I
Abijah Flagg was driving over to Wareham on an errand for old Squire
Winship, whose general chore-boy and farmer's assistant he had been for
some years.
He passed Emma Jane Perkins's house slowly, as he always did. She was
only a little girl of thirteen and he a boy of fifteen or sixteen, but
somehow, for no particular reason, he liked to see the sun shine on her
thick braids of reddish-brown hair. He admired her china-blue eyes too,
and her amiable, friendly expression. He was quite alone in the world,
and he always thought that if he had anybody belonging to him he would
rather have a sister like Emma Jane Perkins than anything else within
the power of Providence to bestow. When she herself suggested this
relationship a few years later he cast it aside with scorn, having
changed his mind in the interval--but that story belongs to another time
and place.
Emma Jane was not to be seen in garden, field, or at the window, and
Abijah turned his gaze to the large brick house that came next on the
other side of the quiet village street. It might have been closed for
a funeral. Neither Miss Miranda nor Miss Jane Sawyer sat at their
respective windows knitting, nor was Rebecca Randall's gypsy face to be
discerned. Ordinarily that will-o'-the wispish little person could be
seen, heard, or felt wherever she was.
“The village must be abed, I guess,” mused Abijah, as he neared the
Robinsons' yellow cottage, where all the blinds were closed and no sign
of life showed on porch or in shed. “No, 't aint, neither,” he thought
again, as his horse crept cautiously down the hill, for from the
direction of the Robinsons' barn chamber there floated out into the air
certain burning sentiments set to the tune of “Antioch.” The words, to a
lad brought up in the orthodox faith, were quite distinguishable:
“Daughter of Zion, from the dust,
Exalt thy fallen head!”
Even the most religious youth is stronger on first lines than others,
but Abijah pulled up his horse and waited till he caught another
familiar verse, beginning:
“Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge,
And send thy heralds forth.”
“That's Rebecca carrying the air, and I can hear Emma Jane's alto.”
“Say to the North,
Give up thy charge,
And hold not back, O South,
And hold not back, O South,” etc.
“Land! ain't they smart, seesawin' up and down in that part they learnt
in singin' school! I wonder what they're actin' out, singin' hymn-tunes
up in the barn chamber? Some o' Rebecca's doins, I'll be bound! Git dap,
Aleck!”
Aleck pursued his serene and steady trot up the hills on the Edgewood
side of the river, till at length he approached the green Common where
the old Tory Hill meeting-house stood, its white paint and green blinds
showing fair and pleasant in the afternoon sun. Both doors were open,
and as Abijah turned into the Wareham road the church melodeon pealed
out the opening bars of the Missionary Hymn, and presently a score of
voices sent the good old tune from the choir-loft out to the dusty road:
“Shall we whose souls are lighted
With Wisdom from on high,
Shall we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny?”
“Land!” exclaimed Abijah under his breath. “They're at it up here, too!
That explains it all. There's a missionary meeting at the church, and
the girls wa'n't allowed to come so they held one of their own, and I
bate ye it's the liveliest of the two.”
Abijah Flagg's shrewd Yankee guesses were not far from the truth, though
he was not in possession of all the facts. It will be remembered by
those who have been in the way of hearing Rebecca's experiences in
Riverboro, that the Rev. and Mrs. Burch, returned missionaries from the
Far East, together with some of their children, “all born under Syrian
skies,” as they always explained to interested inquirers, spent a day or
two at the brick house, and gave parlor meetings in native costume.
These visitors, coming straight from foreign lands to the little Maine
village, brought with them a nameless enchantment to the children, and
especially to Rebecca, whose imagination always kindled easily. The
romance of that visit had never died in her heart, and among the many
careers that dazzled her youthful vision was that of converting such
Syrian heathen as might continue in idol worship after the Burches'
efforts in their behalf had ceased. She thought at the age of eighteen
she might be suitably equipped for storming some minor citadel of
Mohammedanism; and Mrs. Burch had encouraged her in the idea, not, it is
to be feared, because Rebecca showed any surplus of virtue or Christian
grace, but because her gift of language, her tact and sympathy, and her
musical talent seemed to fit her for the work.
It chanced that the quarterly meeting of the Maine Missionary Society
had been appointed just at the time when a letter from Mrs. Burch to
Miss Jane Sawyer suggested that Rebecca should form a children's branch
in Riverboro. Mrs. Burch's real idea was that the young people should
save their pennies and divert a gentle stream of financial aid into
the parent fund, thus learning early in life to be useful in such work,
either at home or abroad.
The girls themselves, however, read into her letter no such modest
participation in the conversion of the world, and wishing to effect an
organization without delay, they chose an afternoon when every house in
the village was vacant, and seized upon the Robinsons' barn chamber as
the place of meeting.
Rebecca, Alice Robinson, Emma Jane Perkins, Candace Milliken, and Persis
Watson, each with her hymn book, had climbed the ladder leading to
the haymow a half hour before Abijah Flagg had heard the strains
of “Daughters of Zion” floating out to the road. Rebecca, being an
executive person, had carried, besides her hymn book, a silver call-bell
and pencil and paper. An animated discussion regarding one of two
names for the society, The Junior Heralds or The Daughters of Zion,
had resulted in a unanimous vote for the latter, and Rebecca had been
elected president at an early stage of the meeting. She had modestly
suggested that Alice Robinson, as the granddaughter of a missionary to
China, would be much more eligible.
“No,” said Alice, with entire good nature, “whoever is _elected_
president, you _will_ be, Rebecca--you're that kind--so you might as well
have the honor; I'd just as lieves be secretary, anyway.”
