Sunday school by Aunt Louise and Emmy Lou. "Dr. Angell came into the
Sunday school room this morning and offered a rector's prize for pink
tickets earned for texts? Each child receiving a pink ticket for every
Sunday throughout the year to be thus rewarded? Willie Glidden has
goaded him to this."
Mr. Glidden had goaded the rector of St. Simeon's to other things which
Emmy Lou, nearing nine years, had heard discussed at home.
"Popular heads to my sermons for the newspapers and the bulletin board?"
it was reported that Dr. Angell had said indignantly. "Who but Glidden
wants notices in the papers or a bulletin board either? For forty years
I have sedulously refrained from being popular, and I'll not begin it
now."
But he came to it, popular heads being furnished by him weekly, in a
dazed pother at finding himself doing it, but still doing it.
"Prizes to encourage the Sunday school?" so report said his comment was
to this last proposition. "Pay the children of my church for doing their
duty?"
But the report also said that he calmed down on grasping that the
proposition centered about texts.
When Dr. Angell met the little people of his flock in the company of
their elders he addressed them much after the same fashion. "A big girl,
now!" or "Quite a little man!" he would say. "Old enough to be coming to
church every Sunday and profiting by service and sermon."
"Sermon," said he, on occasion to a little boy who said he didn't like
sermons. "The sooner you realize and profit by the knowledge that life
is one unending sermon, sirrah, the better for you."
Dr. Angell had gathered his own sermons into a book, as Aunt Cordelia
told proudly to strangers, a stout volume bound in cloth, with a golden
sun in a nimbus of rays stamped on the cover, entitled "Rays from the
Sun of Righteousness."
And now, his attention caught and held by the word "text," since from
his viewpoint to every sermon its text, and possibly to every text its
sermon, he was offering a rector's prize for a year's quiver of pink
tickets, these being the visible show of as many correctly recited
texts.
"Will you have Emmy Lou try?" Aunt Louise said to Aunt Cordelia. "We in
the Sunday school feel we should do all we can to support Mr. Glidden."
But Aunt Cordelia needed no urging from Aunt Louise. She did not feel
that respect for the institutions introduced at St. Simeon's by Mr.
Glidden that Aunt Louise felt, and did not hesitate to say so. But
anything inaugurated by the rector of her church she did respect.
"If Dr. Angell is offering the prize, certainly Emmy Lou will try. A
rector's, not a Willie Glidden prize, is a different thing. It will be
something for her to esteem and value all her life. I am sorry it is for
texts." Evidently the word had the same associations for Aunt Cordelia
that it had for Dr. Angell. "I have trouble enough as it is in making
her want to stay to church."
Aunt Louise explained. "The prizes are for the weekly texts heading the
Sunday school lessons. They have no connection with church or the
sermon."
"Well, maybe not," Aunt Cordelia conceded, "but if she is going to take
a prize from Dr. Angell for texts, and I shall see to it that she does,
it is no more than she ought to be willing to do, to listen cheerfully
to his sermons. I have been too lenient in excusing her from church."
On this same Sunday afternoon Emmy Lou went around to talk the matter
over with Hattie, and found Sadie there.
Emmy Lou and Hattie had been estranged, their first misunderstanding,
Emmy Lou, with St. Simeon's back of her, having taken one stand, and
Hattie another.
Emmy Lou spoke of kneeling at her church to pray and standing to sing
and Hattie corrected her. "Who ever beard of such a thing? You mean
stand to pray and sit down to sing."
Emmy Lou didn't mean anything of the kind and said so.
Hattie faced her down. "Don't I go to church? Doesn't Sadie go?" turning
to this person as referee. "Don't we know?"
Sadie was obliged to qualify her support. "We don't _stand_ to pray, we
lean our foreheads on the next pew."
Emmy Lou refused to be coerced. "I don't stand to pray, or lean forward
either. I kneel down."
"Then," said Hattie, "it must be because you are what my father calls a
bigoted Episcopalian, that you don't. Everybody else stands up or leans
forward."
Emmy Lou had faced the chancel of her church for four years. "St. Paul
doesn't. He's kneeling above our chancel."
"Then he must be a bigoted Episcopalian too," said Hattie with feeling,
and went home.
But today Hattie and Sadie, if anything, were envious of Emmy Lou's
opportunity. A rector's prize!
Hattie, to be sure, with the books of the Bible in her memory as were
David's pebbles in his scrip, once had felled the giant, Contest, and
won the banner for the girls over the boys at her Sunday school. For
which act of prowess her teacher had rewarded her with a little gold
pin.
