
her slippers in their bag.
Miss Eustasia's house is old and shabby. She lives here with her mother
who is Dr. Angell's sister, a lady who crosses her hands resignedly and
says to the mammas and visitors at dancing school, "Eustasia was not
brought up to this; Eustasia was raised with a right to the best."
Aunt Katie and Emmy Lou hurry in the front door. Miss Eustasia in the
long parlor on one side of the hall is hurrying here and hurrying there,
a little frown of bother and of earnestness between her brows,
marshalling some classes into line, whirling others about face to face
in couples. And old Mr. Pelot, tall and thin, with a grand manner and an
arched nose, is rapping with his bow on the mantel and calling for
order. Mammas and visitors are in place along the wall, and Dr. Angell,
who sometimes, as now, comes over from the rectory to look on, beams and
takes off his glasses and rubs them, and, putting them on, beams again.
All of which is as it should be, as Emmy Lou understands it; and Miss
Eustasia, born and baptized, brought up and confirmed, as it were, in
the church next door, had to have something to do. And St. Simeon's,
gathering its children together, offered her this, and at the same time
provided for Mr. Pelot, who, being on everybody's mind in his old age,
also had to have something to do.
And St. Simeon's did itself proud. As Aunt Katie and Emmy Lou came in,
its Infant Class, as Emmy Lou from long association knew it, was out on
the floor taking its first position, while St. Simeon's Big Room,
resolved into skirts, sashes, and curls, or neat shoes, smooth
stockings, knickerbockers, jackets, broad collars, and ties, was waiting
its turn to flutter lightly to places, or, bowing stiffly, go into duty
stoutly. After which its Bible Class, now standing about in confidential
pairs, would go through their new figure in the cotillion sedately. Or
so it was that Emmy Lou coming in in her Sunday dress and her slippers
understood it.
"Just in time," said Miss Eustasia to her briefly. "Get into line."
The Infant Class withdrawing to get its breath, Emmy Lou finds herself
between Logan and Wharton in a newly forming line stretching across the
room. She is glad, because they are her friends, having gone with her on
occasion to the circus, and she can ask them about the pledge.
To each nature of school its vernacular: rudiments and digits, head and
foot, medals and deportment, to the secular; bias and hem, whipping and
backstitch, to the sewing; chorus and refrain, louder please, now
softer, to the singing; sponsors, catechism, texts, to the Sunday; and
Miss Eustasia now is speaking to the class in the vernacular of the
dancing school.
"No, no, no," in discouragement of all attempts at conversation. "Eyes
in front, everybody, on me, and take the first position. Now, right hand
on right hip, so. Left hand lifted above left shoulder, so. Right foot
out, heel first----"
"What do you call it?" from Logan, desperate with his efforts. "Have we
had it before? What's its name?"
"Its name," said Miss Eustasia severely, "is the Highland Fling."
Emmy Lou found a moment before dispersal to interview Logan and Wharton.
"What's the pledge? Have you taken it?"
"No, I haven't," said Logan, not so much curt as embittered, so one
gathered, by his share in the afternoon.
Wharton was more explicit. "We don't have pledges at our Sunday school."
Emmy Lou knew another little boy, Albert Eddie. She went down to the
corner the next morning to see him. If the truth be told, she still
preferred the snugness of life over a grocery to a house in a yard.
Mrs. Dawkins, on what she called a pinch, went down in the grocery and
helped. She was there this Saturday morning, and Maud with her. Sarah in
the kitchen upstairs was mixing the Saturday baking in a crock, and
Albert Eddie, being punished, was in a corner on a stool.
Politeness dictating that the person in durance be ignored, under these
circumstances Emmy Lou immediately addressed herself to Sarah.
"What's the pledge? Do you know anybody who's taken it?"
Sarah brought Albert Eddie right into it, stool, corner, and all.
"Albert Eddie can tell you for he's just taken one. He's been a bad boy
again, and it wasn't catalpa cigars this time either. And after he's
been warned. I've made him promise now. Albert Eddie, turn round here
and say your pledge."
* * * * *
Monday morning found Emmy Lou at the school gate betimes. "I've got my
pledge now," she told Hattie and Sadie eagerly, as together they
arrived.
"Of course you have," from Hattie commendingly, "I knew you must have
taken one. Say yours."
Emmy Lou said hers:
"I'll never use tobacco, no,
It is a filthy weed,
I'll never put it in my mouth----"
She stopped. As could be seen in the horrified faces of Hattie and
Sadie, something was wrong.
"They taught you that at your Sunday school?" from Hattie.
"You, a little girl----?" from Sadie.
Whereupon the pilgrim, the pilgrim Emmy Lou, saw it all, saw that she
had but endeavored to throw dust into eyes, beginning with her own.
