HERE THE ALIEN; THERE THE LITTLE BROWN CHURCH
It was all very well to work out the "Everyday Doctrines of Delafield."
To secure their adoption and application by all the churches of
Delafield was another matter. The unofficial committee scattered, for
one thing. Joe Carbrook went back to medical school, and Marcia to the
settlement and the training school. Marty was traveling his circuit. J.
W. and the pastor and a few others continued their studies of the town.
Nobody had yet ventured to talk about experts, but it began to be
evident that the situation would soon require thoroughgoing and skilled
assistance. Otherwise, all that had been learned would surely be lost.
One day in the late fall a stranger dropped in at the Farwell Hardware
Store and asked for Mr. J.W. Farwell, Jr. He had called first on Pastor
Drury, who was expecting him; and that diplomat had said to him, "Go see
J.W. I think he'll help you to get something started."
J.W., with two of the other clerks, was unloading a shipment of
stovepipes. The marks of his task were conspicuous all over him, and he
scarcely looked the part of the public-spirited young Methodist. But
the visitor was accustomed to know men when he saw them, under all
sorts of disguises.
J.W., called to the front of the store, met the visitor with a
good-natured questioning gaze.
"Mr. Farwell, I am Manford Conover, of Philadelphia. Back there we have
heard something of the 'Everyday Doctrines of Delafield,' and I've been
sent to find out about them--and their authors."
"Sent?" J.W. repeated. "Why should anybody send you all the way from
Philadelphia to Delafield just for that?" He could not know how much
pastoral and even episcopal planning was back of that afternoon call.
"Don't think that we reckon it to be unimportant, Mr. Farwell," said Mr.
Conover, pleasantly. "You see I'm from a Methodist society with a long
name and a business as big as its name--the Board of Home Missions and
Church Extension. The thing some of you are starting here in Delafield
is our sort of thing. It may supply our Board with new business in its
line, and what we can do for you may make your local work productive of
lasting results, in other places as well as here."
J.W. did not quite understand, but he was willing to be instructed, for
he had found out that the effort to promote the "Everyday Doctrines" was
forever developing new possibilities and at the same time revealing new
expanses of Delafield ignorance and need. Anybody who appeared to have
intelligence and interest was the more welcome.
They talked a while, and then, "I'll tell you what," proposed J.W.
"How long do you expect to be in town?" Mr. Conover replied that as yet
he had made no arrangement for leaving.
"Then let's get together a few people to-night after prayer meeting. Our
pastor, of course, and the editor of the _Dispatch_--he's the right
sort, if he does boost 'boosting' a good deal; and Miss Leigh, of the
High School--she's all right every way; and Mrs. Whitehill, the
president of the Woman's Association of our church--that's the women's
missionary societies and the Ladies' Aid merged into one--she's a
regular progressive; and Harry Field, who's just getting hold of his job
in the League; and the Sunday school superintendent. That's dad, you
know; he's had the job for a couple of years now, and he's as keen about
it as Harry is over the League."
They got together, and out of that first simple discussion came all
sorts of new difficulties for Delafield Methodism to face and master.
* * * * *
Manford Conover was a preacher with a business man's training and
viewpoint. He may have mentioned his official title, when he first
appeared, but nobody remembered it. When people couldn't think of his
name he was "the man from the Board," which was all the same to him.
After that first night's meeting Conover gave several days to walks
about Delafield. J.W. had found the shacks and the tenements, and Joe
Carbrook had introduced J.W. to Main Street, but it was left to
Conover to show him Europe and Africa in Delafield.
There's a certain town in a Middle Western State, far better known than
Delafield, rich, intelligent, highly self-content. Its churches and
schools and clubs are matters for complacent satisfaction. And you would
be safe in saying that not one in five of its well-to-do people know
that the town has a Negro quarter, an Italian section, a Bohemian
settlement, a Scandinavian community, a good-sized Greek colony, and
some other centers of cultures and customs alien to what they assume is
the town's distinctive character.
They know, of course, that such people live in the town--couldn't help
knowing it. Their maids are Scandinavian or Negro. They buy vegetables
and candy from the Greeks. They hear of bootlegging and blind tigers
among certain foreign groups. The rough work of the town is done by men
who speak little or no English. But all this makes small impression. It
is a commonplace of American town life. And scarcely ever does it
present itself as something to be looked into, or needing to be
understood.
So Conover found it to be with Delafield. The "Everyday Doctrines" were
well enough, but he knew a good deal of spade work must be done before
they could take root and grow. He fronted a condition which has its
counterpart in most American towns, each of which is two towns, one
being certain well-defined and delimited areas where languages and
Braces live amid conditions far removed from the American notion of
what is endurable, and the other the "better part of town," sometimes
smugly called "the residence section," where white Americans have homes.
Conover and Pastor Drury compared notes. They were of one mind as to the
conditions which Conover had found, conditions not surprising to the
minister, who knew more about Delafield than any of his own people
suspected.
One afternoon they met J.W. on the street, and he led them into a candy
store for hot chocolate.