And Sadie had a workbox, a little affair complete, scissors, thimble,
and all, a recognition of faithfulness at large, from her Sunday school
teacher, the same delivered to her by the superintendent before the
assembled Sunday school. And as she pointed out, the calling of her name
and the walk up and down the aisle to receive the gift were no small
part of the reward.
It did stagger them both that Emmy Lou should have to stay to church.
"Still," argued Hattie, "it will be worth it, a rector's prize. Though
why you don't say preacher!"
"Or minister," said Sadie.
"My brother once got a silver dollar for a prize that wasn't a dollar at
all but a watch made to look like a dollar," said Hattie.
"But not from church," Sadie reminded her.
"No, from the President Dollar Watch Company for guessing the pictures
of the presidents. But still it was a prize."
Sadie could supplement this. "My mamma heard of a little girl who sold
tickets for a picnic and won a locket on a chain."
Emmy Lou went home cheered. Aunt Cordelia had put the emphasis on the
texts whereas Hattie and Sadie had put it on the prize.
"A silver dollar that wasn't a dollar but a watch, and a locket on a
chain," said Uncle Charlie, overhearing her tell about it. "Well, well!"
A rector's prize should indeed be something worth the working for.
Fifty-two pink tickets standing for fifty-two correctly recited texts,
and attendance at church for fifty-two Sundays!
For Aunt Cordelia was as good as her word. The next Sunday she and Uncle
Charlie on their road to St. Simeon's met Emmy Lou returning from Sunday
school. Hitherto on these weekly encounters it was a toss-up whether she
should be allowed to proceed, or must return to church.
With Emmy Lou, face and eyes uplifted to Aunt Cordelia, mutely
interceding for herself, while Uncle Charlie articulately interceded for
her, it was a stand-off whether or not she should be required to go. And
when the worst happened and she must turn about and accompany Aunt
Cordelia, the propinquity of Uncle Charlie in the pew beside her had
helped her through. Until recently he had slipped smoothly rounded
peppermints banded in red from his vest pocket to her, or, the supply
running low, passed her his pencil and an envelope to amuse herself. But
she was a big girl now and Aunt Cordelia no longer permitted these
indulgences.
"Sermons in pencils too, perhaps, Cordelia," Uncle Charlie pleaded, "and
good in peppermints."
But in vain. "Charlie!" Aunt Cordelia but remonstrated, shocked.
Nor was Emmy Lou to be excused today. Aunt Cordelia, plump and comely
in her furs and ample cloak and seemly bonnet, and Uncle Charlie in his
top-coat, gray trousers, silk hat, and natty cane, brought up short on
meeting her. Not that she, in a chinchilla coat suitable for the big
girl she was, and a gray plush hat, with her hair tied with scarlet
ribbons, had much hope herself.
"I see you have your pink ticket in your hand, a good beginning," said
Aunt Cordelia. "I'm glad you walked to meet us. You can do so every
Sunday; the change and relaxation will do you good. Now, Charlie, not a
word. From now on, while she is trying for Dr. Angell's prize, she will
go back with us to church."
Emmy Lou found herself there within a very few minutes, the
parallelograms of pews about her filled with the assembled congregation,
she in her place between Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie.
And at home, where she now would be had Aunt Cordelia relented, what?
Her children doomed to sit in a wooden row against the baseboard until
she arrived to release them. The new book, for Emmy Lou is reading now,
left where one begins to divine that the white cat in reality is a
beautiful lady. Also at home on Aunt Cordelia's table that Sunday
institution never forgotten by Uncle Charlie, the box of candy, from
whose serried layers Emmy Lou may take one piece in Aunt Cordelia's
absence. Furthermore at home the realm of the kitchen with its rites of
Sunday preparation, Aunt M'randy its priestess, and delectable odors and
savory steam arising from its altar, the cooking-stove.
And in the stead for Emmy Lou a morning spent in church. Still she can
settle down and think of the prize which as reward for all this
faithfulness will be hers. Think of Hattie's gold pin, and Sadie's
work-basket, of the silver dollar which in reality was a watch, and the
locket on the chain.
Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou, and, brought to herself, she stands up.
Aunt Cordelia finds the place and hands her a prayer book. Church has
begun.
Amid form without meaning, and symbol without clue, the mind of Emmy Lou
wanders again, this time to that puzzle, the adult, no less impenetrable
to the mind of nine than the shrouded mystery of ancient Egypt to the
adult. For adults, Aunt Cordelia for one, here beside her in the pew,
love to go to church. The proof? That they of their own volition, since
the adult acts of himself, are here.
