Farmington was about eight or ten miles from the lead-mining district
of Southeast Missouri, where a great number of low foreigners were
employed, but God did not permit any ore to be found near us and so
kept our town holy and undefiled by their presence. We did not greatly
concern ourselves with their evil ways, because we knew that foreigners
were little if any better than the beasts of the field, and that
God had put them on earth for some inscrutable purpose of His own,
with which we were not to meddle. Even the Preachers and the amateur
devil-chasers in such towns as Flat River and Bonne Terre devoted their
activities principally to spreading the Gospel among the home-bred and
let the Hunkies carry on whatever nefarious practices pleased them
best. We didn’t want them in our Heaven, anyhow.
Our town nestled in the foothills of the Ozarks, some eighty-six miles
from St. Louis and two miles from the De Lassus station on the Belmont
branch of the Iron Mountain Railroad. But the civilizing influences of
the city seldom touched any of us except a few wealthy families who
could afford the railroad fare for frequent trips. We had then some
2,500 inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were devout workers for
the Protestant God, especially on Sunday. During the week many of them
put sand in the sugar and weighed their thumbs with the sausage, and
otherwise engaged in legitimate and profitable business enterprise, but
on Sunday they praised the Lord.
There were but two or three Jewish families in town then, and I do not
recall that they ever attempted to practice their religion; certainly
not in public. Doubtless our God would have destroyed them if they had
thus flaunted their sin in our faces, and mocked us with their heathen
rites. It is my recollection that they attended the Presbyterian
church, but if so it was for business or social reasons. The Catholics
had a church, but they were not numerically strong, and did not
amount to a great deal in the town’s scheme of things, although they
occasionally captured a city office or did a bit of proselyting among
the backsliders of the Protestant congregations. They labored earnestly
one whole summer trying to ensnare my sister after her allegiance to
the Methodist Father had wavered, but they were unsuccessful. She could
not swallow the Pope, or the holy images and the like. Nor could she
learn to cross herself properly, although I became much interested
and helped her; we used to go behind the barn and practice in all
seriousness, but we invariably found ourselves giggling at the rite.
And few things can destroy religion quicker than a hearty giggle.
The Protestants of Farmington made little if any effort to induce the
Catholics to abandon their debaucheries and embrace the true religion;
generally we considered them benighted heathens and crazy people and
let it go at that, confident that in due time God would blast them with
His wrath, destroy their churches and perhaps send their young women to
Heaven to be virgin angels in a Protestant paradise. I was very eager
to see this wholesale destruction, and waited patiently for many years,
hoping that God would furnish advance information to His intimate,
our Methodist pastor, so we would be able to view the performance. I
strongly favored an earthquake and a bolt of lightning, as being more
spectacular. But I am sorry to say that nothing ever happened, although
one night lightning struck the steeple of the Catholic church and there
was some talk about town that God was limbering up His muscles and
getting ready to show what He could really do.
Some of our most advanced thinkers conceded that perhaps the Catholics
and the few nondescripts who professed religion for the sake of
business but who would not attend church, had their own God, quite
different from ours and unquestionably a very inferior Deity. But
people who held this view were considered entirely too charitable; it
was all right to admit that God might, in the fullness of time, and
out of that loving mercy which keeps half the world constantly at the
throats of the other half, relent and permit a few Catholics to enter
Heaven as low menials, but to say that they might have a Heaven of
their own was going a bit too far. Both socially and spiritually they
were on the other side of the railroad tracks. They were simply not
in our set, and when any of them attended our parties, as sometimes
happened despite every precaution, it was a matter of very great
concern. Things may be different now, but when I was a boy cringing
before the threatening lash of the Methodist God, there was grave doubt
that anyone who lived south of the Post Office would ever amount to
anything spiritually.
All of the reigning sects of the Protestants had churches in our
town. There was also a Lutheran Church somewhere down by Schramm’s
Ice Plant, but its congregation was made up of Germans and what not,
who ranked scarcely higher than the Catholics and the Jews. For some
time during my final year in high school I was devotedly attached to a
young Lutheran girl, and this attachment was the cause of considerable
concern among some of my relatives. It was, then, my intention to marry
her, although I quickly abandoned it after I had tentatively broached
the matter to one of my aunts.