As they sipped the chocolate they talked; J.W., as usual, saying
whatever he happened to think of.
"Say, Mr. Conover," he remarked, "I notice in all your talk about the
foreigner in America you haven't once referred to the idea of the
melting pot. Don't you think that's just what America is? All these
people coming here and getting Americanized and assimilated and all
that?"
"I'd think America was the melting pot if I could see more signs of the
melting," Conover answered. "But look at Delafield; how much does the
melting pot melt here?"
Then he looked across the store. "Do you know the proprietor, Mr.
Farwell?" he asked.
"Yes, indeed; Nick and I are good friends," answered J.W.
"Then I wish you'd introduce me," returned Conover.
"Oh, Nick," J.W. called, "will you come over here a minute?"
Nick came, wiping his hands on his apron.
"Nick," said J.W., doing the honors, "you know Mr. Drury, the pastor of
our church. And this is Mr. Conover from Philadelphia, a very good
friend of ours. He's been looking around town, and wants to ask you
something."
Nick's brisk and cheerful manner was at its best, for he liked J.W.,
besides liking the trade he brought.
"Sure," said he, "I tell him anything if I know it. Glad for the
chance."
"Mr. Dulas," said Conover--he had taken note of the name on the window,
"you know the East Side pretty well, do you? Then, you know that many
Italians live just north of Linden Street, and there's a block or so of
Polish homes between Linden and the next street south?"
"Sure I do," said Nick, confidently, "I live on other side of them
myself. See 'em every day."
"Very well," Conover went on. "What I want to know is this: how do the
Italians and the Poles get along together?"
"They don't have nothing much to do with one another," Nick replied.
"It's like this, the Poles they talk Polish, and maybe a little English.
The Italians, they speak Italian, and some can talk English, only not
much. But Poles they can't talk Italian at all, and Italians can't talk
Polish. So how could they get together?"
"That's just the question, Mr. Dulas," Conover agreed. "I'm telling
these gentlemen that it is harder for the different foreign-born people
to know one another and to be friendly with one another than it is for
them to know and associate with Americans."
"Sure, Mister," Nick said, with great positiveness. "Sure. Before I
speak English I know nobody but Greeks, and when I start learning
English I got no time to learn Polish, or Italian, or whatever it is.
English I got to speak, if I run a candy store, but not those other
languages."
And he went off to serve a customer who had just entered.
"There you have that side," said Conover to the minister and J.W. "The
need of English as an Americanizing force, and the meed of it as a
medium of communication between the different foreign groups. Looks as
though we've got to bear down hard on English, don't you think?"
"As Nick says, 'Sure I do,'" Mr. Drury assented. "It will come out all
right with the children, I hope; they're getting the English. But it
makes things hard just now."
"What can the church do?" J.W. put in. "Should it undertake to teach
English, as that preacher taught Phil Khamis, you remember, Mr. Drury;
or Americanization, or what?"
"I think it should do something else first," said Conover. "Why should
we Americans try to make Europeans understand us, unless we first try to
understand them? Isn't ours the first move?"
"But this is the country they're going to live in," returned J.W. "They
can't expect us to adjust ourselves to European ways. They've got to do
the adjusting, haven't they?"
"Why?" Conover came back. "Because we were here first? But the Indian
was here before us. We told him he needn't do any adjusting at all, and
see what we've made of him. Maybe these Europeans can add enriching
elements to our American culture."
"I guess so, but"--and J.W. was evidently at a loss--"but they've got
to obey our laws, you know, and fit into our civilization. The Indian
was different. We couldn't make Indians of ourselves, and he wouldn't
become civilized."
"Americanized, you mean?" and Conover laughed a little at the irony of
it.
"No, no; not that. But he wouldn't meet us half way, even," J.W. said.
"I think," suggested Pastor Drury, "that what Mr. Conover means is that
we'd better be a little less stiff to newcomers than the Indian was to
us. Am I right?"
"Exactly right," returned Conover. "Europe is in a general way the
mother-land of us all. But many of her children were late in getting
here. The earlier ones have made their contributions; why may not the
later ones also bring gifts for our common treasure?"
"Well, what in particular do you mean?" asked J.W., who was finding
himself adrift. He had been quite willing in the Institute days to be an
admirer of Phil Khamis, and to forget that Phil was of alien birth; but
this was something more complicated.
"Particulars are not so simple," Conover said. "But, for instance: some
European peoples have a fine musical appreciation. Some delight in
oratory. Some are mystical and dreamy. Some are very children in their
love of color. Some are almost artists in their feeling for beauty in
their work. Some do not enjoy rough play, and others cannot endure to be
quiet. Some have inherited a passionate love of country, and great
traditions of patriotism."
"We can't value all these things in just the way they do, but at least
we can believe that such interests and instincts are worth something to
America. Then our Americanization work will be not only more intelligent
but far more sympathetic."
"If I may turn to the immediate business," Mr. Drury said with a smile
of apology, "suppose you tell J.W. what your Board has to suggest for us
here in Delafield, Mr. Conover?"
Conover turned to J.W. "I wonder if you know anything about Centenary
Church?" he asked.
