slim, brisk young man. Emmy Lou knew him well. She liked Mr. Glidden. He
came to see Aunt Louise, and admired her. Week days he was a young man
who was going to do credit to his father and mother. Aunt Cordelia said
so. Sundays, if he let his Christian zeal carry him too far, his betters
at St. Simeon's would have to call him down. Uncle Charlie who was a
warden at St. Simeon's said so, curtly, in a way most disturbing.
In announcing Recruiting Sunday, Mr. Glidden spoke with feeling. "In the
business-run world of today," he told his Sunday school, "St. Simeon's
must look at things in a business way. What with Rally Day and
Canvassing Day in the other Sunday schools, St. Simeon's stands no
chance. Emulation must be met with emulation. Let St. Simeon's get out
and work. And while it works,"--Mr. Glidden colored; he was young--"let
it not forget it shall be its Superintendent's earnest and also daily
prayer that it be permitted to bring even the least of these into the
fold."
Furthermore, there should be inducements. "For every new scholar brought
in," said Mr. Glidden, "there shall be an emblazoned card. For every
five emblazoned cards there shall be a prize. Cards and prizes I shall
take pleasure in giving out of my own pocket."
In the light of after events, as Emmy Lou grasped them, the weakness in
the affair lay in Mr. Glidden's failure sufficiently to safeguard his
prayer.
Emmy Lou had considerable data about prayer, gathered from her two
friends, Hattie being given to data, and Sadie being given to prayer. As
Hattie expounded prayer as exemplified through Sadie, one fact stands
paramount. You should be specifically certain in both what you ask and
how you ask it. For the answer can be an answer and yet be calamitous
too. Hattie used the present disturbing case with Sadie for her proof.
Sadie and her brother decided they wanted a little sister, and would
pray for one. They did pray, fervently and trustfully, being Methodists,
as Hattie pointed out, night after night, each beside her or his little
white bed. And each was answered. It was twin little sisters. Since
when, Sadie was almost as good as lost to her two friends, through
having to hold one little sister while her mother held the other.
"You've got to make what you want clear," Hattie argued. "They both
prayed for a little sister at the same time. If they'd prayed, Sadie one
night, and Anselm the next, or if they'd said it was the same little
sister, they wouldn't 'a' had a double answer and so been oversupplied."
Sadie was torn with conflict over it herself. Her little sisters weren't
justified to her yet, but she wasn't going to admit they might not still
be, though the strain on her Christian zeal was great.
For at Sadie's Sunday school you did not get a prize for the new
scholars you brought in on Canvassing Day. You got a prize when the next
Canvassing Day came around, if they were still there. And Canvassing Day
was nearly here again, and her scholars were failing her.
"It's no easy thing to be a Methodist," she said in one of her moments
of respite from a little sister, talking about it with pride through her
gloom. "You work for all you get! When I could look my scholars up every
week, and go by for 'em with Tom and the barouche when the weather was
bad, I had them there for roll-call every Sunday. But now that I have to
hold my little sisters and we haven't Tom or the barouche either because
on account of my little sisters we can't afford them, they've backslid
and dropped out."
Hattie had data as to that, too. "You needn't be so bitter about it,
Sadie. I know you mean me! You went around and picked your scholars up
anywhere you could find 'em, and I did too. It wasn't as if any one of
'em had a call to your Sunday school. Or as if they had a conviction.
Except Mamie Sessums whose conviction took her away."
Sadie spoke even more bitterly. "You needn't count on Mamie. Because
she had had a conviction that took her away from where she was, I
counted on her the most of any of mine."
Hattie was positive. "But the conviction she has now took her away from
yours. Her mother thinks there is too much about falling from grace at
your Sunday school; she doesn't think it nice for little girls to hear
so much about sin."
"She wouldn't have fallen from grace herself if I could have kept after
her," from Sadie. "If I hadn't to hold my little sisters Mamie wouldn't
be a backslider now. But my little sisters will be justified to me yet.
I'm not going back on prayer."
It all emphasized the need of exceeding caution in prayer. Emmy Lou
never had thought of it so. Time was, in fact, when, praying her "Gentle
Jesus," at Aunt Cordelia's knee, she poured it out in Aunt Cordelia's
lap, so to speak, and left it there. Not that Aunt Cordelia had not
made her understand that prayer goes to God. But that Aunt Cordelia who
attended to everything else for her would see about getting it there.
