I HOLD THE STAGE
So far, the circuit rider has been the hero of these letters, but in
this one his wife shall be the heroine, behind the throne at least, for
scarcely any other woman looks or feels less like one in the open.
The Methodist ministry is singularly devastating in some ways upon the
women who are connected with it by marriage. For one thing, it tends
to destroy their aesthetic sensibilities. They lack very often the
good taste of thrift in poverty, not so much because of the poverty,
but because they never get settled long enough to develop the
hen-nesting instinct and house pride that is dormant in us all. They
simply make a shift of things till the next conference meets, when they
will be moved to another parsonage.
A woman has not the heart to plant annuals, much less perennials, under
such circumstances. Let the Parsonage Aid Society do it, if it must be
done. And the Parsonage Aid Society does do it. You will see in many
Methodist preachers' front yards fiercely-thorny, old-lady-faced
roses--the kind that thrive without attention--planted always by the
president of the Parsonage Aid Society. And it may be there will be a
syringa bush in the background, not that the Parsonage Aid Society is
partial to this flower, but because it is not easily killed by neglect.
They choose the hardiest, ugliest known shrubs for the parsonage yard
because they last best.
On every circuit, in every charge, you will find the Parsonage Aid
Society a band of faithful, fretted, good housekeepers who worry and
wrangle over furnishing the parsonage as they worried and wrangled when
they were little girls over their communistic "playhouses." The
effects in the parsonage are not harmonious, of course. As a rule,
every piece of furniture in it contradicts every other piece, each
having been contributed by rival women or rival committees in the
society.
And this has its deadening effect upon the preacher's wife's taste,
else she must go mad, living in a house where, say, there is a strip of
worn church-aisle carpet down the hall--bought at a bargain by the
thrifty Aid Society--a cherry-colored folding bed in the parlor along
with a "golden oak" table, a home-made bookcase, four different kinds
of chairs, a patent-medicine calendar on the wall and a rag carpet on
the floor, with a "flowered" washbowl and pitcher on a plain deal table
in the corner, confessing that, after all, it is not a parlor, but the
presiding elder's bedroom when he comes to hold "quarterly meeting."
Still, if I had anything to do with the new-monument-raising business
in this country I would have a colossal statue raised to the living
women of the Methodist Parsonage Aid Societies.
But the worst effect of the itinerancy upon its ministers' wives is the
evil information they must receive in it about other people. If I had
to select the woman in all the world best informed about the faults,
sins and weaknesses of mankind, I should not choose the sophisticated
woman of the world, but I should point without hesitation to the
little, pale, still-faced Methodist preacher's wife. The pallor is the
pallor of hardship, often of the lack of the right kind of nourishment,
but the stillness is not the result of inward personal calm and peace.
It is the shut-door face of a woman who knows all about everybody she
meets with that thin little smile and quiet eye. The reason for this
is that the preacher's wife is the vat for receiving all the circuit
scandal actually intended for her husband's ears.
The most conscienceless gossips in this world are to be found always
among the thoroughly-upright, meanly-impeccable members of any and
every church. They are the Scribes and Pharisees who contribute most
to the building of fine houses of worship; they give most to its
causes. They are the "right hands" of all the preachers from their
youth up. They have never been truthful sinners. They were the pale,
pious little boys and girls who behaved, and who graduated from the
Sunday schools long ago without ever being converted to the church.
And there you see them, the fat, duty-doing, self-satisfied "firsts" in
this world, who shall be last and least in the world to come. Those
least inclined to tattle about their neighbors, I found, were poor,
pathetic sinners with damaged reputations, who could not afford to talk
about others. They belonged humbly to the church, but never figured
loudly in it. And if God is God, as I do firmly believe in spite of
all I have heard to the contrary, there will be something "doing" in
Heaven when these saint-pecked sinners are all herded in. They will
wear the holy seal of His tender forgiveness through all eternity and
get most of the high offices in Paradise, just as a matter of simple
justice.
What I have suffered morally from them cannot be put into words.
Within a week of our arrival on a new work one of them would be sure to
call. There was Sister Weekly, for example, on the Gourdville Circuit,
and the parsonage here was in the little village of Gourdville.
William was out making his first pastoral visits when there came a
gentle knock at the door. I untied my kitchen apron, smoothed my hair,
sighed--for I knew from past experience it would be the church's arch
gossip--and opened the door. A round old lady tied up in a sanctified
black widow's bonnet stood on the step.
"I am Mrs. Weekly," she explained, "and I reckon you are Sister
Thompson, the new preacher's wife. Both my sons are stewards. And I
thought I'd come over and get acquainted and give you a few p'inters.
It's so hard for a stranger in a strange place to know which is which."
"I am glad to see you. Won't you come in?" I said pleasantly.
