CHAPTER I_A Circuit Rider's Wife

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A CIRCUIT RIDER'S WIFE

CORRA HARRIS

With Illustrations by William H. Everett

[Frontispiece: The old, burly country doctor bending above me.]

Philadelphia

Henry Altemus Company

TO THE MEMORY OF

WILLIAM

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. I AM CHOSEN INSTEAD OF THE PRAYER MEETING VIRGIN

II. I BUILD FOR MYSELF A MONUMENT MORE ENDURING THAN BRASS

III. THE REVIVAL AT REDWINE

IV. WILLIAM AS A LEADER OF FORLORN HOPE

V. GOD'S ANNUALS

VI. WILLIAM ENTERS HIS WORLDLY MIND

VII. THE LITTLE ITINERANT--AND OTHERS

VIII. I HOLD THE STAGE

IX. WILLIAM AND THE FEMININE SOUL

X. WILLIAM BECOMES A PRODIGAL

XI. FINANCES AND FASHIONS

XII. THE CHEERFUL LITTLE DOG THAT LED THE BLIND MAN

XIII. WILLIAM WRESTLING WITH TRAVELING ANGELS

XIV. CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT THE NATURE OF A PRIEST

XV. SKELETONS IN WILLIAM'S DOCTRINAL CLOSET

XVI. IN THE LITTLE GRAVEYARD BEHIND REDWINE CHURCH

XVII. BACK AGAIN TO THE WORLD

XVIII. CONSCIENTIOUS SCRUPLES ABOUT THE CHURCH

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Old, Burly Country Doctor Bending Above Me . . . . . _Frontispiece_

Brother Tom Pratt, a Prominent Member, Had Backslided

With Such Sad Hunger in Their Faces

"I'll Pay You, Parson. I'll Pay as Soon as I'm Able"

I Heard Him in His Study Singing

"It's Going to Be an Awful Night, Don't Go--She Is Not a Member

of Your Church"

Then He Took Up with Job in the Scriptures

Not So Much for Him as for Fear He Would Not Understand

CHAPTER I

I AM CHOSEN INSTEAD OF THE PRAYER MEETING VIRGIN

If you will look back over the files of the "Southern Christian

Advocate," published at the time in Macon, Georgia, you will find the

following notice--by a singular coincidence on the page devoted to

"obituaries": "Married--Mary Elizabeth Eden to William Asbury Thompson.

The bride is the daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Eden, of Edenton; the

groom is the son of the late Reverend Dr. and Mrs. Asbury Thompson, and

is serving his first year in the itinerancy on the Redwine Circuit. We

wish the young people happiness and success in their chosen field."

"Chosen field" had reference to the itinerancy, not matrimony. And

that was my "obituary" if I had only known it. For after that, if I

was not dead to the world, I only saw it through the keyhole of the

Methodist Discipline, or lifted and transfigured by William's

sermons--a straight and narrow path that led from the church door to

the grave.

But now, after an absence of thirty years, I am addressing this series

of letters to the people of the world concerning life and conditions in

another, removed from this one by the length of long country roads, by

the thickness of church doors, and by the plate glass surface of the

religious mind. They will record some experiences of two Methodist

itinerants and whatever I think besides, for they are written more

particularly to relieve my mind of a very great burden of opinions.

For William has been promoted. He has received his LL. D. in the

Kingdom of Heaven by this time if there are any degrees or giving of

degrees there, along with Moses and Elijah, and I doubt if there is a

more respected saint in that great company. We buried him a year ago

in the graveyard behind Redwine Church.

I was born in Edenton, a little white-and-blue town in Middle Georgia,

and my name was recorded in the third generation of Edens on the

baptismal registry of St. John's Church there. William was born

somewhere in a Methodist parsonage, and his name is probably written on

the first page of the oldest predestination volume in Heaven. In

Edenton the "best families" attended the Episcopal Church. It was a

St. John's, of course, though why this denomination should be so

partial to that apostle is a mystery, for his autobiography, as

recorded in the New Testament, reads more like that of a campmeeting

Methodist than any other disciple's. As a child its presence there at

the end of the shaded village street was real to me, like my mother's.

I did not repent in it as one must do in a Methodist or Baptist church,

but I grew up in it like a daughter in the house of the Lord. As a

girl on Sabbath mornings I entered it with all the mincing worldliness

of my young mind unabashed. Later I was "confirmed" in it and

experienced some of the vanity of that high spiritual calm which

attends quick conversions in other churches. And to this day there is

something ineffably sweet and whimsically inconsistent to me in an

Episcopal saint. The fastidious stamina of their spirituality which

never interferes with their worldliness is so satisfyingly human.