Aunt Cordelia touches Emmy Lou. She and Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie
and the congregation of St. Simeon's, Hattie to the contrary, kneel
down.
But the mind continues to wander. The adult is here because it wants to
be here, whereas Emmy Lou is here because Aunt Cordelia says she must
be. Her eyes, too, will travel ahead on the prayer book page to the
amen. What amen? Any and all, since amens wherever occurring signify the
end of the especial thing of the moment, whether said, sung or prayed.
The thought sustaining one being that, amen succeeding amen, the final
and valedictory one is bound to come in time.
"Get up for the Venite," whispers Aunt Cordelia, and Emmy Lou who has
lost herself on her knees gets up, pink with the defection. Not that the
Venite has any significance to her which brings her to her feet, but
that to find herself in the wrong situation at church, or anywhere, is
embarrassing.
This pitfall of ritual is called the service, though it might be worse
since the more service the less sermon. As nearly as Emmy Lou can grasp
it, at Hattie's church, beyond a sparse standing up to pray, and
sitting down to sing, it is all sermon.
Aunt Cordelia has to speak to her by and by again: "Get up for the
Jubilate," Emmy Lou having lost herself during the second lesson.
And yet? And yet? Can it be there is more in this business of church
than an Emmy Lou suspects? The congregation now going down on its knees
for that matter called the Litany, a tear presently splashes on the
glove of Aunt Cordelia kneeling beside Emmy Lou, her head bowed above
the big, cross-emblazoned prayer book that she always uses.
Aunt Katie and Aunt Louise wear white gloves or gray or brown as the
case may be, and feathers and flowers, and their dresses are varied and
cheery. But Aunt Cordelia still wears black in memory of Emmy Lou's
mother who went away when Emmy Lou was four. The tear falling on her
black glove and sliding off to the book makes a stain tinged with
purple from the kid.
Then Emmy Lou remembers this is the anniversary of the day her mother
went forever, and understands why the prayer book in Aunt Cordelia's
hand is open at the flyleaf bearing the name of its first owner, Emily
Pope McLaurin.
Are we nearer our dead at church? And being nearer, are we comforted?
For when Aunt Cordelia arises from her knees her face is happy.
"The four hundred and ninety-fourth hymn," she whispers. "Find the
place." Then in refutation of Hattie, "Stand up."
And Emmy Lou, finding the hymn for herself, stands up and with Aunt
Cordelia and Uncle Charlie and the congregation, sings heartily:
"The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord----"
While the service thus drags its length along, the hymn which Emmy Lou
both can find for herself and can sing heartily being the only oasis in
the desert of her morning, there is worse ahead. Between two uprising
peaks of the amens, one of which is reached with the close of the hymn,
lies that valley of dry bones called the sermon.
Dr. Angell is beginning it now. "'Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a
light unto my path.'"
This seems a reasonably clear and definite statement even to Emmy Lou,
not quite nine and slow to follow. But no.
"The Psalmist was given to imagery, which is to say, was an Oriental,"
begins Dr. Angell. And so one goes down with him into the valley of dry
bones.
The mind wanders anew. How can it help wandering? Albert Eddie Dawkins
is across the church in a side pew with his big sister, Sarah. She has
decided that he shall try for a rector's prize too. He is low in his
mind about it, and said so to Emmy Lou coming out of Sunday school this
morning.
Joe Kiffin made a proposition to him that he could not accept, Joe being
the big boy who drove the wagon and delivered for the Dawkins grocery.
"He said he would take me and another boy this morning to a place where
we can get all the honey locusts we want. A place where the ground is
covered with 'em. But we both had to come to Sunday school and stay to
church, and Joe says we can't expect him to take us in the afternoon
when it's the only afternoon he's got. You know honey locusts?"
Emmy Lou was compelled to admit that she did not.
"Well," a little anxiously, "I don't either. But if I and the other boy
could have gone with Joe, I'd have found out."
[Illustration: "With one pink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to be
achieved for texts."]
The other boy was at church too. By turning her head the least bit Emmy
Lou could see him. His name was Logan. But he wasn't trying for a prize.
He said they might make him stay to church--"they" meaning the grown
persons in the pew with him--but they couldn't make him try for pink
tickets, or walk up an aisle to get a prize he mightn't want anyway.
Mightn't Logan want it? Was there any chance that Emmy Lou would not
want hers? Fifty-two--no, fifty-one--Sundays now to come, and with one
pink ticket in hand, fifty-one yet to be achieved for texts.