“She is not a Christian girl,” my aunt protested.
“She is a Lutheran,” I said. “They are Protestants.”
“But some of their services are in German! How can they be Christians?”
She was perfectly sincere. She believed firmly that God understood
no language but English, and that, having no knowledge of German, He
could not look with favor upon a Lutheran. But it developed that this
particular Lutheran could not look with favor upon a Methodist, which
was probably an insult to our Methodist God. It was a great many years
before I overcame my surprise that God did not do something about it,
yet He seems to have done nothing but make her happy and her husband
prosperous.
Most of the churches in our town were on Columbia Street, the
principal thoroughfare, and they and their subsidiary schools were
so numerous that we proudly called Farmington “The City of Schools
and Churches,” and enjoyed great renown throughout Southeast Missouri
for municipal piety and Christian education. On this street worshiped
the Presbyterians, the Southern Methodists--this was the church of
the Asburys and enjoyed special favors from the Lord--the Northern
Methodists, and the Christians or Campbellites. The Baptists had a
church in another part of town, in Doss’s Addition. Each of these
churches had a great many interlocking organizations, including Home
Missionary Societies, Foreign Missionary Societies, Ladies’ Aid
Societies and other holy groups.
The Ladies’ Aid Societies of the Middle West have become famous, and
they deserve their renown. When I was a boy they were in truth most
noble organizations. They rotated their meetings at the homes of the
members, performing at each house about once every two weeks, according
to the number of women who belonged. Their sessions were excessively
sanctimonious; they opened and closed with prayer, and frequently some
good Sister would at other times feel the spirit of the Lord working
within her, and she would pop up from the quilting frame or the shirt
on which she was sewing for the heathen and yelp an appeal to God to
give her something or damn somebody. There were also Bible-readings
at these meetings; in fact every time a member of our church called
on another member, a verse from the Bible was read and a prayer was
offered. And curiously enough these devout Christian Sisters displayed
a greater liking for the books of the Old Testament than for those of
the New.
In all of our congregations there were many special societies for young
people, to which the children of the godly had to belong and whose
meetings they had to attend. Their number was great, and the majority
of their titles escape me, but I recall such outfits as the Christian
Endeavor, the Loyal Temperance Legion, the Epworth League, the Baptist
Young People’s Union, and the Sunshine Brigade. The Legion was a union
organization of juvenile foes of rum, and we used to meet on Sunday
afternoons in the Presbyterian or Southern Methodist church and hear
lectures on the evils of drink, after which we would stand, raise our
right hands and shout in unison:
We hate Rum!
We hate Rum!
We hate Rum!
Our bodies will never be ravaged by drink!
The Sunshine Brigade was another union organization, in which all of
the churches combined, and was composed of boys from eight to twelve
or thirteen years of age. We met two or three times a week, in the
evening after supper, generally on the spacious lawn of Merrifield
Huff, the lawyer, and first we heard a Bible-reading and a prayer. Then
we drilled, in military fashion, under the command of older boys who
had been away to military schools. Then there were more verses from the
Bible, another prayer, and we were sent home with unctuous commands to
be good boys and think often of the mercy of the Lord. They called us
“Little Soldiers of the Lord,” and “Our Group of Manly Little Fellows.”
There was nothing we could do about it.
The activities of the Epworth League and the Baptist Young People’s
Union are too well known to require comment; they persist to this
day, and there seems to be no likelihood that the present generation
will make an intellectual advance sufficient to laugh them out of
existence. Fortunately Farmington was spared the Young Men’s Christian
Association, and I had no contacts with that remarkable agency of
salvation until I went to France with the American Army. Of my many
encounters with the Y. M. C. A. abroad, two stand out in my memory.
One occurred when I wanted a toothbrush, while in command of a platoon
of infantry in the support line on the Vesle river front, between
Fismes and Bazoches. I walked the eight miles or so back to division
headquarters with a five-franc note in my pocket, all the money I had
in the world.