“If you should want me to be treasurer, I could be, as well as not,”
said Persis Watson suggestively; “for you know my father keeps china
banks at his store--ones that will hold as much as two dollars if you
will let them. I think he'd give us one if I happen to be treasurer.”
The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop
and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders
organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd
better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful.
“We ought to have more members,” she reminded the other girls, “but if
we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers,
especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till
another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?”
“I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby
Thirza,” said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was
carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. “It always
makes me want to say:
Thirza Meserver
Heaven preserve her!
Thirza Meserver
Do we deserve her?
She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we
ought to have her.”
“Is 'guile' the same as guilt?” inquired Emma Jane Perkins.
“Yes,” the president answered; “exactly the same, except one is written
and the other spoken language.” (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing
information, and a master hand at imparting it!) “Written language is
for poems and graduations and occasions like this--kind of like a best
Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in
for fear of getting it spotted.”
“I'd just as lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,” affirmed the
unimaginative Emma Jane. “I think it's an awful foolish word; but now
we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's
easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying
because their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make
believe be blacksmiths when we were little.”
“It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,” said Persis,
“because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where
Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen
bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let
you and give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we
begin on? Jethro Small?”
“Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!” exclaimed Candace.
“Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.”
“He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through
the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,” objected Alice.
“There's Uncle Tut Judson.”
“He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,” complained Emma
Jane. “Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher--why
doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to
start on!”
“Don't talk like that, Emma Jane,” and Rebecca's tone had a tinge of
reproof in it. “We are a copperated body named the Daughters of Zion,
and, of course, we've got to find something to do. Foreigners are the
easiest; there's a Scotch family at North Riverboro, an English one in
Edgewood, and one Cuban man at Millkin's Mills.”
“Haven't foreigners got any religion of their own?” inquired Persis
curiously.
“Ye-es, I s'pose so; kind of a one; but foreigners' religions are never
right--ours is the only good one.” This was from Candace, the deacon's
daughter.
“I do think it must be dreadful, being born with a religion and growing
up with it, and then finding out it's no use and all your time wasted!”
Here Rebecca sighed, chewed a straw, and looked troubled.
“Well, that's your punishment for being a heathen,” retorted Candace,
who had been brought up strictly.
“But I can't for the life of me see how you can help being a heathen if
you're born in Africa,” persisted Persis, who was well named.
“You can't.” Rebecca was clear on this point. “I had that all out with
Mrs. Burch when she was visiting Aunt Miranda. She says they can't help
being heathen, but if there's a single mission station in the whole of
Africa, they're accountable if they don't go there and get saved.”
“Are there plenty of stages and railroads?” asked Alice; “because there
must be dreadfully long distances, and what if they couldn't pay the
fare?”
“That part of it is so dreadfully puzzly we mustn't talk about it,
please,” said Rebecca, her sensitive face quivering with the force of
the problem. Poor little soul! She did not realize that her superiors
in age and intellect had spent many a sleepless night over that same
“accountability of the heathen.”
“It's too bad the Simpsons have moved away,” said Candace. “It's so
seldom you can find a real big wicked family like that to save, with
only Clara Belle and Susan good in it.”
“And numbers count for so much,” continued Alice. “My grandmother says
if missionaries can't convert about so many in a year the Board advises
them to come back to America and take up some other work.”
“I know,” Rebecca corroborated; “and it's the same with revivalists. At
the Centennial picnic at North Riverboro, a revivalist sat opposite to
Mr. Ladd and Aunt Jane and me, and he was telling about his wonderful
success in Bangor last winter. He'd converted a hundred and thirty in
a month, he said, or about four and a third a day. I had just finished
fractions, so I asked Mr. Ladd how the third of a man could be
converted. He laughed and said it was just the other way; that the man
was a third converted. Then he explained that if you were trying to
convince a person of his sin on a Monday, and couldn't quite finish by
sundown, perhaps you wouldn't want to sit up all night with him, and
perhaps he wouldn't want you to; so you'd begin again on Tuesday, and
you couldn't say just which day he was converted, because it would be
two thirds on Monday and one third on Tuesday.”
“Mr. Ladd is always making fun, and the Board couldn't expect any great
things of us girls, new beginners,” suggested Emma Jane, who was being
constantly warned against tautology by her teacher. “I think it's awful
rude, anyway, to go right out and try to convert your neighbors; but if
you borrow a horse and go to Edgewood Lower Corner, or Milliken's Mills,
I s'pose that makes it Foreign Missions.”
“Would we each go alone or wait upon them with a committee, as they did
when they asked Deacon Tuttle for a contribution for the new hearse?”
asked Persis.
“Oh! We must go alone,” decided Rebecca; “it would be much more refined
and delicate. Aunt Miranda says that one man alone could never get
a subscription from Deacon Tuttle, and that's the reason they sent a
committee. But it seems to me Mrs. Burch couldn't mean for us to try
and convert people when we're none of us even church members, except
Candace. I think all we can do is to persuade them to go to meeting and
Sabbath school, or give money for the hearse, or the new horse sheds.
Now let's all think quietly for a minute or two who's the very most
heathenish and reperrehensiblest person in Riverboro.”
After a very brief period of silence the words “Jacob Moody” fell from
all lips with entire accord.
“You are right,” said the president tersely; “and after singing hymn
number two hundred seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page,
we will take up the question of persuading Mr. Moody to attend divine
service or the minister's Bible class, he not having been in the
meeting-house for lo! these many years.
'Daughter of Zion, the power that hath saved thee
Extolled with the harp and the timbrel should be.'
“Sing without reading, if you please, omitting the second stanza. Hymn
two seventy four, to be found on the sixty-sixth page of the new hymn
book or on page thirty two of Emma Jane Perkins's old one.”