"That little old brick barn over in the East Bottoms? Why, yes, or I
used to; if was quite a church when I was a youngster, but I haven't
been that way lately. I guess it's pretty much run down, with all those
foreigners moving in. Most of the old members have probably moved away.
I know there were two Methodist boys with me in high school who lived
down there, but they've moved up to the Heights. One of them lives next
to the Carbrooks."
"Mr. Drury should take you down that way one of these days," said
Conover, "and you'd find that when your friends moved out of the church
the foreigners who live nearby did not move in. Centenary Church is run
down, as you say."
Mr. Drury added, "And the few members who are left don't know which way
to turn. They have a supply pastor, who isn't able to do much. He gets a
pitiful salary, but they can't pay more, and there's no money at all,
nor any accommodations, for any special attention to the newcomers."
"Well," said Conover, "I'm instructed to tell you Delafield Methodists
that the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension is ready to help
make a new Centenary Church, for the people who now live around it. We
have a department that pays special attention to immigrant and alien
populations. Our workers know, in general, what is needed. We can put
some trained people into Centenary, with a pastor who knows how to
direct their work. I should not be surprised to see a parish house
there, and a modernized church building, and a fine array of everyday
work being done there."
"My, but that sounds great, Mr. Drury, doesn't it?" asked J.W., in a
glow of enthusiasm. Then he checked himself. "It sounds well enough," he
said, "but all that means a lot of money. Where's the money to come
from?"
"From you, of course," Conover replied, "but not all or most from you.
My Board is a benevolent board--that is to say, it is the whole church
at work in such enterprises as this. That's one way in which its share
of the church's benevolent offerings is used"
"But you don't mean to tell us," said J.W., incredulously, "that you can
drop in on a place like Delafield, make up your mind what is needed, and
then dump a lot of money into a played-out church, just like that?"
"Oh, it's not so informal as all that," Conover said, "The thing has to
go through the official channels, of course. Your district
superintendent and Brother Drury and the Bishop and several others have
had a hand in it already. All concerned have agreed as to the needs and
possibilities. But Delafield is also a good place to put on a
demonstration, an actual, operating scheme. I have been making ready for
a survey of the whole East Side, just a preliminary study, and before
anything positive is done we must make a more thorough inquiry. We
expect to find out everything that needs to be known."
"There was only one anxiety I had about it," Pastor Drury said, "and
that has been all taken away. I was keen to have this be a truly
Christian demonstration--not just a settlement or a parish house or
night school classes, but a real demonstration of Christian service
among people who now know little about it. In some places these
activities are being set going because church people know they ought to
do something, and it is easier to give money and have gymnasiums and
moving pictures than to make real proof of partnership with Christ by
personal service and sacrifice. Take your old friend Martin Luther
Shenk, J.W.--do you know that he's working at this very difficulty? And
I hear he's finding, even in the country, that some people will really
give themselves, while others will give only their money and their
time."
J.W. thought of Win-My-Chum week, and how he had had to drive himself to
speak to Marty, so he knew the pastor was right. And he went home with
all sorts of questions running through his mind, but with no very
satisfying answers to make them.
Coming back in a wakeful night to Mr. Drury's casual mention of Marty,
the thought of his chum set him to wondering how that sturdy young
itinerant was making it go on the Ellis and Valencia Circuit, just as
the pastor guessed it might. To wonder was to decide. He would take a
long-desired holiday. A word or two with his father in the morning gave
him the excuse for what he wanted to do. Then he got Valencia on the
long distance, and the operator told him she would find the "Reverend"
Shenk for him in a few minutes. He had started out that morning to visit
along the State Line Highway, as it was part of her business to know. At
the third try Marty was found, and he answered J.W.'s hail with a shout.
After the first exchange of noisy greetings, "Say, Marty, dad's asked me
to run down in your part of the world and look at some new barn
furniture that's been put in around Ellis--ventilators and stanchions
and individual drinking cups for the Holsteins--not like the way we used
to treat the cows on our farm, hey? Well, what do you say if I turn
fashionable for once and come down for the week-end--not this week, but
next?"
No need to ask Marty a question like that. "Come on down. Make it Friday
and I'll show you the sights. We've got something doing at the Ellis
Church, something I want you to see."
Then Marty thought of a few books that he had left at home--"And--hello,
J.W., are you listening? Well, how'd you like to go out to the farm
before you come down here? Jeanette has gathered a bundle of my books,
and I need 'em. Won't you get 'em for me and bring them along?"
Certainly, J.W. would. The farm was home to both the boys, and J.W. was
almost as welcome there as Marty; to one member of the family quite so,
though she had never mentioned it.
On the next Sunday morning J.W. drove out of town in time to get to the
little old church of his childhood for morning service. Then he would go
home with the Shenks for dinner, spend the afternoon, get the books and
come home when he was ready. There was no hurry. J.W., Sr., had given
him two Sundays' leave of absence from Sunday school. The next Sunday
would be his and Marty's, but this would be his and Jeannette's.