But that was when Emmy Lou was a baby thing, and God the nebulous center
of a more nebulous setting, with the kindly and cheery aspect as well as
the ivory beard of---- Was it Dr. Angell, the rector of St. Simeon's? Or
was there in the background of Emmy Lou's memory a yet more patriarchal
face, reverent through benignity, with flowing ivory beard? A memory
antedating her acquaintance with Dr. Angell? She was a big girl now, and
God was not quite so nebulous nor quite so cheery. His ivory beard was
longer, and in the midst of nebulae for support was a throne. But He yet
could be depended on to be kindly. Aunt Cordelia was authority for that.
Her concept of prayer, too, had moved forward; prayer in her mind's eye
now taking the form of little white cocked-hat _billets-doux_ winging
out of the postbox of the heart, and, like so many white doves, speeding
up to the blue of Heaven. If God was not too busy, or too bothered, as
grown people sometimes are on trying days, she even could fancy Him
smiling pleasantly, if absently, as grown-up people do, when the
cocked-hat _billets-doux_, a sort of morning mail, were brought in to
Him.
And so she was glad that Sadie was not going back on prayer, but was
sure that her little sisters would be justified to her. Indeed, her
heart had gone out to Sadie about it, and she had sent up _billets-doux_
of her own, and would send more, that the little sisters should be
justified to her.
But from this new point of view supplied by Hattie, the winging
_billets-doux_, as in the mind's eye they sailed upward, seemed to
droop a little, weighted with the need of exceeding caution in prayer.
And in the light of this revelation God in His aspect changed once more,
again gaining in ivory beard and in throne what He again lost in cheer.
Long ago Aunt Cordelia used to rock her to sleep with a hymn. Emmy Lou
had thought she knew its words, "Behind a frowning providence, He hides
a smiling face." Could she have reversed it? She had been known to do
such things before. All this while had it been saying: "Behind a smiling
providence, He hides a frowning face?"
At Emmy Lou's own home Aunt M'randy the cook, like Hattie, seemed to
feel that prayer not sufficiently set around with safeguards and
specifications could prove a boomerang. "Didn't I w'ar myse'f out with
prayer to get rid er that no-account nigger house-boy Bob? To hev' thet
prayer swing eroun' with this worse-account house-boy, Tom?"
Tom had gone to Hattie's house from Sadie's where they no longer could
afford to have him, but he had not stayed there. He didn't get along
with the cook. From there he came to be house-boy for Aunt Cordelia
where Bob couldn't get along with the cook. Tom's idea of his importance
apparently was in the number of places he had lived, and his
qualifications he summed up in a phrase: "I ca'ies my good-will with me
to the pussons I wuks foh."
The morning after Recruiting Sunday had been announced at St. Simeon's
Sunday school, Uncle Charlie spoke of it at the breakfast table. He
didn't seem to think much of it, and referred to it by another name,
calling it an innovation.
Aunt Louise, on the contrary, defended it. She was teaching in the
Sunday school now. "If everyone would show the energy and
progressiveness of Mr. Glidden since he took the Sunday school," she
said with spirit, "St. Simeon's would soon look up."
"Glidden!" said Uncle Charlie. "Willie Glidden! Pshaw!"
"Why you speak of him in that tone I don't see, unless it is because you
are determined to oppose every innovation he proposes."
"I oppose his innovations?" heatedly. "On the contrary I am in favor of
giving him his way so he may hang himself in his innovations the
sooner." And Uncle Charlie, getting up to go downtown, slammed the door.
Which would have been astounding, Uncle Charlie being jocular and not
given to slamming doors, had it not to do with that one of the many
worlds in the firmament of the Sundays, St. Simeon's. Emmy Lou was glad
she understood these things better now. For persons altogether amiable
in the affairs of the week-days to grow touchy and heated over the
affairs of Sundays is only a measure of their Christian zeal. There was
comfort and reassurance in the knowledge. Time was when it would have
frightened her to have Uncle Charlie slam the door, and made her choke
over her waffle, and sent her down from her chair and round to Aunt
Cordelia for comfort and reassurance.
Aunt Louise, addressing herself to Aunt Cordelia in her place behind the
coffeepot, still further defended Mr. Glidden.
"He is even waking dear old Dr. Angell a bit. Not that we don't love Dr.
Angell as he is, of course," hastily, "but he does lack
progressiveness."
"Which may be why some of us do love him," said Aunt Cordelia tartly.
Aunt Cordelia! Pleasant soul! Who rarely was known to sacrifice good
temper even to Christian zeal! Emmy Lou choked on her waffle despite
all! "But don't draw me into it! I decline to take sides."
"Which means, of course, that you've taken one," said Aunt Louise. "As
if I could ever expect you to side with me against Brother Charlie."
