INNOVATIONS.
I DISLIKE that way of doing things. People are being educated to
suppose that they are engaged in a benevolent enterprise when they
attend a benefit concert or entertainment. Those who can not afford to
go ease their consciences by saying, 'Oh, well, it is for benevolence;'
when it really isn't, you know; it is for self-gratification or
self-improvement, and people who ought to give twenty-five dollars for
a thing learn to tell themselves that they went to the twenty-five
cent supper, or concert, and that is their share, they suppose. Let
us invite them to come to our concert because we believe that we can
entertain them, and that it will pay them to be present.
"The fact is, girls, the church of Christ doesn't _need_ any benefit.
We degrade it by talking as though it did. No, we will divide the
proceeds of the concert in shares among ourselves; that is we, the
workers, will for the time being go into business and earn money that
shall be ours. We will not plead poverty, or ask people to listen to
us because of benevolence; we will simply give them a chance to hear a
good thing if they want to, and the money shall be ours to do exactly
what we please with. Of course, if we please to give every cent of it
to the church, that is our individual affair."
New ground this, for those girls; they had never before heard the like;
but there was an instant outgrowth of self-respect because of it.
"Then we can't _coax_ people to buy tickets?" said Nettie. "I'm so
glad."
"Of course not. The very utmost that propriety will allow us to do will
be to exhibit our goods for sale, so much for such an equivalent, and
allow people the privilege of choosing what they will do, and where
they will go."
The girls, each and all, agreed that from that standpoint they would
as soon offer tickets for sale as not; and instantly they stepped
upon that new platform and argued from it in the future, to the great
amazement and somewhat to the bewilderment of some of their elders.
Thereafter, rehearsals for the concert became the daily order of
things; not much time to spend each day, for nothing could be done
until lessons were over and all regular duties honorably discharged.
The more need then for promptness and diligence on the part of each
helper, and the more glaringly improper it became to delay matters
by having to stay behind for a half-prepared lesson. Never had the
Academy, or the village, for that matter, been so full of eager,
throbbing, healthy life, as those girls made it.
Their numbers grew, also. At first, the music-class was disposed,
like the others, to be exclusive, and to shake its head with a lofty
negative when one and another of the outsiders proposed this or that
thing which they would do to help. But Miss Benedict succeeded in
tiding them over that shoal.
"It is their church, girls, as well as ours. We must not hinder them
from showing their love."
"Great love they have had," sneered one; "they never thought of doing a
thing until we commenced."
But they were all honest, these girls, and this very one who had
offered her sneer, added in sober second thought:
"Though, to be sure, for the matter of that, neither did we, until you
begun it. Well, let them come in; I don't care."
"And we want to do so much," said Miss Benedict, with enthusiasm; "if I
were you I would take all the help I could get."
Meantime, the other schemes connected with this gigantic enterprise
flourished. There seemed no end to the devices for money-making, all of
them in somewhat new channels, too.
"Not a tidy in the enterprise," said Ruth Jennings, gravely, as she
tried to explain some of the work to her mother. "Who ever heard
of a church getting itself repaired without the aid of tidies and
pin-cushions! I wonder when they began with such things, mother? Do you
suppose St. Paul had to patronize fairs, and buy slippers and things,
for the benefit of churches in Ephesus or Corinth?"
The bewildered mother, with a vague idea that Ruth was being almost
irreverent, could not, for all that, decide how to answer her.
"For there isn't any religion in those things, of course," she said to
the equally-puzzled father, "and it did sound ridiculous to hear St.
Paul's name brought into it! That Miss Benedict has all sorts of new
ideas."
In the course of time, the boys (who are quite likely to become
interested in anything that has deeply interested the girls) were
drawn into service. Here, too, the ways of working were unusual and
suggestive. Miss Benedict heard of one who had promised to give all the
cigars he would probably have smoked in two months' time, whereupon she
made this eager comment:
"Oh, what a pity that it is not going to take us fifty years to repair
the church! then we would get him to promise to give us the savings of
cigars until it was done!"
This was duly reported to him, and gave him food for thought.
Another promised the savings from sleigh-rides that he had intended
to take, and another gravely wrote down in Ruth Jennings' note-book:
"Harry Matthews, $1.10; the price of two new neckties and a bottle of
hair oil!" There was more than fun to some of these entries. Some of
the boys could not have kept their pledges if there had not been these
queer little sacrifices.