The Y. M. C. A. canteen was open there, and after the secretary in
charge had greeted me sweetly as Brother and inquired after the
condition of my immortal soul, he produced a toothbrush, for which he
wanted two francs, then about forty cents. I said I would buy it, there
being no Red Cross hut near where I could have got one for nothing, and
laid down my five-franc note. But the Y. M. C. A. man could not change
it, nor could we find anybody else around headquarters who could do so.
The Y man said that he could not let me have the toothbrush without
payment and put it back in the case, and I walked the eight miles back
to my command without it, rejecting his offer of a free pocket Bible
with the observation that the line was one hell of a place for a Bible.
The second encounter with the Y. M. C. A. occurred a week or so
later, at La Pres Farm, on the same front and on the road between
Mont St. Martin and Chery Chartreuve. I had about two hundred sick
and flat-footed infantrymen there, waiting for gas masks and other
equipment so they could be moved to the front, and they had nothing to
smoke. Neither did they have any money, because they had not been paid
for months. To the farm came a Y. M. C. A. man laden with boxes, and
when I asked him what they were, he said cigars. He showed them to my
platoon sergeant and myself; they were fine, fat, handsome smokes.
I suggested that he lay out his stock, and that I would have the
sergeant march the troops past in columns of twos, so that each man
could have a cigar.
“That’s fine,” said the Y man, “they’re fifteen-cent cigars, but the
boys can have them for ten cents.”
I told him that to my knowledge there was not ten cents in the whole
outfit, and suggested that he give the cigars to the soldiers and look
to Heaven for payment. But he would not; he said that he had brought
the cigars to the line to sell and that he had to have the money for
them. So I did the thing that seemed best under the circumstances. I
took his cigars away from him, the sergeant headed him for Division
Headquarters, and I kicked him as hard as I could in the pants. The
last I saw of him, he was stumbling down the hill toward the crossroad
vowing vengeance. But I paid little attention to him; I was busy
handing out free cigars, and a few minutes later everybody at the farm
was puffing happily.
We had also in Farmington three denominational schools, Elmwood
Seminary, a girl’s college with primary and grammar departments for
both sexes, operated by the Presbyterians across the street from their
church; Carleton College in the lower end of the town, a Northern
Methodist institution, and Baptist College, near the Baptist church.
Carleton and Baptist were coeducational. I was educated--God save the
mark!--at Elmwood and Carleton, and at both there was much emphasis
on religious teaching. Carleton, of course, since it was run by the
Northern Methodists, was frankly a mill for grinding out workers for
the Lord, and they poured out of the hopper in large numbers for
many years. Gawky country boys came from the farms around Bull Run,
Hazel Run and French Village, and down-state toward Libertyville and
Fredericktown, and entered Carleton College, to emerge a few years
later rip-snorting evangelists hot on the trail of the Devil. Those
who did not become professional Satan-chasers developed, in the course
of time, into pussyfooting Brothers with keen ears for scandal, gimlet
eyes for boring searchingly and suspiciously into all amusement and
pleasure, and wagging tongues for scattering seeds of holiness. And
God made their teeth very sharp, for backbiting.
Curiously enough, the Presbyterians in Farmington comprised the liberal
element, in so far as we had a liberal element. This was because our
wealthy families, or at least our social leaders, were apparently
Episcopalians at heart and perhaps belonged to the Presbyterian
congregation only because we had no Episcopal church. They were able to
go to St. Louis frequently, and did, and consequently acquired a bit of
metropolitan polish, and rubbed off some of our small-town intolerance
and roughness. From time to time rumors were afloat that some of these
people had been seen entering Episcopal churches in St. Louis, but I
have never heard that they were verified.
But for many years this element had a virtual monopoly of such sinful
practices as playing cards, dancing and buggy-riding on the Sabbath.
I have heard several Brothers and Sisters, and more than one doleful
and sorrowing Preacher, speak regretfully of the unholy spectacle of a
young man of one of these families driving a spanking pair through the
heart of the town on Sunday afternoon, with an abandoned young woman
beside him and neither apparently caring one single damn about the fate
of religion. It was prophesied that they could come to no good end. But
the germ they planted multiplied enormously.