APRIL sunshine of mid-afternoon poured in through the open door of the
Cross-Roads. The usual group of loungers had gathered around the rusty
stove. There was no fire in it; the day was too warm for that, but force
of habit made them draw their chairs about it in a circle, as if this
common centre were the hub, from which radiated the spokes of all
neighbourly intercourse.
The little schoolmistress was under discussion. Her short reign in
District No. 3 had furnished a topic of conversation as inexhaustible as
the weather, for her regime was attended by startling changes. Luckily
for her, the young ideas enjoyed being taught to shoot at wide variance
from the targets set up by parental practice and tradition, else the
tales told out of school might have aroused more adverse criticism than
they did.
"You can't take much stock in her new-fangled notions," was the
unanimous opinion at the Cross-Roads. She had "put the cart before the
horse" when she laid the time-honoured alphabet on the shelf, and gave
the primer class a whole word at a mouthful, before it had cut a single
orthographic tooth on such primeval syllables as a-b ab.
"Look at my Willie," exclaimed one of the district fathers. "Beating
around the bush with talk about a picture cow, and a real cow, and a
word cow, and not knowing whether B comes after W or X. At his age I
could say the alphabet forwards or backwards as fast as tongue could go
without a slip."
"She's done _one_ sensible thing," admitted Cy Akers. "They tell me
she's put her foot down on the scholars playing April fool tricks this
year."
"I don't see why," said Henry Bicking. "It has been one of the customs
in this district since the schoolhouse was built. What's the harm if the
children do take one day in the year for a little foolishness? Let them
have their fun, I say."
"But they've carried it too far," was the answer. "It's scandalous they
should be allowed to abuse people's rights and feelings and property as
they have done the last few years. First of April doesn't justify such
cutting up any more than the first of August."
"She's got Scripture on her side," said Squire Dobbs. "You know Solomon
says, 'As a mad man who casteth firebrands, arrows, and death, so is the
man that deceiveth his neighbour and saith, am I not in sport?'"
"She can't stamp out such a deep-rooted custom in one day," protested
Bicking.
"You can bet on the little school-ma'am every time," laughed Bowser. "My
daughter Milly says they didn't have regular lessons yesterday
afternoon. She had them put their books in their desks.
"Said they'd been studying about wise men all their lives, now they'd
study about fools awhile; the fools of Proverbs and the fools of
history.
"She read some stories, too, about a cruel disappointment and the
troubles brought about by some thoughtless jokes on the first of April.
Mighty interesting stories, Milly said. You could have heard a pin drop,
and some of the girls cried. Then she drew a picture on the blackboard
of a court jester, in cap and bells, and asked if they wouldn't like a
change this year. Instead of everybody acting the fool and doing silly
things they'd all be ashamed of if they'd only stop to think, wouldn't
they rather she'd appoint just one scholar to play the fool for all of
them, as the old kings used to do.
"They agreed to that, quick enough, thinking what fun they'd have
teasing the one chosen to be it. Then she said she'd appoint the first
one this morning who showed himself most deserving of the office. Milly
says from the way she smiled when she said it, they're all sure she
means to choose the first one who plays an April Fool joke. She'd put it
so strong to 'em how silly it was, that there ain't a child in school
you could hire to run the risk of being appointed fool for the day. So I
think she's coming out ahead as usual."
"After all," said Bud Hines, "there's some lessons to be got out of
those old tricks we used to play. For instance, the pocketbook tied to a
string. Seems to me that everything in life worth having has a string
tied to it, and just as I am about to pick it up, Fate snatches it out
of my hands."
"Don't you believe it, Buddy," said Bowser, cheerfully; "you take notice
those pocketbooks on strings are always empty ones, and they don't
belong to us, so we have no business grabbing for them or feeling
disappointed because we can't get something for nothing."
But Bud waved aside the interruption mechanically.
"Then there's the _gifts_ with strings tied to 'em," he continued. "My
wife has a rich aunt who is always sending her presents, and writing,
'Understand this is for _you_, Louisy. You're too generous, and I don't
want anybody but your own deserving self to wear this.' Now out in the
country here, my wife doesn't have occasion to wear handsome clothes
like them once a year, while they'd be the very thing for Clara May, off
at Normal School. But not a feather or a ribbon can the child touch
because her great-aunt bought them expressly for her ma. Goodness knows
she'd have a thousand times more pleasure in seeing Clara May enjoy
them, than knowing they were lying away in bureau drawers doing nobody
any good. When she takes 'em out at house-cleaning times I say, 'Ma,'
says I, 'deliver me from gifts with strings tied to 'em. I'd rather have
a ten-cent bandanna, all mine, to have and to hold or to give away as
pleased me most, than the finest things your Aunt Honigford's money
could buy, if I had to account to her every time I turned around in
them.'
"When I give anything I _give_ it, and don't expect to come back, spying
around ten years afterward to see if it's worn out, or cracked, or
faded, or broken. That's my doctrine."
* * * * *
Marion Holmes, driving along the country road in the old miller's
antiquated chaise, drew rein in front of a low picket gate, overhung by
mammoth snowball bushes. Down the path, between the rows of budding
lilacs and japonicas, came an old gentleman in a quaintly cut,
long-tailed coat. He was stepping along nimbly, although he leaned hard
on his gold-headed cane.
"'A man he was to all the country dear,'" quoted Marion softly to
herself as the minister's benign face smiled a greeting through his big
square-bowed spectacles. "I know he must have been Goldsmith's friend,
and I wish I dared ask him how long he lived in the Deserted Village."