"I didn't get my pledge at Sunday school, I got it from a little boy. I
asked him and he taught it to me. We don't have pledges at my Sunday
school."
"We went to see you on Friday like we said, and you were out," said
Hattie severely.
"They changed the day and I had to go," from Emmy Lou. "I was at dancing
school."
"Dancing school? Your Sunday school doesn't have pledges and you go to
dancing school? Your church lets you go? Like Sally Carter's? And you
didn't tell us?"
"My church might give up pledges if it had to," said Sadie, "but its
foot is down on dancing."
Yet Hattie would be fair. "Your minister knows? What sort of dancing?
What did you dance on Friday?"
"Our minister was there. It is the Sunday school that dances. We danced
the Highland Fling."
The school bell rang.
"Well," said Hattie as she turned to go, "I'm Presbyterian."
Sadie bore witness as she turned to follow. "And I'm Methodist."
Emmy Lou lifted her buckler and drew her sword. Never dust in the eyes
again. For she knew now what she was over and above being a St.
Simeonite, having asked Aunt Cordelia. In this company it bore not only
the odium of disapproval and the hall-mark of condemnation, but from the
qualifying term applied to it by Aunt Cordelia would seem to merit both.
"I'm a low church Episcopalian," said Emmy Lou, the pilgrim, stoutly if
wretchedly.
When Emmy Lou reached home that day Aunt Katie brought up an old matter.
"Aunt Cordelia rather likes the looks of the little girl named Hattie
who came here. So I suppose it is all right for you to go on sitting
with her. What have you found out about her?"
What Emmy Lou would have liked to find out was, would Hattie go on
sitting with her? But how make those things clear to Aunt Katie?
"Charlie," said Aunt Cordelia to her brother that night, "what on earth
do children mean? Emmy Lou as she was getting ready for bed asked me why
Hattie's church and Sadie's church have the pledge and hers has the
Highland Fling? It isn't possible that she has confused dancing and
Sunday school?"
Uncle Charlie stared at his sister, then his shout rang to heaven.
VI
THE IMPERFECT OFFICES OF PRAYER
RECRUITING Sunday occurred at Emmy Lou's Sunday school the winter she
was eight. The change to this nature of thing was sudden. Hitherto when
Hattie, her best friend, who was Presbyterian, spoke of Rally Day, or
Sadie, her next best friend, who was Methodist, spoke of Canvassing Day,
Emmy Lou of St. Simeon's refrained from dwelling on Septuagesima, or
Sexagesima, or Quinquagesima Sunday, as the case might be, for fear it
appear to savor of the elect. As, of course, if one has been brought up
in St. Simeon's, and by Aunt Cordelia, one has begun to feel it does.
Hattie and Sadie, on the contrary, full of the business and zeal of
Rally Day and Canvassing Sunday, looked with pity on Emmy Lou and St.
Simeon's, and at thought of Quinquagesima and such kindred Sundays shook
their heads. Which is as it should be, too.
For, while there is one common world of everyday school in the firmament
of the week, drawing the Emmy Lous and Hatties and Sadies into the fold
of its common enterprise and common fellowship, there are varying worlds
in the firmament of Sundays, withdrawing the Emmy Lous and Hatties and
Sadies into the differing folds of rival enterprises, Hattie to the
First Presbyterian Church North, Sadie to the Second Avenue M. E. Church
South, and Emmy Lou with no status or bias as to pole at all, if we
except polemics, to St. Simeon's P. E.
And each one within her fold is so convinced her fold is the only fold,
it is her part to make all others feel this. Which is as it should be,
too. And, as Hattie pointed out when Sadie got worsted in being made to
feel it and cried, is only the measure of each one's proper Christian
zeal!
And Hattie, being full of data about her Rally Day, and Sadie, being
full of grace from her Canvassing Day, were equipped at seemingly every
point for making another feel it. Whereas when Sadie asked Emmy Lou what
Quinquagesima or fifty days before Easter had to do with saving souls,
and Hattie asked her to spell it, Quinquagesima not only died on her
lips but she and it seemed indefensibly and reprehensibly in the wrong.
Which Emmy Lou endeavored to remember was but a measure of Christian
zeal again.
And now St. Simeon's, awakening to its needs in such zeal, was to have,
not a Rally nor yet a Canvassing, but a Recruiting Sunday. For every
Sunday school with any zeal whatever has a nomenclature of its own and
looks with pity and contumely on the nomenclature of any other Sunday
school. So that Emmy Lou heard with a shock of incredulity that what she
knew as the Infant Class was spoken of by Hattie as the Primary, and by
Sadie as the Beginners.
But this department of Sunday school, whatever its designation, belongs
to the early stages of faith. Emmy Lou is in the Big Room, now, and here
has heard about St. Simeon's Recruiting Sunday.