It has been well said that the heresies of one generation are the
orthodox standards of the next; and it is equally true that the great
convulsive waves of emotion, belief, patriotic aspiration or progressive
emulation of the leaders of thought of one age, for which they are
martyred by the conventionally stupid majority, become the watchwords
and uncontrovertible basis of belief for the succeeding generation of
the respectably unthinking, and furnish afresh, alas! the means, the
motives and the power for the crucifixion of the prophets and thinkers
of the new cycle. Mediocrity is forever sure that nothing better or
loftier is in store. Genius sees eternal progress in perpetual change.
Much of the doings and many of the sayings of the new religious sect
seemed to the people about them full of heresy, dangerous in tendency,
and, indeed, blasphemous in its enthusiasms and its belief in and effort
for an intimate personal relationship with a prayer-answering and a
praise-loving God. To Grif, Brother Prout's fervor and enthusiasm of
expression, his prayers which seemed the friendly communications of
one who in deed and in truth walked with his God, instead of the old,
perfunctory, formal reading of set phrases arranged for special days,
which had to be hunted up in a book and responded to by all in exactly
the same words, and with the same utter want of personal feeling, to
Grif, these fervid, passionate, sincere and simple appeals of the kind
old enthusiast seemed like the very acme and climax of a faith which
might, indeed, move mountains.
"Amen! amen!"
"Praise the Lord, O my soul!"
"Thanks be to Almighty Godt" echoed along the banks of the river, the
loved Opquan, that had been to Grif a friend and companion from his
earliest boyhood. He had never stood by its banks without an onrush
of feeling that had tended to burst into a song of joy! From his
grandfather's front porch and from the windows of his own room at home
he could see it winding through the rocky hills and struggling for its
right to reach the sea. He had skipped pebbles on it and waded across it
at low tide, and had stood in awe at its angry and impetuous swirl when
the spring rains had swollen it to a torrent of irresistible force. It
seemed to Grif now that its waters smiled at him, and his eyes filled
with tears that were of happiness not unmixed with a tender pain and
regret--regret for he knew not what.
"Joy to the world, the Lord has come!" rang out with a volume and an
impassioned sincerity which gave no room for the critical ear of the
musician nor for the carping brain of the skeptic, had either been there
to hear. "Let earth receive her King!" The hills in the distance took
up the melody, and it seemed to the overwrought nerves of the boy
that nothing so beautiful in all the world had ever been seen or heard
before. "Let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing!"
Ah, was not heaven and nature, indeed, singing the most glorious song
the earth had ever heard or seen when she made this valley? When she
built these mountains, and threaded that little river over the stones?
Griffith was lost in an intoxication of soul and sense. He was looking
across the valley to the old home. His hands were clenched until the
nails were marking the palms, and his voice rang out so clear and true
that the neighborhood boys touched each other and motioned toward the
young fellow with almost a sense of envy. Neither cultured musician nor
cynic was there, and the softness of the air lent charm to the simple
exercises which some of the youths had come in a spirit of fun to
deride. It was restful to the weary, stimulating to the sluggish and
soothing to the unhappy. They were carried out of their narrow and
monotonous lives. If Griffith's heart had been sore and in a condition
to be soothed by the words and prayers of Father Prout, how much more
were his nerves and emotions in that unstrung and vaguely wounded
and impressionable state where physical change and reaction is easily
mistaken for religious fervor or exaltation, how much more was he in
that state where melody joined to nature's most profligate mood of
beauty in scene leads captive the soul!
During the meeting which had followed his arrival at the camp-ground
Grif had passed through that phase of physical reaction which meant to
him a "leading of the spirit" and, as he stood now on the banks of his
beloved river pouring out his young heart in the hymn of his boyish
fancy, he no longer doubted that he had, indeed, been "called" to be
a circuit rider and to cast his lot with the new order of religions
enthusiasts. He looked now upon his previous doubts as temptations of
the devil and put, once and for all, their whisperings behind him and
accepted the new lot as heaven and God-sent and intended.
Father Prout gave to all of his converts a choice in the form of
their baptism. Leaning, himself, toward immersion, he still held that
sprinkling was sufficient and with a lingering memory of his father's
fling at "ducking converts in the creek," Griffith had determined to be
sprinkled; but, as the last echoes of the old hymn died away, he stepped
to the bank and indicated that he would be immersed. As he arose from
the water his face was radiant, and when he had removed his immersion
robe his eyes filled with happy tears as his father rode up to the edge
of the grounds and held out his arms to the boy.