She settled herself in the rocker before the fire in our "front room,"
looked down at the rug and exclaimed:
"My! ain't this rug greasy! Our last pastor's wife was a dreadful
careless housekeeper."
She had a white, seamless face, sad, prayerful blue eyes too large for
the sockets, a little piquant nose that she had somehow managed to
bring along with her unchanged from a frivolous girlhood, and a quaint
old hymnal mouth. Looking up from the rug she took on an expression of
pure and undefiled piety and began in the strident, cackling tones of
an egg-laying hen:
"Your husband's goin' to have an awful hard time here, Sister Thompson.
The church is split wide open about the organ. Old man Walker wants it
on the right-hand side of the pulpit, and my sons have put it on the
left-hand side, where the light is good and the choir can see the music
better. It ain't decent, the way Walker makes himself prominent in the
church, nohow. They say he killed a man in Virginia before he came
here. I might as well tell you, for you are bound to hear it anyhow.
My sons say they are going to pull out and go to the Presbyterian
church if Walker don't quit carryin' on so about the organ. Their
father was Presbyterian, and I wouldn't be surprised if it cropped out
in them. But it'll be bad for our church if they do. They pay half of
the preacher's salary, and Walker scarcely pays at all. Seems to me he
ought to keep his mouth shut. And Richard Brown has took the homestead
law to keep from paying his debts. Now maybe he'll drop behind in his
subscription, too. He was a right smart help in the church, though I
never thought much of him morally. They say he drinks and cusses both
when he goes off to Augusta. And it's a plumb shame that his wife's
president of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. She's all right
now, I reckon, but folks 'talked' about her when she was a girl." She
paused to get her second wind, folded her hands as if in prayer, turned
her divine old eyes up to the ceiling and continued:
"But the Epworth League is the worst. I've always had my doubts about
it. 'T won't do to git too many young folks together in a bunch. I
don't care how religious they are, they'll just bust up and turn
natural if you git too many of 'em together. That's what's happened
here. The Epworth League kept on flourishin' so, we didn't understand
it. It met every Saturday night as prayerful and punctual as clocks.
But as soon as the old folks left they shet the doors, and then they'd
dance like sin--been doing it for months before anybody found out. Oh!
I'll tell you everything is on the downward road in this church, and
your husband is going to have his hands full even if he don't starve to
death!"
Every preacher's wife is the victim of such women. If she is
supernaturally wise she does not handicap her husband by repeating
their gossip to him. Personally, I prayed more earnestly to be
delivered from this particular temptation than from any other. But
never once was the Lord able to do it. Sooner or later I invariably
told William every word of scandal I heard.
He never served but one church where the people in it did not "talk"
about one another. I will call the place Celestial Bells, although
that is not the real name of it.
The congregation was a small one, composed of well-bred, worldly-minded
folk. They all danced a little, went to the theater often, wore golden
ornaments and otherwise perjured themselves in the light of the
membership vows in our Church Discipline. What I wonder is, will the
good, patient God--who knows that since the days of David we have had
dancing dust in us, who has Himself endowed us so abundantly with the
dramatic instinct, who even hid His gold about with which we bedeck and
enrich ourselves--will He, I say, damn those honest, world-loving,
church-giving people most, or will He take it out of the religious
topknots of the church who tempted them with these "Rules" in the
Discipline?
Poor William had a scandalous time at that place readjusting his moral
focus so that it would rest upon his people. Sister C and Sister Z
were admirable wives and mothers. He had never had more intelligently
helpful women in his congregation. That is to say, they were patiently
faithful in their attendance upon its services, they professed often to
be "benefited" by his sermons, they brought up their children in a new
kind of nurture and admonition of the Lord; but if he went to pay them
a pastoral call and have prayers with them, apt as not he would find
that they had gone to take the children to the matinee. And Brother A
and Brother I were the best stewards he ever had, but they would do
anything from wearing a tuxedo to going to a circus. I can never
forget Brother I's prayers. Although he was modest and retiring to the
point of shyness he was one of the few members in the church at
Celestial Bells who could be depended upon to lead in prayer. This was
frequently William's experience. Oftener than not the brother who
could slap him on the back or sing a bass in the choir that made the
chandeliers rattle would turn pale and fall into a panic if he was
called on to pray. Somehow one got the notion that he felt his voice
would not carry in that direction. But Brother I could open his heart
at once in prayer, and do it so naturally every one of us felt that we
were ourselves uttering the same prayer. He never ornamented his
petitions with any high sounding phrases. He was not so much a man
carrying on in a loud voice before his Maker as he was a little boy
with a sore toe and troubles appertaining to his littleness and
inexperience, and faults and forgetfulness, all of which he let out
with the emotion of a child to his father, and with such reality of
detail that the whole congregation accompanied him with his
lamentations and regrets. Whenever I lifted my head after one of
Brother I's prayers, I felt better, like a child who has taken some
great Elder Person into its confidence.