Not that he needed to make any special plans for being with Jeannette
Shenk; of late he had found the half hour drive down to the old farm the
prelude to a pleasant evening. Sometimes he would make the round trip
twice, running out to bring Jeanette into town, when something was
going on, and taking her home afterward in the immemorial fashion.
As J.W. turned to the church yard lane leading up to the old horseshed,
he noticed that there were only two cars there besides his own--and one
old-time sidebar buggy, battered and mud-bedaubed, with a decrepit and
dejected-looking gray mare between the shafts.
It was time for meeting, and he contrasted to-day's emptiness of the
long sheds with the crowding vehicles of his childhood memories. In
those days so tightly were buggies and surries and democrats, and even
spring wagons and an occasional sulky wedged into the space, that it was
nothing unusual for the sermon to be interrupted by an uproar in the
sheds, when some peevish horse attempted to set its teeth in the neck of
a neighbor, with a resultant squealing and plunging, a cramping of
wheels and a rattle of harness which could neutralize the most
vociferous circuit rider's eloquence.
At the door, J.W. fell in with the little group of men, who, according
to ancient custom, had waited in the yard for the announcement of the
first hymn before ending their talk of crops and roads and stock, and
joining the women and children within.
Inside the contrast with the older day was even more striking. The
church, small as it was, seemed almost empty. The Shenks were there,
including Jeannette, as J.W. promptly managed to observe. Father Foltz
and his middle-aged daughter stood in their accustomed place; they had
come in the venerable sidebar buggy, just as for two decades past.
Mother Foltz hadn't been out of the house in years, and among J.W.'s
earliest recollections were those of the cottage prayer meetings that he
had attended with his father in Mrs. Foltz's speckless sickroom. Then
there were the four Newells, and Mrs. Bellamy, and Mr. and Mrs. Haggard
with their two little girls, and a few people J.W. did not know--perhaps
twenty-five altogether. No wonder the preacher was disheartened, and
preached a flavorless sermon.
Where were the boys and girls of even a dozen years ago? where the
children who began their Sunday school career in the little recess back
of the curtain? and where the whole families that once filled the place?
Surely, old Deep Creek Church had fallen on evil days.
It was a dismal service, with its dreary sermon and its tuneless hymns.
After the benediction J.W. shook hands with the preacher, whom he knew
slightly, and exchanged greetings with all the old friends.
"Well, John Wesley," said Father Foltz, with glum garrulity, "this ain't
the church you used to know when you was little. I mind in them times
when you folks lived on the farm how we thought we'd have to enlarge the
meetinghouse. But it's a good thing we never done it. There's room
enough now," and the old man indulged in a mirthless, toothless grimace.
The Shenks didn't invite him to dinner; their understanding was finer
than that. Pa Shenk just said, "Let me drive out first, John Wesley;
I'll go on ahead and open the gate," And J.W. said to Jeannette, "Jump
into my car, Jean; it isn't fair to put everybody into Pa Shenk's Ford
when mine's younger and nearly empty."
So that was that; all regular and comfortable and proper. If Mrs. Newell
smiled as she watched them drive away, what of it? She was heard to say
to Mrs. Bellamy, "I've known for three years that those two ought to
wake up and fall in love with each other, and they've been slower than
Father Foltz's old gray mare. But it looks as though they were getting
their eyes open at last."
At the farm Mrs. Shenk hurried to finish up the dinner preparations,
with Jeannette to help. Ben and little Alice contended for J.W.'s favor,
until he took Alice on his knee and put one arm about her and the other
about her brother, standing by the chair. And Pa Shenk talked about the
church.
"I reckon I shouldn't complain, John Wesley," he said, "seeing that our
Marty is a country preacher, and maybe he'll be having to handle a job
like this some time. But I can't believe he will. His letters don't read
like it."
"But, Pa Shenk," said J.W., "don't you suppose the trouble here in Deep
Creek is because you're so near town? Nine miles is nothing these days,
but when you first came to the farm there was only one automobile in the
township. Now everybody can go into town to church."
"They can, boy," Pa Shenk answered, "but they don't. Not all of 'em.
Some don't care enough to go anywhere. One-year tenants, mostly, they
are. Some go to town, all right enough, but not to church. A few go to
church, I admit, but only a few."
J.W. started to speak, hesitated, then blurted it out. "Maybe dad and
others like him are responsible for some of the trouble. They've pulled
out and left just a few to carry the load. You're all right, of course;
you really belong here. But a lot of the farmers who have moved to town
have rented their places to what you call one-year tenants, and it seems
to me that's a poor way to build up anything in the country, churches or
anything else. Tenants that are always moving don't get to know anybody
or to count for anything. It's not much wonder they are no use to the
church."
"There's a good deal in that, John Wesley," said Pa Shenk. "Your father
and me, we get along fine. We're more like partners than owner and
tenant. But it isn't so with these short-term renters. The owner raises
the rent as the price of land rises, and the tenant is mostly too poor
to do anything much after he's paid the rent. Besides, he's got no stake
in the neighborhood. Why should he pay to help build a new church, when
he's got to move the first of March? And the church has been as careless
about him as he has been about the church."