One evening there was a new development. Ruth Jennings brought the
news. The much-abused, long-suffering, neglectful sexton of the
half-alive church notified the startled trustees that he had received
a louder call to the church on the other corner, and must leave them.
It really was startling news; for bad as he had been, not one in the
little village could be thought of who would be likely to supply his
place.
Ruth reported her father as filled with consternation.
"I wish I were a man!" savagely announced Anna Graves, "then I would
offer myself for the position at once. It is as easy to make three
dollars a month in that way as it is in any other that I know of."
That was the first development of the new idea. Miss Benedict bestowed
a sudden glance, half of amusement, half of pleasure, on her aspiring
pupil, and was silent.
"If it were not for the fires," was Nettie Burdick's slow-spoken
sentence, rather as if she were thinking aloud than talking. That is
the way the idea began to grow.
Then Ruth Jennings, with a sudden dash, as she was very apt to enter
into a subject:
"It is no harder to make fires in church stoves than it is in
sitting-room ones. I've done that often. I say, girls, let's do it!"
Every one of them knew that she meant the church stoves instead of the
sitting-room ones, and that was the way that the idea took on flesh,
and stood up before them.
There followed much eager discussion and of course some demurs. Nothing
ever was done yet, or ever will be, without somebody objecting to it.
At least, this was what Ruth said; and she added that she could not,
to save her life, help being a little more settled in a determination
after she had heard somebody oppose it a trifle.
However, the trustees opposed it more than a trifle. They were amazed.
Such an innovation on the time-honored ways of South Plains had never
been heard of before. Argument ran high. The half-doubtful girls came
squarely over to the aggressive side, and waxed eloquent over the plan.
It was carried at last, as Miss Benedict, looking on and laughing, told
the girls she knew it would be.
"When you get fairly roused, my girls, I observe that you are quite apt
to carry the day." She did not tell them that they were girls after her
own heart, but I think perhaps she looked it.
One request the trustees growled vigorously over, which was that the
new sextons should be paid in advance for a half-year's work. What if
they failed?
"We won't fail," said Ruth indignantly, "and if we do, can't you
conceive of the possibility of our being honest? We will not keep a
cent of the precious money that has not been earned."
Whereupon, Mr. Jennings, in a private conference with the trustees,
went over to the enemy's side, and promised to stand security for
them, remarking apologetically that the girls had all gone crazy over
something, his Ruth among the number. Therefore eighteen dollars were
gleefully added to the treasury. The sum was certainly growing.
The Sabbath following the installation of the new sextons marked
a change in the appearance of the old church. The floors had been
carefully swept and cleansed, the young ladies drawing on their
precious funds for the purpose of paying a woman who had scrubbed
vigorously.
"It would be more fascinating," Ruth Jennings frankly admitted, "to let
all the improvements come in together in one grand blaze of glory; but
then it would be more decent to have those floors scrubbed, and I move
that we go in for decency, to the sacrifice of glory, if need be."
So they did. Not a particle of dust was to be seen on that Sabbath
morning anywhere about the sanctuary. From force of habit, the men
carefully brushed their hats with their coat-sleeves as they took
possession of them again, the service over; but the look of surprise on
the faces of some over the discovery that there was nothing to brush
away, was a source of amusement to a few of the watchful girls.
Also the few stragglers who returned for the evening service were
caught looking about them in a dazed sort of way, as though they deemed
it just possible that there might be an incipient fire in progress
that threatened the building. Not that a new lamp had been added; the
chimneys had simply been washed in soapsuds, and polished until they
shone, and new wicks had been furnished, the workers declaring that
their consciences really would not allow them to do less. The effect of
these very commonplace efforts was somewhat astonishing, even to them.
"It is well we did it," affirmed Anna Graves with serious face. "I
believe we ought to get the people used to these things by degrees or
they will be frightened."
One question Claire puzzled over in silence: Did the minister
really preach a better sermon that evening? Was it possible that
the cleanliness about him might have put a little energy into his
discouraged heart, or had she been so tired with her week of toil, that
to see every one of her dozen girls out to church, and sit back and
look at them through the brightness of clean lamps, was restful and
satisfying? She found that she could not decide on the minister as yet.
Perhaps the carrying of such a load as that church, for years, was what
had taken the spring out of his voice and the life out of his words.
About these things nothing must be said, yet could not something be
done? How could she and her girls help that pastor?