Dr. Angell is ending his sermon. ". . . and so it comes that the words of
the Psalmist occurring in the liturgy of our service, are a lamp unto
our feet, and a light unto our path." And he and his congregation come
up out of the valley of dry bones.
And yet? And yet? Emmy Lou's eyes, fixed on Dr. Angell, are registering
on the retina of her mind for all time a figure which for her shall be
a type, dominant in its attitude of beneficent authority, hands
outspread above its people, rumpled hair white, beard white, robes
white, a shaft of light from a common window into heaven shared with him
by St. Paul, the bigoted Episcopalian, searching him out where he
stands.
As void of meaning to her, these gettings up and these sittings down,
these venites, jubilates, and amens, as the purpose of Dr. Angell in his
chancel. Yet who shall say at what moment Emmy Lou in her pew,
struggling along in the darkness though she is, shall sense the symbol
of the one, and behold in the other the office and the appointment?
And the adult who is here of self-actuated volition? The Aunt Cordelia
ever in her place in the family pew? Emmy Lou's eyes turn to this
person, and behold, her face is touched as by a light, too, and her eyes
are shining.
"Get up," she whispers as she herself arises, "it is the benediction."
Uncle Charlie is jocular on the way home. "And what did you think of the
sermon?" he asks Emmy Lou.
She does not know that he is jocular, nor that she too, unwittingly, is
the same in her reply. "I thought I understood the text until Dr. Angell
began to explain it, and then I lost it."
Fifty-one more Sundays, fifty-one more sermons, fifty-one more texts
between Emmy Lou and her reward! The next Sunday and there would be
fifty, and the next forty-nine!
As the weeks went by Emmy Lou discussed the prize with Aunt Cordelia,
and incidentally with Uncle Charlie who overheard the conversations.
"When Albert Eddie's mamma won a prize for catechism in England where
she lived when she was little, it was tea to take home to her mother,
and a flannel petticoat for her grandma, and she cried."
And again. "Sadie says it's an awful thing when your name is called, to
get up and walk up the aisle, but Hattie says that you don't mind it so
much if you keep thinking about the prize."
* * * * *
Papa came down once a month from his home city a hundred miles away, to
stay over Sunday and see Emmy Lou. "I was going to propose," he said on
one of these visits, "that the next time, you and Aunt Cordelia and
Uncle Charlie get on the train and come up to visit me. But it's no use,
I see."
"Not until I get my prize," said Emmy Lou. "I have forty-one pink
tickets in Aunt Cordelia's bureau drawer, and today will make
forty-two."
"I am almost sorry I let her try," Aunt Cordelia told her brother-in-law
and Uncle Charlie. "She begins to study the text for the next Sunday as
soon as she gets home on this."
Aunt Louise, as the allotted Sunday drew near, brought home news of a
tiff between Dr. Angell and Mr. Glidden.
"Mr. Glidden told Dr. Angell today that he had been looking over a
printed list of Sunday school prizes sent to superintendents, and had
noticed some excellent suggestions. Dr. Angell was ruffled and said, 'If
I'm fool enough to come to prizes, bribes for duty, I'm nevertheless
still capable of providing them.' I'm afraid he is getting old."
"Old," retorted Uncle Charlie. "It's being goaded by Willie Glidden.
Drive even a saint too far and he will show his manhood."
"Hattie's is a little pin," remarked Emmy Lou, even irrelevantly, "and
Sadie's is a workbox, and that other little girl's was a locket on a
chain."
The morning of the fifty-third Sunday came. "I don't know which she is
the more, proud, or alarmed, at thought of walking up the aisle this
morning for her prize," said Aunt Cordelia after Emmy Lou left the
breakfast table. "There are only three children who have come through
successfully in the whole Sunday school, Charlie. A little girl named
Puggy Western, according to Emmy Lou, she herself, and Albert Eddie
Dawkins. Two of the three are thanks to Sarah and myself, if I do say
it."
* * * * *
The moment was come. The Sunday school--Bible Class, Big Room, and
Infant Class--was assembled. Mr. Glidden, with Dr. Angell beside him,
had arisen.
"One at a time, Puggy Western, Emily Louise McLaurin, and Albert Edward
Dawkins come forward and receive their prizes."
Puggy Western went up first, in a brand-new hat and coat for the
occasion, and came back.
Emily Louise McLaurin went up next in a next-to-new coat and hat and
dress, and came back.
Albert Edward Dawkins, in a new suit and his first high collar, went up
and came back. A hymn, and Sunday school was over, and all ages and
sizes crowded around the three to see their similar rewards.