"That's what bothers me," J.W. commented. "But even so, I should think
something could be done to interest these folks. They've all got
families to bring up."
"Something can be done, too," said Pa Shenk. "You remember when the
people on upper Deep Creek used to come here to church, four miles or
so? Well, now they are going to Fairfield Church--owners, renters,
everybody. It's surprising how Fairfield Church is growing. That's going
away from town, not to it, and they're as near to town as we are."
"Then," persisted J.W., "how do you account for it?"
"Only one way, my boy," said Pa Shenk. "I'm as much to blame as any, but
we've had some preachers here that didn't seem to understand, and then
lately we've had preachers who stayed in town all the time except on
preaching Sunday, and we scarcely saw or heard of 'em all the two weeks
between. They haven't held protracted meetings for several years, and I
ain't blaming 'em. What's the use of holding meetings when you know
nobody's coming except people that were converted before our present
pastor was born?"
"You say some people are going over to Fairfield?" asked J.W. "Why do
they go there, when they could go to town about as easy?"
"Well, John Wesley," Pa Shenk answered, soberly. "I think I know. But
you say you're going to spend next Sunday with Marty. From what Marty
writes I've a notion it's much the same on his work as it is at
Fairfield, except that Marty has two points. Wait till next week, and
then come back and tell us how you explain the difference between Deep
Creek Church and Ellis."
In the afternoon Jeannette and J.W. took a ride around the
neighborhood, whose every tree and culvert and rural mail-box they knew,
without in the least being tired of seeing it. Their talk was on an old,
old subject, and not remarkable, yet somehow it was more to them both
than any poet's rhapsody. And their occasional silences were no less
eloquent.
But in a more than usually prosaic moment Jeannette said, "John Wesley,
I wonder if there's any hope to get the Deep Creek young people
interested in church the way they used to be? I'm just hungry for the
sort of good times the older boys and girls used to have when you and
Marty and I were nothing but children. They enjoyed themselves, and so
did everybody else. What's the matter with so many country churches,
nowadays?"
To which question J.W. could only answer: "I don't know. I didn't
realize things were so bad here. Maybe I'll get some ideas about it next
Saturday and Sunday. Your father seems to think Marty is getting started
on the right track. And that reminds me; don't let me go away without
those books he wants, will you?"
This is not a record of that Sunday afternoon's drive, nor of the many
others which followed on other Sundays and on the days between. Some
other time there may be opportunity for the whole story of Jeannette and
J.W.
* * * * *
As J.W. drove up to Ellis Corners post office late the next Friday
afternoon Marty waylaid him and demanded to be taken aboard. "Drive a
half-mile further east," he said after their boisterous greetings.
"That's where we eat to-night--at Ambery's. Then just across the road to
the church. We've got something special on."
"A box supper," asked J.W., "or a bean-bag party?" But he knew better.
Marty told him to wait and see. Supper was a pleasant meal, the Amberys
being pleasant people, who lived in a cozy new house. But J.W. was
mystified to hear Marty speak of Henry Ambery as a retired farmer. He
knew retired farmers in town, plenty of them, and some no happier for
being there. But in the country?
"Oh," said Marty, "that's easy. Our church is the social hub of all this
community, and I told the Amberys that if they built here they would be
as well off as in town. I'm right too. They bought two acres for less
than the price of a town lot, and they have most of the farm comforts as
well as all the modern conveniences. You didn't notice any signs of
homesickness, did you?"
No, J.W., hadn't, though he knew the retired-farmer sort of homesickness
when he saw it.
"And the Amberys are worth more to the church than they ever were,"
Marty added. "I'm thinking of a scheme to colonize two or three other
retiring farmers within easy reach of this church. Why not? They've got
cars, and can drive to the county seat in an hour if they want to.
That's better than living there all the time, with nothing to do."
By this the two were at the church, a pretty frame building, L-shaped,
with a community house adjoining the auditorium. People were beginning
to arrive in all sorts of vehicles--cars, mostly. J.W. looked for signs
of a feed, but vainly. No spread tables, no smell of cooking or rattle
of dishes from the kitchen.
"What is it, Marty?" he asked. And Marty laughed as he answered,
"Old-fashioned singing school, with some new-fashioned variations,
that's all." Certainly it was something which interested the
countryside, for there was every indication of a crowded house.
J.W. heard the singing and noted with high approval the variations which
modernized the old order. He thought the idea plenty good enough even
for Delafield, which, for him, left nothing more to be said. And there
_was_ a feed, after all; but it was distinctly light refreshments, such
as J.W. was used to at Delafield First Church.
On the way back to the Amberys', and well into the night in Marty's
room, they talked about the circuit and its work.
"It isn't a circuit, rightly, you know," Marty said. "I preach every
Sunday at both places, and for the present"--J.W. grinned--"I can get
across the whole parish every day if necessary. But I'm working it a
little more systematically than that."