"My son," he said tremulously, "my son, forgive me. I have been unhappy
all night. I did not realize that I was swearing at you until your
mothah told me. Come home, my boy, and your new friends will be welcome
at Rock Hall. God bless you, my son, come home, your mothah is unhappy."
Mr. Lengthy Patterson, a long-legged, cadaverous mountaineer who had
wended his way from the distant fastnesses of the high perched log
cabin which he called home and wherein he ate and slept when he was
not engaged in those same occupations out under the stars where
night--during his hunting and fishing expeditions--chanced to overtake
him, had been watching Grif all day. The boy's radiant face the past
hour had fascinated him. In his absorption he had stepped so close to
the old Major as he and Grif stood making ready for the homeward ride,
that Mr. Davenport made an instinctive gesture of impatient disapproval
which called the naturally deferential woodsman back to his normal
mental state.
"It is Lengthy Patterson, father," said Griffith, with his ever-ready
impulse to cover the confusion of the unlucky or ignorant who were
intrusive without a knowledge of the fact until a recognition of
disapproval made self-consciousness painful.
Mr. Davenport moved as if to make amends for his previous manner by an
offer to shake hands with the mountaineer--an unheard-of proceeding on
the 'Squire's part.
"Oh, it's Lengthy Patterson, is it? I beg your pahrdon, Mr. a--Lengthy.
I did not recognize you at--"
The long legs had moved slowly away. He turned around, tilted his half
rimless hat further on to the back of his head, in lieu of lifting
it, and in a voice as evenly graded to one single note as is that of a
flying loon, remarked, as he kept on his way:
"No excuse. Say nothin'. Few words comprehends the whole."
"What did that fellow say, Grif?" asked his father, as they mounted.
Griffith laughed rather hysterically. The reaction was coming.
"It's just a phrase he has, father. They say he never was known to say
anything else; but I expect that is a joke. He's an honest fellow and
a splendid woodsman. He knows every crack in the mountains, and is a
perfect terror to rattlesnakes. Don't you remember? He is the fellow
who saved the old Randolph house that time it took fire, and got the
children out. They say when Mrs. Randolph went away up to his cabin to
thank him, he remarked that 'a few words comprehended the whole,' and
fled the mountain until he was sure she had gone. He appears to be
afraid of the English language and of nothing else on earth."
There was a long silence. The old Major was turned half out of his
saddle, as was a habit of his, to rest himself. The horses were taking
their own gait. Presently they turned a curve in the road and Grif
suddenly threw his arm across his father's shoulder and leaned far over
toward him. "Kiss me, father," he said, and before the moisture had
dried out of their eyes and the great lump left their throats, both
laughed a little in that shame-faced fashion men have when, with each
other, they have yielded to their natural and tender emotions. But
both horses understood and broke into a steady lope, and the chasm was
bridged.
"Dars Mos' Grif! Dars Mos' Grif an' ole Mos'!" exclaimed Jerry as he saw
the two horsemen in the distance. "Dey comin', Mis' Sallie, dey is dat!
Lawsy me, Mis' Sallie, dey want no uste fer yo' ter be skeered dat a
way 'bout Mos' Grif. He's des dat staidy dat yo' c'd cahry wattah on he
haid, let er 'lone Selim ain't gwine ter let no trouble come ter Mos'
Grif. But I dus 'low dat'e oughter a tuck dis chile erlong wid'im ter
look arter'im, dough. Dat's a fack. I knows dat. Run inter de kitchen,
Lippy Jane, an' tell yo' maw dat Mos' Grif an' ole Mos' mose heah, an'
she better git dem dar chicken fixins all raidy quick as ebber she kin.
Dey gwine ter be hongry, sho's yo' bohn, dey is dat."
Lippy Jane sped away on her errand with that degree of enthusiasm which
sprang from a consciousness of bearing a welcome message to expectant
listeners, when suddenly, as she passed a group of idle compeers, one
of the boys flung upon her lower lip, where it lodged and dangled in
squirming response to her every motion, a long yellow apple peeling. She
did not pause in her onward course, but called back in belligerent tones
at the offender:
"I des gwine ter lef dat erlone dar, now, an' show hit ter Mos' Grif! I
is dat! You nasty little nigger!" and she reappeared, after giving her
message in the kitchen, with the pendant peel still reposing upon the
superfluous portion of the feature to which she was indebted for her
name.