But all she called out to him as he stopped with a courtly bow, under
the snowball bushes, was a cheery good morning and an invitation to take
a seat beside her if he wanted to drive to the Cross-Roads store.
"Thank you, Miss Polly," he answered, "that is my destination. I am on
my way there for a text."
"For a what?" exclaimed Marion in surprise, turning the wheel for him to
step in beside her.
"For a text for my Easter sermon," he explained as they drove on in the
warm April sunshine. "Ah, I see, Miss Polly, you have not discovered the
school of philosophers that centres around the Cross-Roads store. Well,
it's not to be wondered at; few people do. I spent a winter in Rome,
when I was younger, and one of my favourite walks was up on the Pincian
Hill. The band plays in the afternoons, you know, and tourists flock to
see the queen drive by. There is a charming view from the summit--the
dome of St. Peters against the blue Italian sky, the old yellow Tiber
crawling along under its bridges from ruin to ruin, and the immortal
city itself, climbing up its historic hills. And on the Pincio one meets
everybody,--soldiers and courtiers, flower girls and friars, monks in
robes of every order, and pilgrims from all parts of the world.
"The first time I was on the hill, as I wandered among the shrubbery
and flowers, I noticed a row of moss-grown pedestals set along each side
of the drive for quite a distance. Each pedestal bore the weather-beaten
bust of some old sage or philosopher or hero.
"They made no more impression on my mind then, than so many
fence-posts, but later I found a workman repairing the statuary one day.
He had put a new nose on the mutilated face of an old philosopher, and
that fresh white nasal appendage, standing out jauntily in the middle of
the ancient gray visage, was so ludicrous I could not help smiling
whenever I passed it. I began to feel acquainted with the old fellow, as
day after day that nose forced my attention. Sometimes, coming upon him
suddenly, the only familiar face in a city full of strangers, I felt
that he was an old friend to whom I should take off my hat. Then it
became so that I rarely passed him without recalling some of his wise
sayings that I had read at college. Many a time he and his row of
stony-eyed companions were an inspiration to me in that way.
"It was so that I met these men at the Cross-Roads. They scarcely
claimed my attention at first. Then one day I heard one of them give
utterance to a time-worn truth in such an original way that I stopped to
talk to him.
"Trite as it was, he had hewn it himself out of the actual experiences
of his own life. It was the result of his own keen observation of human
nature. Set as it was in his homely, uncouth dialect, it impressed me
with startling force. Then I listened to his companions, and found that
they, too, were sometimes worthy of pedestals. Unconsciously to
themselves they have often given me suggestions for my sermons. Ah, it's
a pity that the backwoods has no Pincio on which to give its
philosophers to posterity!"
* * * * *
Half an hour later as they drove homeward, Marion glanced at her
companion. "No text this time," she laughed, breaking the reverie into
which the old minister had fallen. "Your sages said nothing but 'good
morning, sir,' and there wasn't a single suggestion of Easter in the
whole store, except the packages of egg dyes, and some impossible little
chocolate rabbits. Oh, yes,--those two little boys playing on the
doorstep. Tommy Bowser had evidently taken time by the forelock and
sampled his father's dyes, for he had a whole hatful of coloured eggs,
and was teaching that little Perkins boy how to play 'bust.' He was an
apt scholar, for while I watched he won five of Tommy's eggs and never
cracked his own. You should have seen them."
"Oh, I saw them," said the minister, with a smile. "It was those same
little lads who suggested the text for my Easter sermon."
Marion gave a gasp of astonishment. "Would you mind telling me _how_?"
she exclaimed.
"It came about very naturally. There they stood with their hands full
of the Easter eggs, with never a thought of what they symbolised--the
breaking shell--the rising of this little embryo earth-existence to the
free full-winged life of the Resurrection. They were too intent on their
little game, on their small winnings and losings, to have a thought for
higher things. As I watched them it occurred to me how typical it was of
all the children of men, and instantly that text from Luke flashed into
my mind: '_Their eyes were holden._' Do you remember? It was when the
two disciples went down to Emmaus. I often picture it," mused the old
man after a little pause. "The green of the olive groves, the red and
white of the blossoming almond-trees, the late afternoon sunshine, and
those two discouraged fishermen trudging along the dusty road. They were
turning away from a lost cause and a buried hope, too absorbed in their
overwhelming grief to see that it was the risen Lord Himself who walked
beside them. Not till the end of their journey did they know why it was
that their hearts had burned within them as He talked with them by the
way. Their eyes were holden.
"How typical that is, too, Miss Polly. Sometimes we go on to the end of
life, missing the comfort and help that we might have had at every step,
because we look up at our Lord only through eyes of clay, and hold
communion with him as with a stranger. Yes, I shall certainly make that
the subject of my Easter sermon, Miss Polly. Thank you for helping me
discover it."
That next Sunday as Marion sat in church beside the old miller, her
gaze wandered from the lilies in the chancel to the faces of the waiting
congregation. Bud Hines was there and Bowser, Cy Akers, and even
Perkins's oldest, whose game of "bust" had suggested the helpful sermon
of the morning. Marion studied the serious, weather-beaten faces with
new interest. "It is not in spiritual things alone that our eyes are
holden," she said to herself. "I have been looking at only the
commonplace exterior of these people. It takes a man like the old
minister to recognise unpedestalled virtues and to set them on the
Pincio they deserve."