* * * * *
When Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Charlie on their road to church met Emmy
Lou this morning, her eyes, like her late accumulation of tickets, were
pink. She to whom tears came hard and seldom had been crying.
"And how about the prize?" asked Uncle Charlie.
Emmy Lou, tears stoutly held back, handed it to him. He looked it over,
opened it, read her name in inscription within, then lifted his gaze to
her.
"Well, I'll be doggoned!"
"Charlie!" from Aunt Cordelia.
"I surely will. The same to the other two?"
Emmy Lou nodded. There are times when one cannot trust oneself to speak.
And when Uncle Charlie handed back the volume stoutly bound in cloth,
stamped with a golden sun in a nimbus of rays, and bearing for title,
"Rays From the Sun of Righteousness," the nimbus surrounded, not a
golden sun, but a silver dollar held in place by Uncle Charlie's thumb.
"A dollar that is only a dollar, and not a watch," he explained
regretfully. "But somewhere in the week ahead we may be able to overtake
a locket on a chain." Then to Aunt Cordelia, "I'll decide it this
morning, Cordelia. Emmy Lou is excused for today from anything further
in the nature of sermons."
The next Sunday Albert Eddie Dawkins was absent from Sunday school. He
had run off, so his sister Maud explained, and could not be found.
Emmy Lou heard more about it later on from Albert Eddie himself. She
also found out what a honey locust is, though she had had to wait a year
to do so.
"I told Joe Kiffen if he'd take us to that honey locust place now, that
he said he would last year, I'd stay away from Sunday school. And he
did. And here's one for you."
Emmy Lou took the pod and bit into it. As solace and recompense she
could have wished for something more delectable.
VIII
STERN DAUGHTER OF THE VOICE OF GOD
HATTIE'S rule of life was simple, but severe. She set it forth for Emmy
Lou. "Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and you have to draw the line
between. And when you've chosen which side you're on, you have to stand
by your colors."
She went on to diagram her meaning. "I heard my father tell my brothers
what it means to stand by your colors. He said they couldn't be too
careful in their associates. That now they've joined the League for the
Right they must show their faith by their works. You and I can't
associate with anyone who chooses the other side either. If Lisa Schmit
will go to Sunday picnics, she's wrong, and you and I have to show our
colors and tell her so."
Emmy Lou hesitated at such consignment of Lisa to the limbo defined as
wrong, but Hattie said she didn't dare hesitate. She even showed a
disposition to take Emmy Lou's right of election into her keeping,
saying if she felt this way about it she'd speak for her.
"No, we won't come into your game of prisoner's base," she told Lisa and
Yetta at recess; "we're going to have a game of our own."
The contumely for the unfriendly act nevertheless fell on Emmy Lou who
knew them best. "She's getting to be stuck up," Lisa said bitterly to
her own group, with a jerk of her head toward Emmy Lou standing by
Hattie. "She won't play with Yetta and me any more because our papa
keeps a grocery."
"No such thing!" said Hattie. "She won't play with you because you go to
picnics on Sunday."
Was this true? Or was it because Hattie had told her she must not play
with them because they went to picnics on Sunday?
Hattie called this bringing of Lisa and Yetta to judgment "drawing the
line." It was a painful process to the rejected. Lisa went off with her
face suffused and Yetta who followed her was crying.
Next followed the case of Mittie Heinz whose mamma kept a little shop
for general notions, a stock that Emmy Lou never had been able to
identify, often as she had been there to buy needles or thread or
cambric for Aunt Cordelia.
Mittie read her storybook on the steps of the shop on Sunday and Hattie
explained to her that this made it impossible to include her in a game
of catcher.
"Right's right, and wrong's wrong," she said. "If we are going to draw
the line we have to draw it."
"I read my books on Sunday," expostulated Emmy Lou, for Mittie's
startled face showed surprise as she turned away, and her eyes looked
reproach at Emmy Lou.
"But they are books you get out of your Sunday school library, and don't
count anyway because you say you don't like them," from Hattie.
This lamentable and unhappy knowledge of good and evil was forced on
Emmy Lou when in the ascending scale of years she simultaneously reached
her ninth birthday, the Fourth Reader, and the estate of bridesmaid to
Aunt Katie.
Life from this eminence appeared broad-spread and beautiful, and
diversified by variant paths within the sweep of a far horizon until now
never suspected. But Hattie, youthful Virgil to her youthful Dante,
permitted personally conducted excursions only, and these along a
somewhat monotonous because strait and narrow path--all other roads,
whether devious or parallel, flower-bedecked or somber, ascending or
descending, leading but to questionable ends.