"You must be. I can hardly believe even what I've seen already," J.W.
replied. "When I was at Deep Creek last Sunday I was sure it was all
off with the country church, and on the way down here I passed three
abandoned meetinghouses. So I made up my mind to persuade you out of it.
You know I wasn't much in favor of your coming here in the first place.
But maybe that's a bigger job than I thought."
"You're right, John Wesley, about that. I don't budge, if I can make
myself big enough for the job. It's too interesting. And things are
happening. There's no danger of this church being abandoned."
"But what do you do, Marty, to make things happen? I know they don't
just happen. I'm from the country too, remember that."
"What do I do? Not 'I' but 'we.' Well, we work with our heads first, and
our hearts. Then we get out and go at it. Take our very first social
difficulty; in Delafield you have a dozen places to go to. Here it's
either the church or the schoolhouse--that's all the choice there is.
And the schoolhouse has its limitations. So our folks have decided to
make the church, both here and at Valencia, the center of the community.
That explains the social hall; we call it 'Community House.' Everything
that goes on, except the barn dances over east that we can't do much
with so far, goes on in the church, or starts with the church, or ends
at the church. That's the first scheme we put over. It was fairly easy,
you know, because all our country people are pretty much one lot. We
have no rich, and no really poor. And they're not organized to death,
either, as you are in Delafield."
"Do you try to have something going on every night, and nearly every
day, as Brother Drury does with us?" J.W. asked.
"Not quite," replied Marty; "we can't. We're too busy growing the food
for you town folks. But we keep up a pretty stiff pace, for the
preacher; I have no time hanging on my hands."
"I should think not," J.W. commented, "if you try to run everything.
Mr. Drury always seems to have lots of time, just because he makes the
rest of us run the works in Delafield First."
"Oh, he does, does he?" said Marty, shortly, who knew something of the
older minister's strategy. "That's according to how you look at it. I'm
not above learning from him, and I don't run everything, either. But I'm
there, or thereabouts, most of the time."
"How do you get time for your study and your sermons, then," queried J.
W., "if you're on the go so much?"
Marty turned a quizzical look at J.W. "My beloved chum, how did you and
I get time for our studies at Cartwright?" he said. "Besides, I'm making
one hand wash the other. The social life here, for instance, used to be
pretty bad, before Henderson came--that's the preacher whose place I
took. It was pulling away from the church; now it draws to the church.
Henderson started that. The people who are my main dependence in the
other affairs are mostly the same people I can count on in the Sunday
school and League and the preaching service. The more we do the better
it is for what we do Sundays."
"Then, there's another Because these people and I know one another so
well, I couldn't put on airs in the pulpit if I wanted to. I've just got
to preach straight, and I won't preach a thing I can't back up myself. I
use country illustrations; show them their own world. It's one big white
mark for the Farwell farm, as you might suppose, that I know the best
side of country life, though I don't advertise your real estate."
"I know," said J.W. "But don't you find country people pretty hard to
manage? That's our experience at the store. They are particular and
critical, and think they know just what they want."
"They do too," Marty asserted, "Why shouldn't they? I believe I can tell
you one big difference between the city boy and the country. You've been
both; see if I'm right. The country boy minds his folks, and his
teacher. But everything else minds him. He is boss of every critter on
the place, from the hens to the horses, whenever he has anything to do
with them at all. So he learns to think for them, as well as for
himself. In the city the boy has no chance to give orders--he's under
orders, all the time; the traffic cop, the truant officer, the boss in
the shop or the office, the street car conductor, the janitor--everybody
bosses him and he bosses nothing, except his kid brothers and sisters.
So he may come to be half cringer and half bully. The country boy is not
likely to be much afraid, and he soon learns that if he tries to boss
even the boys without good reason it doesn't pay. Maybe that's the
reason so many country boys make good when they go to the city."
"And the reason why a city boy like me," suggested J.W., "would be a
misfit in the country."
"Oh, you," scoffed Marty. "You don't count. You're a half-breed. But, as
I meant to say, you're right about country folks. They are a little
close, maybe. They are more independent in their business than town
people, but they learn how to work together; they exchange farm work,
and work the roads, and they are fairly dependent on one another for all
social life."
"On Deep Creek the tenant farmers are the biggest difficulty, your dad
told me last Sunday," said J.W. "They go to town when they go anywhere,
and not to church, either."
"I know," said Marty. "And I don't much blame 'em, from all I hear. But
Henderson changed that considerably in this community. He found out that
the tenants were just as human as the others, only they had the idea
that nobody cared about them, because they might be here to-day and gone
to-morrow. And, what do you think? I find tenant farmers around here are
beginning to take longer leases; one or two are about like dad's been
with your father--more partners than anything else. Every renter family
in this neighborhood comes to our church, and only three or four fight
shy of us at Valencia."
"All right," said J.W., drowsily. "Go to sleep now; I've got to inspect
that Holstein hotel in the morning, and I know what country hours are."
The next day J.W. drove off toward the big barns of his customer, and
left Marty deep in the mysteries of Sunday's sermon. Marty was yet a
very young preacher, and one sermon a week was all he could manage, as
several of his admirers had found out to his discomfiture, when one
Sunday they followed him from Ellis in the morning to Valencia at night.