While I am on this subject of prayer, I must not forget an incident
connected with Brother A. He was the most belligerent looking peaceful
man I ever saw. His brows were black and so thick they amounted to
whiskers above his large pale blue eyes. He wore a military moustache
of the same color and preferred to talk through his teeth. And aside
from being very prosperous and a good friend, his distinction was that
he knew how to _do_ the will of his Father with as much directness and
dispatch as if it had been an ordinary business proposition. If
William wanted the church moved off a side street in a hollow, he was
the man who could drag it a quarter of a mile and set it on a hill,
yoked up, of course, with as many other stewards as he could get. If
there was anything to be done he could do it, and in the right spirit.
But he was one of God's dumb saints. He had faith and he had works,
but he couldn't pray, that is, not in public. This led to the incident
to which I have already referred.
We had just come to Celestial Bells, and seeing Brother A so active,
like a pillar of cloud and fire, in the church, we did not suspect his
other-world muteness. William was closing his first Sunday night
service. The congregation was large and in the front midst of it sat
Brother A. Immediately behind him sat Brother B, a fluent and
enthusiastic steward. I was in the Amen Corner as usual, because it is
only from this vantage ground that a preacher's wife can keep her eye
properly upon his congregation and be able to estimate the causes and
effects of his discourse. I have sometimes suspected, indeed, that
better saints occupy this Amen Corner for a less excusable curiosity
about the doings in the congregation. William closed the hymn-book,
looked out over the blur of faces before him, and said:
"Brother A will lead us in prayer."
If he had suddenly struck a short circuit and let loose a flash of
electricity in the house the shock would not have been more
perceptible. Everybody knew that Brother A could not lead in prayer,
except William, who was already on his knees with closed eyes and the
Patmos look on his blind face. Every head was bowed except those of
Brother A and Brother B. They were whispering over the back of the
bench that separated them. The sweat was standing out on Brother A's
forehead, his brows bristled with horror, while Brother B smiled calmly
at him.
"Go on, B! you know I can't pray in public!" I heard him say.
"He didn't ask me, he called on you," retorted Brother B.
Thus they had it back and forth for more than a minute. Then William
groaned, which added the one touch that rendered Brother A frantic.
Casting a ferociously damaging look at Brother B, he nudged the lady
sitting beside him and whispered:
"Lead this prayer, madam, I can't!"
And she led it in a sweet high treble that must have surprised William
and even the angels in Heaven, if they were expecting to hear the
petition in the ordinary masculine bass which is usually characteristic
of such petitions.
But I was going to tell how disconcerting it was to William to serve
people who were apparently religious and worldly-minded at the same
time. He could not reconcile this kind of diphthong living with his
notions of piety. At least their sins lay heavily on his conscience.
One Sabbath morning in June he entered the pulpit in a Sinai mood,
determined to read the Church Rules and to apply them severely. He
began by selecting a condemnatory Psalm, took his text simply as a
threat from Jeremiah in one of his bad moods, and after a severe hymn
and a mournful Rachel prayer he arose, folded his spectacles and fixed
his eyes burningly upon the innocent faces of his congregation, which
had a "What have we done?" expression on them that would have moved an
angel to impatience.
"Brethren and sisters," he said after a frightful spiritual pause, "it
is my duty this morning to call you back out of the far country into
which you have gone, to your Father's house. I blame myself for your
dreadful condition. I have not had the courage to tell you of your
faults as a preacher should tell his people when he sees them wandering
in the forbidden paths of worldliness and sin. I have not been a
faithful shepherd to you, and doubtless the Lord will lay your sins
upon my head. But this morning I am resolved to do my duty by you, no
matter what it costs."
The congregation took on the expression of a child about to be laid
across the parent's knee. But when he opened the Discipline and
proceeded to read the Rules, following each with solemn, almost
personal applications to conditions under his very nose, in his own
church, their countenances underwent a lightning change of almost happy
relief. Never can I forget the naïve sweetness with which those people
turned up their untroubled eyes to William and received his thundering
exhortations. They seemed proud of his courage--for, indeed, he nearly
broke his heart condemning them--and at the same time they seemed to be
bearing with him as they would bear with the vagaries of a good and
loving old father.
Sister C and Sister Z sat near the front, surrounded by their
respective cherubim broods, looking up at him with tender humorous
eyes. The children, indeed, felt something alien to peace in the
atmosphere. They regarded him fearfully, then turned meek, inquisitive
faces to their mothers; but those two extraordinary women never blinked
or blushed from start to finish, although they were deeply dyed with
all the guilt William mentioned. The one person present who received
the discourse with almost vindictive signs of indorsement was Brother
Billy Smithers, a man who had lived an exasperatingly regular life in
the church for more than forty years. He sent up Amens fervid with the
heat of his furious spirit at the end of each charge and condemnation.