Meantime, some of the girls came to her one evening, bursting with
laughter:
"Oh, Miss Benedict, we have a new recruit! You couldn't guess who. We
shall certainly succeed now, with such a valuable reinforcement. Oh,
girls, we know now why Miss Benedict sprained her ankle, and kept us
all waiting for a week! This is a direct result from that week's work."
"What are you talking about?" said Miss Benedict, with smiling eyes
and sympathetic voice. It was a great addition to her power over those
girls that she held herself in readiness always to join their fun at
legitimate moments. Sad-hearted she often was, but what good that those
young things should see it? "Who is your recruit?"
"Why, Bud!" they said, and then there were shouts of laughter again,
and Ruth could hardly command her voice to explain: "He came to me
last night--tramped all the way up to our house in the snow, after
meeting--because he said he wasn't so ''fraid' of me as he was of 'all
them others.' Was that a compliment, girls, or an insult? Yes, Miss
Benedict, he wants to help; offers to 'tend the fires,' and I shouldn't
wonder if he could do it much better than it has been done at least. It
was real funny, and real pitiful, too. He said it was the only 'livin'
thing he knew how to do,' and _that_ he was sure and certain he could
do, and if it would help any, he would be awful glad to join."
"But doesn't he want to be paid?" screamed one of the girls.
"Paid? not he! I tell you he wants to join us. He said he wanted to do
it to please _her_. That means you, Miss Benedict. You have won his
heart in some way. Oh, it is the fruit of the sprained ankle. You know,
girls, she said it was surely for some good purpose." Then they all
went off into ecstatic laughter again. They were just at the age when
it takes so little to convulse girls.
"But I am not yet enlightened," explained Claire, as soon as there was
hope of her being heard. "Who is Bud?"
"Oh, is it possible you don't remember him? That is too cruel, when he
is just devoted to you! Why, he is the furnace-boy at the Ansteds. I
don't know where he saw you. He muttered something about the furnace
and the register that I did not understand; but he plainly intimated
that he was ready to be your devoted servant, and die for you, if need
be, or at least, make the church fires as many days and nights as you
should want them. Now the question is, what shall we do to the poor
fellow?"
The furnace-boy at the Ansteds! Oh, yes, Claire remembered him, a
great, blundering, apparently half-witted, friendless, hopeless boy.
Claire's heart had gone out in pity for him the first time she ever
saw him. He had been sent to her room to make some adjustment of the
register-screw, and she had asked him if he understood furnaces, and if
he liked to work, and if the snow was deep, and a few other aimless
questions, just for the sake of speaking to him with a pleasant voice,
and seeming to take an interest in his existence. Her father's heart
had always overflowed with tenderness and helpfulness for all such
boys. Claire had pleased herself--or perhaps I might say saddened
herself--with thinking what her father, if he were alive, and should
come in contact with Bud, would probably try to do for him. She could
think of ways in which her father would work to help him, but she
sadly told herself that all that was passed; her father was gone where
he could not help Bud, and there were few men like him; and the boy
would probably have to stumble along through a cold and lonely world.
She had not thought of one thing that _she_ could do for him; indeed,
it had not so much as occurred to her as possible that there could be
anything. After that first day she had not seen him again, until he
came to the music-room with a message for Ella, and she had turned her
head and smiled, and said "Good-morning!" and that was really all that
she knew about Bud. She had forgotten his existence; and she had been
sorrowing because her week at the Ansteds seemed to have accomplished
nothing at all.
Her face was averted for a moment from the girls, and some of them,
noticing, actually thought that their gay banter was offensive, and was
what caused the heightened color on her cheeks as she turned back to
them.
They could not have understood, even had she tried to explain, that
it was a blush of shame over the thought that the one whom possibly
she might have won from that home for the Master's service she had
forgotten, and reached out after those whom, possibly, she was not sent
to reach. Her eyes were open now; she would do what she could to repair
blunders.
"Do with him?" she said, going back to Ruth's last question. "We'll
accept him, of course, and set him to work; I should not be greatly
surprised if he should prove one of the most useful helpers on our list
before the winter is over. Look at the snow coming down, and we have a
rehearsal to-night; don't you believe he can shovel paths, as well as
make fires?"
"Sure enough!" said those girls, and they went away pleased with the
addition to the circle of workers, and prepared every one to greet him
as a helper.