But the "twicers" professed to enjoy it.
J.W.'s farmer was quite ready to talk about the new barn equipment and
how it was working, and he had remarkably few complaints, these more for
form's sake than anything else. That business was soon out of the way.
But Farmer Bellamy was interested in other things besides ventilators
and horse-forks.
"So you're a friend of our preacher," he said, in the questioning
affirmative of the deliberate country. "Well, he's quite a go-ahead
young fellow; you never get up early enough to find him working in a
cold collar. Maybe he's a mite ambitious, but I don't know."
J.W., as always, came promptly to Marty's defense. "He's not ambitious
for himself, Mr. Bellamy; I'll vouch for that. But I shouldn't wonder he
is ambitious about his work, and maybe that's not a bad thing for a
country preacher in these days."
"That's so," Mr. Bellamy assented. "But I doubt we keep him. He'll be
getting a church in town before long."
Now J.W. had no instructions from Marty, but he thought he might
venture. And he had been introduced to a few ideas that he had never met
in the days when he objected to Marty's taking a country circuit.
"I'll tell you something, Mr. Bellamy," he said. "Marty is a farmer's
boy who loves the country. If he has the right sort of backing, I
shouldn't wonder he stayed here a good long time. He's got enough plans
ahead for this circuit of his."
Mr. Bellamy laughed. "He has that; if he waits to get 'em all going
we're sure of him for a while. Why, he wants to make the church the most
important business in the whole neighborhood; and, what's more, he's
getting some of us to see it that way too."
"Yes, I guess that's his dream," J.W. said. "And it's so much better
than the reality up around where I used to live that I wouldn't head him
off if I were you."
"Head him off!" Mr. Bellamy laughed again. "Why, do you know what he did
in the fall, when some of us told him we couldn't do much for missions?
He phoned all over the neighborhood the day before he set out with a
ton-and-a-half truck he had hired for the job. Told us to put into the
truck anything we could spare. And what do you think? Before night he
drove into Hill City with a big overload, even for that truck, of wheat,
corn, butter, eggs, chickens, sausage, apples, potatoes, and dear knows
what. Sold the lot for sixty-nine dollars. He paid nine dollars for the
truck--got a rate on it--and turned in for missions sixty dollars. We've
never given more than twenty, in cash."
"But that wasn't all. Next Sunday he reported, and before any of us
could say 'Praise the Lord!' says he, 'Don't think the Lord's giving any
of us much credit for that stuff. We owe him a good deal more than a few
eggs that we'll never miss. I just wanted to show you that when we
country people really start paying our tithe to the Almighty our
missionary and other offerings will make that truckload look like the
crumbs from our tables. I've proved that we're rich, instead of being
too poor to provide for missions. And it's all our Father's, you know.
When we pay him our tithe we admit that in the only practical way,'
Funny thing was the whole business had been so queer, nobody got mad
over his plain talk. Some of us have begun to tithe, and to enjoy it.
Yes; that young feller is quite a go-ahead young feller."
J.W. rather admired the tale of the truck; it was like Marty, right
enough, to get his tithing talk illustrated with a load of produce; but
there was more than a hint of a new Marty, with a new directness and
confidence.
So he asked, "What else is he doing that's making a difference?"
And the floodgates were lifted. The Bellamy gift of utterance had a
congenial theme. For an hour the stream ran strong and steady, and when
it would have stopped none could tell. But J.W. remembered he had
promised to be back with Marty for dinner, and so, in the midst of a
story about Marty's Saturday afternoon outings with the boys, highly
reminiscent of their own old-time Saturdays in the Deep Creek timber,
J.W. made his excuses and hurried away.
In that hour he had heard of the observing of special days, Thanksgiving
and Christmas particularly; of the rage for athletic equipment on every
farm which had youngsters, so that the usual anaemic croquet outfit had
given place to basketball practice sets, indoor-outdoor ball,
volley-ball nets, and other paraphernalia. Some of it not much used now,
since winter had come, but under Marty's leadership, a skating rink
construction gang had thrown up a dirt embankment in a low spot near the
creek and then cut a channel far enough upstream to flood about four
acres of swamp. Mr. Bellamy told about the skating tournaments every
afternoon of the cold weather for the school children, and Saturday
afternoons for the older young folks. More people went than skated too,
the garrulous farmer asserted. It was just another of that young
preacher's sociability schemes, and there was no end to 'em, seemed like
to him.
There was even more on the business side of country life: how Marty had
joined forces with the Grange and the county agent and the cooperators
of the creamery and the elevator and the school teachers. And so on, and
so on.
J.W. would be the last to worry about such a program; it just fitted
his ideas. But it made him a little more interested in the Sunday
services. Would Marty's preaching match his community work?
But before Sunday morning came J.W. had other questions to ask. He put
them to Marty in intervals of the skating races; and again after supper,
before going over to the church to meet a little group of Sunday-school
folk--"my teacher-partners" Marty called them--who were learning with
him how to adapt Sunday school science and the teaching art to the
conditions of the open country.