"And if I do agree with Charlie, what then? To have the running of St.
Simeon's passed over his head to Willie Glidden! The church our own
grandfather gave the ground for! And he the senior warden who has run
St. Simeon's his way for thirty faithful years!"
And Aunt Cordelia, getting up from behind the coffeepot and going toward
the pantry to see about the ordering, broke forth into hymn, as was her
way when ruffled. Emphatic hymn. And always the same hymn, too, Aunt
Cordelia, like Uncle Charlie, objecting to innovations. Emmy Lou was
long familiar with this hymn as barometer of Aunt Cordelia's state of
being:
"Let the fiery, cloudy _pillow_,"
sang Aunt Cordelia, flinging open the refrigerator door.
What it meant, a fiery, cloudy pillow, further than that Aunt Cordelia
was outdone, was another thing. Emmy Lou always intended to ask, but the
very fact that Aunt Cordelia only sang it when outdone prevented--that
and the additional fact that when Aunt Cordelia was outdone Emmy Lou in
distress of mind was undone.
Aunt Louise waited until Aunt Cordelia, who could be seen through the
open doorway, straightened up from her inspection of the refrigerator.
"Still," she said, "you won't object that I entered Emmy Lou's name at
Sunday school yesterday as a recruiter? To try her best and get a
prize?"
"I do object if there are tickets about it," emphatically. "You can take
care of them for her if so. Willie Glidden has gone mad over tickets.
What with her blue tickets for attendance one place in my bureau
drawer, and her pink tickets for texts in another place, I won't be
bothered further."
Yet what were Sunday schools without tickets? Emmy Lou getting down from
the breakfast table, her still unfinished waffle abandoned for all time
now, was dumbfounded. The one thing common to all Sunday schools was
tickets. Though St. Simeon's under the accelerating progressiveness of
Mr. Glidden had gone further, and whereas in ordinary your accumulated
tickets for every sort of prowess only got you on the honor roll, a
matter of names on a blackboard, Mr. Glidden had instituted what he
called "a drawing card." At St. Simeon's, now, when your blue tickets
for attendance numbered four--or five those months when the calendar
played you false and ran in another Sunday--you carried these back and
got the Bible in Colors, a picture at a time. And, incidentally, a color
at a time, too. Emmy Lou had a gratifying start in these, last month
having achieved a magenta Daniel facing magenta lions in a magenta den,
and this month adding a blue David with a blue sword cutting off the
head of a not unreasonably bluer Goliath.
Pink tickets grow more slowly. Aunt Cordelia said that she could see to
it that Emmy Lou got to Sunday school, but she could only do her best
about the texts.
And she did do her best, Emmy Lou felt that she did.
"Say the text over on the way as you go," Aunt Cordelia had said to her
as she started only yesterday. "That way you won't forget it before you
get there."
And she had said it on the way, and had said it in the class, too, when
called on by Miss Emerine.
Aunt Cordelia, plump and pleasant soul, had ways of her own, and Emmy
Lou in ways even beyond the plumpness was modeled on her. Aunt Cordelia
said "were" as though it were spelled w-a-r-e, and Emmy Lou said it that
way too.
"'And five ware wise, and five ware foolish,'" Emmy Lou told Miss
Emerine.
"Five what?" Miss Emerine asked, which was unfortunate, this being what
Emmy Lou had failed to remember.
It was Tom, the new house-boy, who really started Emmy Lou's recruiting
for St. Simeon's. Hearing Aunt Louise ask her what she was doing about
looking up new scholars, he volunteered his help.
"There's a li'l girl up the street whar I wuked once is thinkin' about
changin' her Sunday school. I'll tell her to come aroun' an' see you."
The little girl came around promptly. It was Mamie Sessums. Emmy Lou
knew her at week-day school. Far from being without a conviction, as
Hattie had claimed, she now had two.
"My mother says Tom don't do anything but try to have her change my
Sunday school. He lived with us before he went to live at Sadie's. But
she says she's very glad to have me stop Hattie's and go with you. She
didn't send me there to have the minister go by our house every day and
never come in. Sadie's minister never came to call on her when I went to
that Sunday school either. Do you have tickets at your Sunday school?"
Tickets were vindicated. Emmy Lou hurried upstairs and came back with
all her trophies of this nature. Mamie seemed impressed by the Bible in
Colors.
"You get them a picture at a time," Emmy Lou explained. "The first one
is Adam in buff."
"Buff?" said Mamie doubtfully.
"Buff," repeated Emmy Lou firmly, since it was so, and not to be helped
because Mamie didn't seem to like it. "My Uncle Charlie says so."