Piety renders them increasingly graceful in manners and appearance. In

Heaven I believe Episcopalian saints will be distinguished from all

others by stiff ruffs worn around their redeemed necks.

But all was different in the church to which William belonged, and in

which he had been brought up for three generations. The "best

families" are never in the majority there. You will find, instead,

besides a few "prominent members," the poor, the simple-minded, the

ne'er-do-wells morally, who have always flocked to the Methodist fold

for this pitying reason, because they find that, if fallen, it is

easier to rise in grace according to the doctrines of that church.

So, while William's father and further fathers had been engaged in the

tedious mercy of healing and rehealing these lame, indigent souls

according to various hallelujah plans, my mother and foremothers had

been engaged in embroidering altar-cloths and in making durable Dorcas

aprons for the unknown poor. This made the difference in our natures

that love bridged. That is the wonderful thing about love--it comes so

tremendously new and directly from God to recreate in us, and it is so

divinely unprejudiced by what our ancestors did religiously or

sacrilegiously.

To all appearances it would have been better for William if he had

chosen for his wife one of those pallid prayer-meeting virgins who so

naturally keep their lamps trimmed and burning before the pulpits of

unmarried preachers. They are really the best women to be found in any

church. They never go astray, they are the gentle maiden sisters of

all souls, the faded feminine love-psalms of a benighted ministry who

wither and grow old without ever suspecting that their hope was

marriage no less than it is the hope of the giddiest girl. However, a

preacher rarely takes one of them for his first wife. It is only after

he has been left a widower with a house full of children that he turns

imploring love-looks in their direction. And whatever is true in other

churches, it will be found upon investigation that most of the

excellent stepmothers so numerous in the Methodist itinerancy have been

selected from this class. But William was not a widower; besides, love

is the leveler of human judgments in such matters and the builder of

new destinies. So I was chosen instead of the prayer-meeting virgin to

be his wife--the gayest, wildest young heroine hoyden in the town.

We met by chance in the house of a mutual friend. I remember the day

very well, so blue above, so green below, with all the roses in Edenton

blooming. I was going to tea at the Mallarys'. I wore a green muslin,

very tight in the waist, but flaring in the skirt like the spring

boughs of a young bay tree. I had corntassel hair and a complexion

that gave my heart away. Mrs. Mallary, a soft, match-making young

matron, met me at the door and whispered that she had a surprise for

me. The next moment we entered the parlor together. The room spun

around, I heard her introducing some one, felt the red betrayal on my

brow, and found myself gazing into the face of a strange young man and

hoping that he would ask me to marry him. It was William, a college

mate of Tom Mallary's, spending the night on his way to his circuit

from a district meeting. He wore his long-tailed preacher clothes and

looked like a young he-angel in mourning as he bowed and replied to me

with his eyes that indeed he would ask me to be his wife as soon as it

was proper to do so. This was sooner than any steward or missions

mother in his church would have suspected. For, once a man is in love,

his sense of propriety becomes naïvely obtuse and primitive.

There is little distinction between a preacher and any other man as a

lover. William, I recall, made love as ardently as the wildest young

scamp in Edenton. This was one of the thrilling circumstances of our

courtship. I should not have been surprised if Tom Logan, or Arthur

Flemming or any one of a half a dozen others had made me telegraphic

dispatches of an adoring nature with his eyes, but I was flattered and

delighted to have melted the mortal man in a young minister who always

looked as if he had just risen from his knees. I do not know why women

are this way about preachers, but they are, at least they were in my

day, and, later, I discovered that the trait leads to curious

complications. Meanwhile, I left the course of our true love all to

William, feeling that a man who could smile like that must know what

was proper. We were engaged in less than a week and married in a

month. Women only are the conductors of protracted courtships.

Our wedding tour was a drive of twenty miles through the country to the

parsonage on the Redwine Circuit. And the only one who had any moral

impression of the day was the horse. I do not even recall the road

except that it swept away like a white, wind-blown scarf over the green

world, and that wild roses looked at me intimately from the fence

corners as we passed. William had a happy amen expression, but neither

of us was thinking of the living or dying souls in the Redwine Circuit.

The horse, however, had got her training on the road between churches,

and did not know she was conducting a wedding tour. She was a sorrel,

very thin and long-legged, with the disposition of a conscientious

red-headed woman. She was concerned only to get us to the parsonage in

time for the "surprise" that had been secretly prepared for our coming.