All of J.W.'s questions were really one big question: "Say, Marty, boy,
I always knew you had something in you that didn't show on the surface,
but I never thought it was exactly the stuff they need to make
up-to-date country preachers. How does it happen that you've blossomed
out in these few months as a Moses to lead a 'rural parish'--if that's
the right scientific name--out of such a wilderness as I saw at Deep
Creek last Sunday?"
Marty made a pass at his chum in the fashion of the Cartwright days, and
waited for the return punch before answering. "Don't you 'Moses' me,
John Wesley. Besides, this circuit was no wilderness. Henderson, the
preacher who was here before me, was just the man for this work. He knew
the country, and believed it had the makings of even more attractive
life than the town. Too bad he had to quit. But he started these folks
thinking the right way. And then, don't you remember I wrote last
summer that I was spending two weeks at a school for rural ministers?"
"Oh, yes, I remember that," J.W. answered, "but that's no explanation. I
spent four years at a college for town and country boys, and now look at
me! Two weeks is a little too short a course to produce miracles, even
with such an intellect as yours, notwithstanding your name is bigger
than mine, Martin Luther! Now, if you'd said four weeks, I might almost
have believed you, but two weeks--well, it just isn't done, that's all!"
"Make fun of it, will you!" said Marty, with another short-arm jab.
"Now, listen to me. That thing is simple enough. First off, I'd been
thinking four years about being a preacher. On top of that, I'd been a
country boy for twenty-three years. I know the Deep Creek neighborhood
better than you do, because I had to live there. You were just visiting
the farm your father paid taxes on. When I came here I found that
Henderson had set things going. He told me what his dream was. So, when
I went to that two-weeks' school I was ready to take in every word and
see every picture and get a grip on every principle. Maybe you don't
know that it was one of many such schools set up by the rural work
leaders of our Home Missions Board, and it was a great school. They had
no use for rocking-chair ruralists, so the faculty, instead of being
made up of paper experts, was a bunch of men who _knew_. It was worth a
year of dawdling over text-books. You see, I knew I could come back here
and try everything on my own people. It was like the Squeers school in
'Nicholas Nickleby,' 'Member? When the spelling class was up, Squeers
says to Smike, the big, helpless dunce, 'Spell window,'" And Smike says,
'W-i-n-d-e-r,' 'All right,' Squeers says, 'now go out and wash 'em,'
Well, I hope I got the spelling a little nearer right, but I came home
and began washing my windows. That's all.
J.W. said "Huh!" and that stood for understanding, and approval, and
confidence.
As to Marty's preaching, it was a boy's preaching, naturally, but it was
preaching. And the people came for it; J.W., remarked to himself the
contrast between the close-parked cars around Ellis church and the
forlornly vacant horse-sheds he had seen at Deep Creek the Sunday
before.
The hearty singing of people glad to be singing together, the contagious
interest of a well-filled house, and the simple directness of the
preacher were all of a piece. Here was no effort to ape the forms of a
cathedral, but neither was there any careless, cheap slovenliness. And
assuredly there were no religious "stunts."
Marty preached the Christian evangel, not moralized agriculture. He made
the gospel invitation a social appeal, without blinking its primary
message to the individual to place himself under the authority of
Christ's self-forgetting love. He put first things in front--"Him that
cometh unto me," and then with simple illustrations and words as simple
he showed that they who had accepted Christ's lordship were honor bound
to live together under a new sort of law from that of the restless,
pushing, self-centered world: "It shall not be so among you." Besides,
he told them they could not separate service from profit. They knew, for
instance, that their farm values were a third higher because of the
presence of the church and its work, but they would find that the profit
motive was not big enough to keep the church going. They had to love the
work, and do it for love of it.
That afternoon the friends drove over to Valencia, where at night Marty
would preach again this his one sermon of the week; and J.W. left him
there, turning his car homeward for the fifty-two miles to Delafield.
As they parted, J.W. gripped Marty's hand and said: "Old man, I own up.
I thought you ought not to bury yourself in the country, but I had no
need to worry. I know preachers who are buried in town all right; you
have a bigger field and a livelier one than they will ever find. And
I'll never say another word about your two-weeks' school. If the Home
Missions Board had nothing else to do, such work as it showed you how to
do would be worth all the Board costs. I'm going to make trouble for Mr.
Drury and the district superintendent and the bishop and the Board and
anybody else I can get hold of, until Deep Creek gets the same sort of
chance as this circuit of yours. If only they knew where to find another
Martin Luther Shenk--that's the rub!" And with a last handclasp the
chums went their separate ways.
On Monday J.W. called up Pastor Drury and gave that gentleman, who was
expecting it, a five-minute summary of his day with Marty. "I'm awfully
glad I happened to think of going over there," he said, "not only for
the sake of being with the old boy again, but because I've got some new
notions about the country church, and about what we Methodists are
beginning to do for the places where Methodism got its start."
And Walter Drury said, "Yes, I'm glad, too." So he was; he could put
down a new mark on the credit side of the Experiment.