But it was only lack of familiarity with buff on the part of Mamie. As a
prize, it impressed her. "I'll meet you on your church steps on
Recruiting Sunday," she said.
After Mamie left, Emmy Lou went around to see Hattie. "Don't let it make
you feel bad, taking Mamie away from me," Hattie told her. "I never
expected anything else. When it's not a call, nor even a conviction,
they're like as not to fail you on the very doorstep."
Sadie, at her window holding a little sister, waved to Emmy Lou and
Hattie on the sidewalk. It was hard Sadie couldn't be with her friends
any more. Emmy Lou sent up a _billet-doux_ that the little sisters might
be justified to Sadie yet. Poor Sadie!
It was Tom who told Emmy Lou where to go for her next recruit. She had
no idea it would be so easy. Sadie had worked hard for all she got but
it didn't seem hard to Emmy Lou. "There's a li'l girl roun' on Plum
Street where I wuked once, too. I'll speak to her, an' then you go roun'
an' see her."
With Aunt Cordelia's permission, Emmy Lou went around. It proved that
she knew this little girl at school, too. Her name was Sallie Carter.
She was the richest little girl in the class and said so. Her curls
shone like Aunt Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, and her skirts stood
out and flaunted.
Sallie had convictions too. She had tried Sadie's Sunday school while
her own church was being rebuilt, and she was just about through trying
Hattie's.
"My mother thinks it's strange that Tom should be sending you after me
too. Though he did live with us before he lived with any of you. She is
surprised at some of the little girls who go to Sadie's Sunday school.
And after she took me away they were the first little girls I met on the
steps at Hattie's Sunday school. My mother says I'm a Carter on one side
and a Cannon on the other, and everybody knows what that means. We're
high church and you are low, but she's glad to have me go with you to
St. Simeon's for a while and try it. Do you have tickets?"
Tickets and more, the Bible in Colors. Emmy Lou, explaining it, felt
again she couldn't sufficiently uphold tickets to Aunt Cordelia.
The very next day Tom came to Aunt Cordelia and said if she would let
Emmy Lou go with him to Mr. Schmit's when he went to get the ice, he
knew of some other little girls who might be persuaded to go to her
Sunday school. At Aunt Cordelia's word, Emmy Lou got her hat and joined
Tom with his basket.
The accustomed place to get extra ice before Tom came was Mr. Dawkins'
at the corner. But Tom wouldn't hear of going to Mr. Dawkins'. He
argued about it until Aunt Cordelia gave in. He said he used to live
with Mr. Schmit and drive his wagon.
Emmy Lou knew Mr. Schmit herself. Tom, after an inquiry at the counter,
took her through the store to the back yard where he left her, a back
yard full of boxes and crates and empty coops. Mr. Schmit's little girl
Lisa was here with a baby brother in her arms, and another holding to
her skirts, Yetta, her little sister, and Katie O'Brien from next door
completing the group. Emmy Lou knew Lisa and Katie at school, too.
Lisa's round cheeks were mottled and red, and the plaits hanging down
her back were yellow. She did not seem overly glad to see Emmy Lou
though she came forward.
"Well?" she said.
It made it hard to begin. And even after Emmy Lou had explained that she
had come to get them to go to Sunday school Lisa was unmoved.
"What do we want to go to Sunday school for? If we wanted to go to
Sunday school we'd be going. We go to our grandfather's in the country
now on Sundays. That way we get a ride in my papa's grocery wagon and we
get to the country too."
"But if you would," urged Emmy Lou, "it would get me a prize."
"Sure I see," said Lisa. "I see that. But if Katie here and Yetta and me
give up our ride out to my grandfather's, what do we get?"
"Oh!" said Emmy Lou, and hastened to set forth St. Simeon's largesse and
system in tickets.
"What do we do to get the tickets?" asked Lisa. "We're Lutheran and
Katie's Dominican. I don't know as we'd be allowed to. We wouldn't mind
four Sundays and get a picture, would we, Katie?"
Katie, whose hair was black and whose eyes were blue, agreed.
"Sure, we'd like a picture. But I don't know as they'd let me at home.
They said I shouldn't go to no more Sunday schools. The little girl who
was sassy to us and said they didn't want us there was at two Sunday
schools we've been to now."
"Still," said Lisa, "we'd like a picture. Which one is your Sunday
school?"
When Emmy Lou rejoined Tom, she was overjoyed. "And they'll meet me on
the church steps too. All of 'em will meet me on the church steps, Mamie
and Sally and Lisa and Yetta and Katie."