Toward evening the road narrowed and steepened and, looking up, we

caught sight of it, a little wren of a house, hidden between two green

shoulders of the world. The roof sloped until one could touch the

mossy shingles, and the chimneys on either side were like ugly,

voluminous old women who rocked the cradle of a home between them and

cheered it with the red heart of wood fires within. In the valley

below lived the people of Redwine Church. But the world was withdrawn

and could only be seen at a great distance through the gateway of the

two hills. One had the feeling that God's ancient peace had not been

disturbed in this place, and this was a solemn, foreboding feeling for

me as we reached the shadow of the big fruit tree in front of the

house, and William lifted me lightly from the buggy, unlatched the

door--it was before the day of rogues and locks in that community--and

welcomed me home with a kiss that felt a trifle too much like a

benediction.

There were two rooms; one was a bedroom, having a red, white and blue

rag carpet on the floor and furnished with a home-made bed, a little

stump-toed rocking chair, a very straight larger chair, and a mirror

hanging over a table that was covered with fancifully notched blue

paper. The other was the living room, and contained a cedar piggin and

gourd on a shelf; a bread tray, dishpan, a pot and two skillets on

another shelf near the fireplace, two split-bottom chairs, a table, and

a cat. The cat was a large, gray agnostic. He never admitted

William's presence by so much as a purr or a claw, and I have noticed

that the agnostic is the only creature living who can treat a preacher

with so much contempt. We found him curled up on the window sill next

to the milk pitcher, sunning himself.

William went out to put up his red-headed horse, and I drew a chair

before the shelf containing the bread tray, the dishpan, pot and

skillets, and stared at them with horror and amazement. Why had

William not mentioned this matter of cooking? I had never cooked

anything but cakes and icings in my whole life! I was preparing to

weep when a knock sounded upon the door and immediately a large, fair

woman entered. She wore the most extraordinary teacup bonnet on her

huge head that was tied somewhere in the creases of her doubled chin

with black ribbons. And, on a blue plate, she was carrying a stack of

green-apple pies nearly a foot high. Catching sight of the

half-distilled tears in my eyes as I arose to meet her, she set the

pies down, clasped me in her arms and whispered with motherly

tenderness: "I know how you feel, child; it's the way all brides feel

when they first realize what they have done, and all they've done to

theirselves. But 'tain't so bad; you'll come down to it in less 'an a

week; and you mustn't cry now, with all the folks comin' in. They

won't understand."

She pointed through the open door and I turned in the shelter of her

arms to see down the road a strand of people ascending the hill,

dressed like fancy beads, each behind the other, and each bearing

something in her hands or on his shoulders--and William standing at the

gate to welcome them.

"Who are they?" I asked in astonishment.

"It's a donation party. I come on ahead to warn you. Them's the

members of the Redwine, Fellowship and Macedonia churches, bringin'

things to celebrate your weddin'. I'm Glory White, wife of one of the

stewards at Redwine, and we air powerful glad to have you. So you

mustn't cry till the folk air all gone, or they'll think you ain't

satisfied, which won't do your husband any good."

That was my first lesson in suppressing my natural feelings. As the

years went by I had more lessons in it than in anything else. And I

reckon it is not such a bad thing to do, for if one's natural feelings

are suppressed long enough one develops supernatural feelings and feels

surer of having a soul.

The donation party poured in, Sister Glory White and I standing between

the kitchen table and the fireplace to receive them. William acted as

master of ceremonies, conducting each man and woman forward with great

_empressement_ for the introduction. Everyone called me "Sister

Thompson" and laid a "donation" on the table in passing. I was not

aware at the time of their importance, but as William only received two

hundred and forty-five dollars for his salary that year we should have

starved but for an occasional donation party. In fact, they are

smiling providential instances in the memory of every Methodist

itinerant. Upon this occasion they ranged from bedquilts to hams and

sides of bacon; from jam and watermelon rind preserves to flour, meal

and chair tidies. One old lady brought a package of Simmons' Liver

Regulator, and Brother Billy Fleming contributed a long twist of "dog

shank"--a homecured tobacco. The older women spread the viands for the

"infare," as the wedding dinner was called, upon the table, and we

stood about it to eat amid shouts and laughter and an exchange of wit

as good natured as it was horrifying to bridal ears.

"So," said a huge old Whitman humorist that I afterward identified as

Brother Sam White, as he clasped both my hands in his, "this is Brother

Thompson's new wife"--as if I were one of a series--"you are welcome,

ma'am. He's been mightily in need of a wife to perk him up. He's a

good preacher, but sorter like my young horse Selim. There ain't a

better colt in the country, only he don't show it; sperit's too quiet

unless I lay a cuckle bur under his tail. And your husband, ma'am,

what he says is good, but he don't r'ar and pitch enough. He can't

skeer young sinners around here with jest the truth. He must learn to

jump up and down and _larrup_ 'em with it!"

All this was delivered in a bellowing voice that fairly shook the

feathers in my hat. And it indicates the quality of William's ministry

and the ideals of his congregation.