_THE MEETING AND ITS MISSIONARY WORK_.
The Methodist church in the village is doing now, as it has always
done, a good and noble work for Christianity and the cause of public
morals; but it has not escaped the trials which are permitted
sometimes to afflict the Church militant. Years ago, when the
congregation was first organized, it erected a small but very
pretty frame meeting-house. In the course of time the people became
dissatisfied with the location of the house of worship; and as they
had a good offer for the site, they sold it and bought a better one in
another quarter. Then they put rollers under the building, and as soon
as it was off the ground the purchaser of the lot began to build a
dwelling-house on the site. It was slow work pushing the church along
the street, and before they got far somebody discovered that the title
of the new site was not good, and so the bargain was annulled. The
next day the brethren went plunging around town trying to buy another
site, but nobody had one to sell; and on the following morning the
supervisors got an order from the court requiring that meeting-house
to be removed from the public street within twenty-four hours.
The brethren were nearly wild about it, and they begged old Brindley
to let them run the concern in on his vacant lot temporarily until
they could look around. But Brindley belonged to another denomination,
and he said he felt that it would be wrong for him to do anything
to help a church that believed false doctrines. Then they ran the
meeting-house out on the turnpike beyond the town, whereupon the
turnpike company notified them that its charges would be eight dollars
a day for toll. So they hauled it back again; and while going down the
hill it broke loose, plunged through the fence of Dr. Mackey's garden
and brought up on top of his asparagus-bed. He is an Episcopalian,
and he sued the meeting for damages; and the sheriff levied upon the
meetinghouse. The brethren paid the bill and dragged the building out
again.
They wanted to put it in the court-house yard, but Judge Twiddler, who
is a Presbyterian, said that after examining the statutes carefully he
could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located
in that place. In despair, the brethren ran the building down to the
river-shore and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tie it
to the wharf until they could buy a lot. But as the owner of the
wharf handed them on the third day a bill of twenty-five dollars for
wharfage, they took the building out and anchored it in the stream.
That night a tug-boat, coming up the river in the dark, ran halfway
through the Sunday-school room, and a Dutch brig, coming into
collision with it, was drawn out with the pulpit and three of the
front pews dangling from the bowsprit. The owners of both vessels sued
for damages, and the United States authorities talked of confiscating
the meeting-house as an obstruction to navigation. But a few days
afterward the ice-gorge sent a flood down the river and broke the
building loose from its anchor. It was subsequently washed ashore on
Keyser's farm; and he said he was willing to let it stay there at four
dollars a day rent until he was ready to plough for corn. As the cost
of removing it would have been very great, the trustees ultimately
sold it to Keyser for a barn, and then, securing a good lot, they
built a handsome edifice of stone.
On the first Sunday that the congregation worshiped in the new church
Mr. Potts attended; and in accordance with his custom, he placed his
silk high hat just outside of the pew in the aisle. In a few moments
Mrs. Jones entered, and as she proceeded up the aisle her abounding
skirts caught Mr. Potts' hat and rolled it nearly to the pulpit. Mr.
Potts pursued his hat with feelings of indignation; and when Mrs.
Jones took her seat, he walked back, brushing the hat with his sleeve.
A few moments later Mrs. Hopkins came into church; and as Mr. Potts
had again placed his hat in the aisle, Mrs. Hopkins' skirts struck it
and swept it along about twenty feet, and left it lying on the carpet
in a demoralized condition. Mr. Potts was singing a hymn at the time,
and he didn't miss it. But a moment later, when he looked over the end
of the pew to see if it was safe, he was furious to perceive that it
was gone. He skirmished up the aisle after it again, red in the face,
and uttering sentences which were very much out of place in the
sanctuary. However, he put the hat down again and determined to keep
his eye on it, but just as he turned his head away for a moment Mrs.
Smiley came in, and Potts looked around only in time to watch the hat
being gathered in under Mrs. Smiley's skirts and carried away by them.
He started in pursuit, and just as he did so the hat must have rolled
against Mrs. Smiley's ankles, for she gave a jump and screamed right
out in church. When her husband asked her what was the matter, she
said there must be a dog under her dress, and she gave her skirts
a twist. Out rolled Mr. Potts' hat, and Mr. Smiley, being very
near-sighted, thought it was a dog, and immediately kicked it so
savagely that it flew up into the gallery and lodged on top of the
organ. Mr. Potts, perfectly frantic with rage, forgot where he was;
and holding his clinched fist under Smiley's nose, he shrieked, "I've
half a mind to brain you, you scoundrel!" Then he flung down his
hymn-book and rushed from the church. He went home bareheaded, and the
sexton brought his humiliating hat around after dinner. After that Mr.
Potts expressed a purpose to go habitually to Quaker meeting, where he
could say his prayers with his hat on his head, and where the skirts
of female worshippers are smaller.
* * * * *
Upon a subsequent occasion Mrs. Whistler had even a greater occasion
for dissatisfaction with the sanctuary.
The facts in Mrs. Whistler's case were these: Mrs. Whistler has
singular absence of mind, and on the last Sunday she attended church
Dr. Dox began to read from the Scriptures the account of the Deluge.
Mrs. Whistler was deeply attentive; and when the doctor came to the
story of how it rained for so many days and nights, she was so much
absorbed in the narrative and so strongly impressed with it that she
involuntarily put up her umbrella and held it over her head as she sat
in the pew. It appears that Mrs. Moody, who sits in the next pew in
front, frequently brings her lap-dog to church with her; and when
Mrs. Whistler raised her umbrella suddenly, the action affected the
sensibilities of Mrs. Moody's dog in such a manner that he began to
bark furiously.