And now it was Recruiting Sunday. But the shortness of manner with which
Aunt Cordelia tied Emmy Lou's hair-ribbons was not on account of this,
Recruiting Sunday for her having taken its place among the minor evils.
Late on Saturday evening she had lost Tom, a case again of the
house-boy not getting on with the cook.
"After I wore myse'f out with prayer to git rid of thet no-account Bob,
to have thet prayer swing aroun' with this worse-account Tom," was Aunt
M'randy's explanation of the disagreement.
"They want me over at Sadie's house tomorrow, anyway," Tom said with
feeling as he went. "'Count of their grandfather walkin' in on 'em f'om
Kansas City sudden there's big doin's hurried up about the twins.
They're goin' to have a barouche roun' f'om the livery stable too, an'
they want me to drive."
Then Tom became darkly cryptic. "I tol' you when I come, I ca'ies my
goodwill with me to the pussons I wuks foh."
And now it was Sunday morning and no house-boy. "Charlie," said Aunt
Cordelia to this person, "I wish you'd walk around to the Sunday school
door with Emmy Lou. She's never been so far alone. Louise is not ready,
and she's to meet all those children on the church step where they'll be
waiting for her, and thinks she ought to be early."
"Surely," said Uncle Charlie. "I'm glad to. I've an idea it's about time
for Willie Glidden to be hanging himself in some of his innovations."
At the corner Uncle Charlie and Emmy Lou met Tom coming back towards
Sadie's with the barouche from the livery stable. One felt Tom saw them,
though he looked the other way.
At the second corner they met Sally Carter. Her curls shone like Aunt
Cordelia's copper hot-water jug, and her skirts stood out and flaunted.
She stopped when Emmy Lou stopped, but with reluctance, since it was
palpable she was in a hurry.
"I've decided I didn't treat Sadie right. My name's still on her roll.
Those little girls my mother didn't want me to associate with at the
other Sunday schools were on your church steps, anyway, and she wouldn't
want me to stay."
At the next corner they met Lisa and Yetta and Katie, scoured and
braided and in their Sunday dresses. They didn't want to stop either,
palpably being in even a greater hurry.
"As long as we're goin' to Sunday school we think well go back to the
one we started from," said Lisa. "That sassy little girl our mothers
said we shouldn't put up with was on your church steps anyhow, and was
sassy to us some more."
At St. Simeon's itself they met Mamie. "I didn't want to wait, but I
felt I ought to. I'm going back to Sadie's, and I'm late. Tom called to
us here on the steps as he went by in the barouche, and said Sadie's
little twin sisters were going to be baptized at her church right after
Sunday school."
"Which," said Uncle Charlie the while his Emmy Lou swallowed tears,
"hangs Willie Glidden neatly in his own innovations."
When Sadie and Hattie and Emmy Lou met at school the next day, Sadie's
eyes were bright and her face shone. Why not? As she pointed out, her
little sisters were justified to her, her erring scholars were returned,
her grandfather said he'd see to it that they _could_ afford to have Tom
back and the barouche too, and it all went to prove the efficacy of
prayer.
It would seem to. That is, of Sadie's prayer. Emmy Lou could see that.
She indeed had sent up _billets-doux_ in Sadie's behalf herself. But it
did not explain everything.
"Mr. Glidden at my Sunday school prayed too, that the least of these be
brought into the fold."
Hattie forgot her own right to grievance in the joy of this additional
data in support of her position. Had she not claimed that an answer to
prayer can be an answer and yet be calamitous too?
"Exactly," said Hattie. "'The least of these into the fold.' But he
didn't say which fold!"
Did not say which fold? To God who knows everything? For Mr. Glidden
meant his fold. Hattie, then, was right?
The concepts of Emmy Lou, eight years old, a big girl now, moved on
again. Behind a smiling providence God hides a frowning face. And those
winging _billets-doux_, already weighted with caution and now heavy with
doubt, in the mind's eye faltered, hung, and came fluttering, drifting,
so many falling white doves, wings broken, down from the blue.
VII
PINK TICKETS FOR TEXTS
THE walls of St. Simeon's conservatism had fallen. St. Simeon's, with
its arches above, its pews below, their latched doors, as it were,
symbolic, the Old Dispensation depicted in the window above its entrance
doors, and St. Paul, the apostle of the personal revelation, smitten to
his knees by light from Heaven, the figure of the window above its
chancel. Modern progressiveness, the battering-ram in the hands of
Willie Glidden, come up through the Sunday school himself but yesterday,
had assailed the defenses of an older generation successfully.