Of course the sexton came in for the purpose of removing the animal,
but it dodged into a vacant pew upon the other side of the aisle and
defied him, barking vociferously all the time. Then the sexton became
warm and indignant, and he flung a cane at the dog, whereupon the dog
flew out and bit his leg. The excitement in the church by this time,
of course, was simply dreadful. Not only was the story of the Deluge
interrupted, but the unregenerate Sunday-school scholars in the
gallery actually hissed the dog at the sexton, and seemed to enjoy the
contest exceedingly.
Then Elder McGinn came after the dog with his cane, and as he pursued
the animal it dashed toward the pulpit and ran up the steps in such a
fierce manner that the doctor quickly mounted a chair and remarked,
with anger flashing through his spectacles, that if this disgraceful
scene did not soon come to an end he should dismiss the congregation.
Then the elder crept softly up the stairs, and after a short struggle
he succeeded in grasping the dog by one of its hind legs. Then
he walked down the aisle with it, the dog meantime yelling with
supernatural energy and the Sunday-school boys making facetious
remarks.
Mrs. Whistler turned around, with other members of the congregation,
to watch the retreating elder, and as she did so she permitted her
unconscious umbrella to droop so that the end of one of the ribs
caught Mrs. Moody's bonnet. A moment later, when she was straightening
up the umbrella, the bonnet was wrenched off, and hung dangling from
the umbrella. Mrs. Moody had become exceedingly warm, at any rate,
over the onslaught made upon her dog, but when Mrs. Whistler removed
her bonnet, she fairly boiled over; and turning around, white with
rage, she screamed,
"What'd you grab that bonnet for, you wretch! Haven't you made enough
fuss in this church to-day, skeering a poor innocent dog, without
snatching off such bonnets as the like of you can't afford to wear, no
matter how mean you live at home, you red-headed lunatic, you! You
let my bonnet alone, or I'll hit you with this parasol, if it is in
meeting, now mind me!"
Then Mrs. Whistler, for the first time, seemed to realize that her
umbrella made her conspicuous; so she furled it and concluded to
escape from an embarrassing position by going home. As she stepped
into the aisle her enemy gave her a parting salute:
"Sneaking off before the collection, too! You'd better spend less for
breastpins and give more to the poor heathen if you don't want to
ketch it hereafter!"
Then she began to fan herself furiously, and as Mrs. Whistler emerged
from the front door and things became calmer the doctor resumed the
story of the Flood. But Mrs. Whistler has given up her pew and gone
over to the Presbyterians, and there are rumors that Mrs. Moody is
going to secede also because Elder McGinn insists that she shall leave
her dog at home.
* * * * *
The Dorcas and missionary societies of the church are particularly
active, but they were somewhat discouraged a year or two ago by
certain unforeseen occurrences. The ladies of the Dorcas Society made
up a large quantity of shirts, trousers and socks, and boxed them up
and sent them to a missionary station on the west coast of Africa.
A man named Ridley went out with the boxes and stayed in Africa for
several months. When he returned, the Dorcas Society, of course, was
anxious to hear how its donation was received, and Ridley one evening
met the members and told them about it in a little speech. He said,
"Well, you know, we got the clothes out there all right, and after
a while we distributed them among some of the natives in the
neighborhood. We thought maybe it would attract them to the mission,
but it didn't; and after some time had elapsed and not a native came
to church with the clothes on, I went out on an exploring expedition
to find out about it. It seems that on the first day after the goods
were distributed one of the chiefs attempted to dress himself in a
shirt. He didn't exactly understand it, and he pushed his legs through
the arms and gathered the tail up around his waist. He couldn't make
it stay up, however, and they say he went around inquiring in his
native tongue what kind of an idiot it was that constructed a garment
that wouldn't hang on, and swearing some of the most awful heathen
oaths. At last he let it drag, and that night he got his legs tangled
in it somehow and fell over a precipice and was killed.
"Another chief who got one on properly went paddling around in the
dark, and the people, imagining that he was a ghost, sacrificed four
babies to keep off the evil spirit.
[Illustration: THE HEATHEN CLOTHE THEMSELVES]
"And then, you know, those trousers you sent out? Well, they fitted
one pair on an idol, and then they stuffed most of the rest with
leaves and set them up as kind of new-fangled idols and began to
worship them. They say that the services were very impressive. Some of
the women split a few pairs in half, and after sewing up the legs used
them to carry yams in; and I saw one chief with a corduroy leg on his
head as a kind of helmet.
"I think, though, the socks were most popular. All the fighting-men
went for them the first thing. They filled them with sand and used
them as boomerangs and war-clubs. I learned that they were so much
pleased with the efficiency of those socks that they made a raid on a
neighboring tribe on purpose to try them; and they say they knocked
about eighty women and children on the head before they came home.
They asked me if I wouldn't speak to you and get you to send out a few
barrels more, and to make them a little stronger, so's they'd last
longer; and I said I would.
"This society's doing a power of good to those heathen, and I've no
doubt if you keep right along with the work you will inaugurate a
general war all over the continent of Africa and give everybody an
idol of his own. All they want is enough socks and trousers. I'll take
them when I go out again."
Then the Dorcas passed a resolution declaring that it would, perhaps,
be better to let the heathen go naked and give the clothes to the poor
at home. Maybe that is the better way.